Those Who Forget the Past

by Ron Rosenbaum

  Apart from getting to know one another, it is also necessary to establish relationships of trust and respect. Trust is lacking today: we meet often, listen sometimes, and distrust each other often. Trust needs time and support. The frequency and quality of meetings and the nature of the exchanges certainly help to create spaces for sincere encounter. However, it seems to me that four rules should be applied which may be quite demanding as preliminaries, but which are fundamentally constructive:

  Recognition of the legitimacy of each other’s convictions and respect for them;

  Listening to what people say about their own scriptural sources and not what we understand (or want to understand) from them;

  The right, in the name of trust and respect, to ask all possible questions, sometimes even the most embarrassing;

  The practice of self-criticism, which consists in knowing how to discern the difference between what the texts say and what our coreligionists make of them, and deciding clearly what our personal position is.

  These rules are essential. One cannot enter into dialogue if one does not recognize the legitimacy of other people’s convictions. Not to share them is one thing, but not to recognize, deep in one’s heart, their right to be is another. Nor is it fitting to try to become an exegete of one’s partner’s scriptures. This is not our role or our area of expertise. It is for our partners to tell us what they understand or what their coreligionists understand, from such and such a text. Reading the Torah or the Bible for a Muslim, the Qur’an for a Jew or a Christian, or the Bhagavad Gita for all three is certainly useful and necessary in order to try to understand others’ convictions, but these readings should inspire meditation and questions, not a simplistic accusation. We must also give ourselves the right to dare to ask all the questions that occur to us. The answers may or may not be satisfying, they may or may not suit us, but they will have been clearly stated. Trust can be born only from this frankness and clarity: in the meantime, without the latter, courtesy is but artificial or even a masquerade. At a deeper level, these are all questions that help people to go further in understanding their own traditions. Looking for a way to give a deep explanation means making the effort to understand better. The relevance of the question to my partner in dialogue is a gift, an intellectual and spiritual tonic, because I learn to express better what I believe and so to understand more deeply the meaning of what I am. Finally, dialogue involves clarity and courage: our scriptural sources have sometimes been used, or have legitimized (and still legitimize) discourses, behavior, and actions toward others about which we need to make clear statements. This is not always easy, but it is nevertheless vital, and all the religious traditions should be involved in this self-criticism. Some see it as a kind of disloyalty toward their own community; it should instead be a matter of self-respect and dignity before God and each person’s conscience.

  SHARED INVOLVEMENT

  Dialogue is not enough. Even if it is rigorous, even if it is necessary to give time to knowing, trusting, and respecting each other, even if we should take on ourselves the widest possible responsibility to report back, it is only one stage or one aspect of the encounter among the various religious traditions. In Western societies, it is urgent that we commit ourselves to joint action.

  In dialogue, we soon realize that we hold a great number of convictions and values in common. We understand very quickly that we are facing the same difficulties and challenges. But we very rarely move outside these circles of reflection. Together we say “God,” awareness, spirituality, responsibility, ethics, solidarity, but we live and experience, each one on one’s own, the problems of education, transmission of spirituality, individualism, consumerism, and moral bankruptcy. In philosophical terms, we could say that we know one another in words but not in action. Our experience of fifteen years of joint action in South America, Africa, and Asia has convinced us not only that this path is necessary but that it is the only way to eventually change minds and build mutual respect and trust.

  In the West, there are many shared challenges, first among them being education. How can we pass on to our children the sense of the divine, for the monotheistic faiths, or of spiritual practice for Buddhism, for example? In a society that pushes people to own, how are we to form individuals whose awareness of being illumines and guides their mastery of possession? Again, how are we to explain morality and boundaries, to pass on principles of life that do not confuse liberty with carelessness and that consider neither fashion nor quantity of possessions as the measure of goodness? All the religious and spiritual traditions are experiencing these difficulties, but we still see few examples of shared commitment to proposing alternatives. And there is so much to do—working together, as parents and as citizens, so that schools will provide more and more courses on the religions; suggesting ways of providing educational modules outside the school structures to teach the general population about the religions—their fundamental beliefs, particular topics, and social realities. Such modules need to be thought out together, not only by inviting a partner from the other religion to come to give a course as part of a program we have put together for and by ourselves. By way of example, the Interreligious Platform in Geneva has launched an interesting “school of religions,” and there is the Center for Muslim-Christian Studies, in Copenhagen, which, under the leadership of Lissi Rasmussen, is scored a first in Europe in establishing a real partnership within an institution promoting and practicing dialogue.

  Acts of solidarity take place from within each religious family, but the examples of shared initiatives are rare. People sometimes invite others, but do not act in collaboration. One of the best testimonies that a religious or spiritual tradition can give of itself lies in acts of solidarity between its adherents and others. To defend the dignity of the latter, to fight so that our societies do not produce indignity, to work together to support marginalized and neglected people, will certainly help us know one another better but it will, above all, make known the essential message that shines at the heart of our traditions: never neglect your brother in humanity and learn to love him, or at least to serve him.

  More broadly, we have to act together so that the body of values that forms the basis of our ethics is not relegated to such a private and secluded sphere that it becomes inoperative and socially dead. Our philosophies of life must continue to inspire our civil commitment, with all due respect to the supporters of a postmodernism whose aim seems to be to deny any legitimacy to all reference to a universal ethic. We need to find together a civil role, inspired by our convictions, in which we will work to demand that the rights of all be respected, that discriminations be outlawed, that dignity be protected, and that economic efficiency cease to be the measure of what is right. Differentiating between public and private space does not mean that women and men of faith, or women and men of conscience, have to shrink to the point of disappearance and fear to express themselves publicly in the name of what they believe. When a society has gone so far as to disqualify, in public debate, faith and what it inspires, the odds are that its system is founded only on materialism and ruled only by materialist logic—the self-centered accumulation of goods and profit.

  We must dare to express our faith, its demands, and its ethics, to involve ourselves as citizens in order to make known our human concerns, our care for justice and dignity, our moral standards, our fears as consumers and televiewers, our hopes as mothers and fathers—to commit ourselves to do the best possible, together, to reform what might be. All our religious traditions have a social message that invites us to work together on a practical level. We are still far from this. In spite of thousands of dialogue circles and meetings, we still seem to know one another very little and to be very lacking in trust. Perhaps we must reconsider our methods and formulate a mutual demand: to behave in such a way that our actions, as much as possible, mirror our words, and then to act together.

  NOTES

  Although it must be pointed out that more and more dialogue initiatives
are aimed at the local level and in the United States and Europe unite believers from various religions.

  Qur’an 2:38.

  Qur’an 6:35.

  Qur’an 10:99.

  Qur’an 5:48.

  The Qur’an confirms this in a clear general rule: “No compulsion in religion” (2:256).

  Qur’an 2:251.

  Qur’an 22:40.

  Qur’an 49:13.

  Read and understood globally, these Qur’anic references bring together all the dimensions of “difference” among human beings: tribe, nation, race, religion.

  Qur’an 29:46.

  It does not mean that it would be impossible to dialog with pantheistic spirituality or Buddhism, but its ground and its focus would naturally be more essentially directed toward common moral values, ethical commitment.

  Qur’an 3:64.

  In the mind of Muslims, the Qur’an confirms, completes, and corrects the messages that came before it, and in this Muslims hold the same position that Christians hold toward the Jews. It is a position that is in itself perfectly coherent: to believe in a Book that comes later necessarily assumes that one considers that there is a deficiency or distortion in the former.

  Qur’an 3:2–3.

  Qur’an 16:125.

  Qur’an 29:46.

  Qur’an 5:82.

  Qur’an 60:8.

  Whether one translates this as “they are miscreants who . . .” or “they are infidels who . . .” depends on the sense one gives to kafara. We shall return to this.

  Qur’an 5:17.

  Qur’an 98:1. We find the same senses here: “who have done wickedly” or “who are infidels.”

  Qur’an 3:19.

  Qur’an 3:85.

  Qur’an 2:120.

  Qur’an 3:28.

  See part I [of the whole book].

  Qur’an 2:34.

  Qur’an 2:131.

  Qur’an 2:62.

  On the strength of an opinion attributed to Ibn Abbas reported in al-Tabari’s commentary (tafsir). It was said to be abrogated by 3:85, already referred to.

  After the revelation of the last message, those who had knowledge beforehand would be judged according to their sincerity in the search for truth. Only God is the judge of this, and no human being can declare another’s destiny, or his own.

  The concept of “milla” used in this verse to express the idea of religion conveys the idea of “people’s community of faith,” a sense of belonging, much more than the word “din,” which is “religion” or “concept and way of life” per se. 34 In Qur’anic usage, the word mumin (bearer of faith) usually means Muslim.

  Qur’an 60:9.

  Qur’an 16:125.

  Qur’an 2:143.

  As I see it, interreligious debate cannot take place by way of a debate on theological questions. We often witness a choice between extremes; either the discussion is completely theological, or the theological aspect is totally ignored and people behave as if the cause of the problem were understood. Both approaches are, in my view, defective and illusory.

  AMOS OZ

  Two Middle East Wars

  TWO PALESTINIAN-ISRAELI WARS have erupted in this region. One is the Palestinian nation’s war for its freedom from occupation and for its right to independent statehood. Any decent person ought to support this cause. The second war is waged by fanatical Islam, from Iran to Gaza and from Lebanon to Ramallah, to destroy Israel and drive the Jews out of their land. Any decent person ought to abhor this cause.

  Yasir Arafat and his men are running both wars simultaneously, pretending they are one. The suicide killers evidently make no distinction. Much of the worldwide bafflement about the Middle East, much of the confusion among the Israelis themselves, stems from the overlap between these two wars. Decent peace seekers, in Israel and elsewhere, are often drawn into simplistic positions. They either defend Israel’s continued occupation of the West Bank and Gaza by claiming that Israel has been targeted by Muslim holy war ever since its foundation in 1948, or else they vilify Israel on the grounds that nothing but the occupation prevents a just and lasting peace. One simplistic argument allows Palestinians to kill all Israelis on the basis of their natural right to resist occupation. An equally simplistic counterargument allows Israelis to oppress all Palestinians because an all-out Islamic jihad has been launched against them.

  Two wars are being fought in this region. One is a just war, and the other is both unjust and futile.

  Israel must step down from the war on the Palestinian territories. It must begin to end occupation and evacuate the Jewish settlements that were deliberately thrust into the depths of Palestinian lands. Its borders must be drawn, unilaterally if need be, upon the logic of demography and the moral imperative to withdraw from governing a hostile population.

  But would an end to occupation terminate the Muslim holy war against Israel? This is hard to predict. If jihad comes to an end, both sides would be able to sit down and negotiate peace. If it does not, we would have to seal and fortify Israel’s logical border, the demographic border, and keep fighting for our lives against fanatical Islam.

  If, despite simplistic visions, the end of occupation will not result in peace, at least we will have one war to fight rather than two. Not a war for our full occupancy of the holy land, but a war for our right to live in a free and sovereign Jewish state in part of that land. A just war, a no-alternative war. A war we will win. Like any people who were ever forced to fight for their very homes and freedom and lives.

  1http://www.sicmuse.com/weblog/

  2 Just as this book was going to press, I had an interesting discussion with Jonathan Alter, the Newsweek and Washington Monthly writer. He suggested there are two types of anti-Semitic utterances: those that come from an almost unconscious resort to a preexisting external “template,” one such as the Protocols, and those that come from within, where they are embedded in the consciousness of the utterer like a “virus” (his word), or meme. It’s important to remember: just as not all Jews are alike, neither are all anti-Semites.

  3 That was what I found so fascinating in Dr. David Zangen’s account. He was someone who was an eyewitness in Jenin, now witnessing the unveiling of a film that would perpetrate the lie about Jenin: a slick, deceptive propaganda “documentary” that would soon be shown throughout the world. It was as if he were there to watch the composition of the Protocols. He seeks to speak the truth, knowing it may be too late, and is shouted down. Jenin is one of a number of moments that you will find described from various perspectives by various authors herein, such as the incident at San Francisco State University and the Egyptian TV dramatization of the Protocols. I don’t consider these recurrences repetitious; I’d call them cumulative testimony to the iconic status these events attained, and the grim reality they represented.

  4 There are similar arguments over whether “Holocaust” is the preferable term, as opposed to “Shoah” (Hebrew for “destruction”), “Final Solution,” or just plain “genocide.” I have some reservations about the sacralizing origin of “Holocaust” (Greek for “burnt offering in a religious ritual”) but have gone with it because it has become the most familiar, and now historically specific, usage for Hitler’s crime.

  5 I suspect this is why Robert Jan van Pelt, historian of Auschwitz, prefers the term “negationism” to “Holocaust denial.” Negationism is a cynical, knowing attempt to erase something that happened, while “denial” pretends to believe it never happened at all.

  6 www.memri.org/

  7 As Christopher Caldwell put it recently, “Land once ceded is hard to reclaim; peace can be revoked by merely changing one’s mind.”

  8 News report, November 21, 2003: “Israeli Deputy Chief of Staff Ashkenazi warns: ‘Iranian nuclear threat to Israel is a matter of time.’ ”

  9 It has been said that the Arab states can lose a thousand wars and still survive; Israel will not survive if it loses one.

  10 Beyond Belief: The American Press and the Coming of the Holocaus
t, 1933–1945. See also The Terrible Secret: The Suppression of the Truth About Hitler’s Holocaust, by Walter Laqueur, as well as Wyman and Medoff ’s A Race Against Death. In his new book, The Return of Anti-Semitism, Gabriel Schoenfeld calls the phenomenon “anti-Semitism denial.”

  11 Daniel Gordis’s piece captures the emotional reality of those living under this threat.

  12 See Hitler’s “Table Talk,” October 24, 1941.

  13 See Yehuda Bauer’s important challenge to the “mystifiers” in “Is the Holocaust Explicable?,” originally published in the journal Holocaust and Genocide Studies and reprinted in Rethinking the Holocaust, Yale University Press, 2001.

  14 In an important British anthology called A New Anti-Semitism? Debating Judeophobia in 21st-Century Britain (ed. by Paul Iganski and Barry Kosmin), the source of Jonathan Freedland’s essay.

  15 In November 2003 the U.K. Political Cartoon Society gave its annual first prize to a depiction (in The Independent) of a bloodthirsty Ariel Sharon biting off the bloody head of a Palestinian child. “Mere” anti-Zionism or repulsive anti-Semitism?

  16 I had sought to reprint herein the whole text of Ms. Klein’s important caution to the Left, about “all the recent events I’ve gone to where anti-Muslim violence was rightly condemned, but no mention made about attacks on Jewish synagogues, cemeteries and community centers,” but permission was not granted.