In late fall I received an invitation from the Perdana Leadership Foundation in Malaysia, headed by the former Prime Minister Dr. Mahathir Mohammed to participate in an international conference devoted to the theme of peace to be held in Kuala Lumpur, in mid-December 2005, and was the only Israeli participating.
A major source of satisfaction was to see at the opening of the conference that was attended by over 2000 people among the flags of the countries from which the speakers originated — also the flag of Israel.
As someone who has been involved in Israeli-Palestinian dialogue for many years, I believe that I had some feel for the audience of over 1000 Malaysians that I was to address as part of a panel on religious dialogue. As both a religious Jew and a faculty member of Bar-Ilan University, which is a Jewish religious university, I wore a kippa (Jewish religious skull cap) at the conference. The chairman introduced me as from Bar-Ilan University, Israel and part of the audience applauded.
In my presentation, I asked the question: Does dialogue work in changing perception to help make peace building possible?
As a political scientist I began to work with an interested colleague in my Department — the Interdisciplinary Dept of Social Sciences — a social psychologist, Dr. Chaim Lavie, who did earlier work on the impact of the Israeli Policy of Open Bridges began in the late 1960s — on Israeli perceptions of Palestinians. We assessed in 1999 an Israeli-Palestinian inter-religious dialogue held in Khan Unis, Gaza and found the most significant positive changes occurring among participants most religious and considered most resistant to change.
A virtual dialogue comparing Ramadan and Rosh Hashana by respective Israeli Jewish from Bar-Ilan and Palestinian students was held in 2000, supervised by me and reported on at an international scientific conference continued to underline the potential importance of religion and culture for relationship-building.
Why does this approach to dialogue — a cultural religious approach — seem to offer possibilities where other forms of dialogue and peace building might not? On a basic level one aspect is that of commonalty — no two religions are more similar in structure and practice than Judaism and Islam. This connects to the literature in social psychology and relationship building of finding commonalities between groups in conflict.
From the point of identifying commonalities in religious practice this approach to dialogue has led to deeper matters and points of clarification regarding the historic and religious connection of each side’s attachment to the land that we call the Land of Israel and is an intrinsic part of Jewish belief and yearning, and others call Palestine. Perhaps in such a dialogue we will begin to realize that each side will have in some way to make accommodation for the other in their narrative and worldview. The main Jewish civilization in the Land of Israel during the time of the Bible took place before the rise of Islam, and Islam’s control of the area occurred when the Jewish people were no longer an active political force in the area.
So how can the inter-religious approach help us in this era? Perhaps today we can meet in another way. We can as believers wish each other well in prayer, this is sort of a transcendent point of contact beyond words — even when political positions differ or even strongly differ. But this discourse should take us to a deeper level as well.
Magnified and enhanced in my view based on the process I have described here could be a vision that emerges from such efforts. This could be a cooperative vision for the Holy Land where we do not give up our national identities and commitments — as Israelis and Palestinians. And I am not naïve; in fact I survived a terror attack several years ago and miraculously came out with only a minor injury and have been able to continue my regular work. But the transcendent vision or direction would be toward making the land which we call by different names a Holy Land but worthy of people created in the image of God.
My audience was attentive and I felt well received even if many may not have agreed with me. I also felt privileged to be exposed to Malaysia as a society based on a dedicated but modern form of Islam, along with strong multicultural elements.
I also felt that many who I came into contact with represented the ideal of having pride in one’s own identity and heritage while being open to positive contact with other cultures.
I hope that this type of contact might help promote dialogue between Israel, the larger Muslim world, and have a spill over onto Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking and dialogue. (GGNS)
— Dr. Ben Mollov is on the faculty of Bar-Ilan University and teaches political science and conflict management.
