Holy war, holy peace: how religion can bring peace to the Middle East

279 Pages·2002·1.01 MB·English

by  Marc Gopin

holy war, holy peace

4
Holy War, Holy Peace
How Religion Can Bring Peace
to the Middle East
marc gopin
1
2002
3
Auckland Bangkok Buenos Aires Cape Town Chennai
Dar es Salaam Delhi Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kolkata
Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi
São Paulo Shanghai Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto
and an associated company in Berlin
Copyright © 2002 by Marc Gopin
Published by Oxford University Press, Inc.
198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016
www.oup.com
Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior permission of Oxford University Press.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gopin, Marc.
Holy war, holy peace : how religion can bring peace to the Middle East
Marc Gopin.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-19-514650-6
1. Arab-Israeli con(cid:15)ict—1993—Peace. 2. Arab-Israeli con(cid:15)ict—Religious aspects.
3. Religion and politics—Middle East. I. Title.
DS119.76 .G67 2002
956.05—dc21 2001035850
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
To Ruth Sarah Gopin, my daughter Ruthie
I write this for you to give you a spiritual path for the future,
a way to be a proud Jew, a Jew who heals, a Jew who loves, who
hates only hatred, who forgives for the sake of life,
and for the sake of the Divine Spirit that inhabits all things.
I give you a way for us to be together always.
Find me here if you should ever miss me.

Acknowledgments
I want to thank my colleagues and friends who have supported me in many
ways in the course of this difficult work. Entering into the heart of the Israeli-
Palestinian con(cid:15)ict and learning how to empathize with the lives and feel-
ings of people on all sides of this tragedy have been wrenching experiences.
Sometimes it is difficult to move from day to day, not with the writing, but
with the dark knowledge of exactly who of my friends is at risk, who has been
hurt, and who has died.
I thank many friends for continuing to support me in this writing, such as
David Little, Aviva Bock, Julia Lieblich, Gordie Fellman, Andrea Bartoli,
Arnold Resnicoff, Ted Sasson, Roger Hurwitz, Yitshak Melamed, Patrick
McNamara, Robert Eisen, and Bob Carroll. In particular I want to mention
Kevin Avruch for his intellectual mentoring and personal support, Joseph
Montville for his unwavering friendship and devotion to our work, no matter
how difficult, and Doug Johnston who has courageously marched forward in
this (cid:18)eld. I also thank Scott Appleby and Louis Kriesberg, who continue to
teach me in many ways. I single out Vamik Volkan, whose psychological
genius and personal compassion form the two cornerstones of what I believe
the world needs most for a healthy future. I thank him for a lifetime of ser-
vice, and for teaching my teachers.
With the help of Initiatives for Change (IC), for which I am deeply grate-
ful, Bryan Hamlin and I have been partners on this long journey of Israeli
and Palestinian friendships, through the exhilaration of breakthroughs and
the heartbreak of witnessing the consequences of human failure. Together we
have been committed to the human heart as the source of all the trouble and
all future hopes. I honor with all my heart his friendship and courage. I also
thank too many other members of IC to mention. Charles and Kathy Aquilina,
Pierre and Fulvia Spoerri, Dick and Rande Ruffin, Christoph and Marianne
viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Spreng, Anne Hamlin, and many others have at times facilitated this difficult
process and have been friends to me in the deepest sense.
I thank my students at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy for stimu-
lating my thinking in class. I thank colleagues at Fletcher for being support-
ive friends and guides, especially Eileen Babbitt, Peter Uvin, Dean Bosworth,
Joel Trachtman, and Terry Knopf. I thank many friends at Temple Beth Sha-
lom of Cambridge, an extraordinary group of people who have put up with
my passions and heartbreak around Israel, and my obsessions as a writer. I
thank the U.S. Institute of Peace and, in particular, David Smock and Judy
Barselou for respecting my work and giving me a much-needed boost of
personal encouragement at a critical time. I thank my Israeli friends, whose
commitment, each in their own way, to peace and compassion bewilders me
in its persistence and (cid:18)lls me with wonder at the surprising capabilities of the
human spirit: Yehezkel Landau, Betsy Cohen-Kallus, Eliyahu Mclean,
Yehuda Stolov, Rabbi Menahem Frohman. As the years pass, I (cid:18)nd myself
less and less able to convey in words my love for and solidarity with them.
To my Palestinian friends, to the Abu Ghazaleh family, and to some of the
most honorable men in the security forces who will remain nameless here, I
thank you for everything you have taught me, for your graciousness and hos-
pitality, and for your role model of dignity in the worst of circumstances. I
wrote this book always with you in mind and with the peace and justice that
we can see together before our eyes. And to Sheikh Abu Saleh, a man of
unsurpassed spirituality and humanity whose courage in peacemaking is an
astonishing teaching for me.
Finally, I thank my family, as always: my wonderful wife, an incredible
mother to my daughters, two amazing children, astonishing creations whose
gifts, whose beauty, whose laughter and love of life carry me through the most
difficult days of my work.
Brookline, Massachusetts M. G.
March 2001
SEE LIST ix
Contents
Part I: Analysis
1. The Interaction between Religion and Culture in
Peace and Conflict, 3
2. Family Myths and Cultural Conflict, 7
3. Political and Mythic Interdependencies, 37
4. Patterns of Abrahamic Incrimination, 58
5. Conflict, Injury, and Transformation, 92
Part II: Practical Applications
6. Patterns of Abrahamic Reconciliation:
Act, Ritual, and Symbol as Transformation, 103
7. The Use of the Word and Its Limits:
Dialogue as Peacemaking, 144
8. Ritual Civility, Moral Practices of Interpersonal
Exchange, and Symbolic Communication, 160
9. De-escalation Plans and General Steps toward a
New Relationship, 186
10. Specific Steps toward a New Relationship, 198
Notes, 229
Bibliography, 255
Index, 261