By Rabbi Dow Marmur
TORONTO — Though President Barack Obama will have many urgent challenges to contend with in his second term, it’s reasonable to assume that Israeli-Palestinian relations will be high on his agenda. During the election campaign he said he would visit Israel when “we’re actually moving something forward.” He seems to have had the peace process in mind.
There’s evidence that, despite intransigent tactical posturing on both sides, the majority of Israelis and Palestinians yearn for peace and are willing to make sacrifices for it. Michael Melchior is an important and reliable witness to that effect.
Melchior is an Orthodox rabbi and the leader of the small religious Zionist Meimad party in Israel. For some 10 years he was a member of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, and held several ministerial posts in the government. Throughout his career he has fostered warm relations with Christian and Muslim leaders and thus gained access to authoritative players in the region.
Based on his inside information, Melchior insists that he has proof of continued Palestinian commitment to a two-state solution.
Throughout his career this Danish-born scion of generations of distinguished rabbis has been in the forefront of progressive causes in Israel. He remains undeterred in his peace activism. In an interview last September in the online English-language daily the Times of Israel he disclosed that he has continued to meet with leading Palestinian personalities — including leaders of Hamas, the terrorists who rule Gaza — and that they are all sincere in their desire for peace with Israel.
Though Melchior is a politician, his approach goes far beyond politics. Based on his vast experience in interfaith work, he’s confident that it’s possible to bring together Jewish and Muslim religious leaders who “would give their religious legitimization for a two-state solution, which would accept that there is a Jewish state next to a Palestinian state living in peace.”
He envisages not only an Arab minority in Israel, as is now the case, but even “a Jewish minority living in Palestine” as a solution to the vexing problem of Israeli settlements. These could remain Jewish in a Palestinian state.
Hard-headed skeptical analysts are likely to dismiss this possibility as wishful utopian thinking by a pious but unrealistic rabbi. For the received wisdom, as promulgated by politicians and media pundits on both sides, suggests the very opposite: that time for a two-state solution initiated by the so-called Oslo Accords of 1993 is rapidly running out and that peace is nowhere in sight.
But Melchior, whom I have known for most of his life, is neither a fool nor a romantic. His experience suggests that he’s approaching the issue on a religious — thus arguably more nuanced and sophisticated — level that’s free from considerations of expediency, tactics and the need to be re-elected.
Humans are able to generate ideas that influence their actions, not only engage in behaviour that shapes attitudes. Melchior is a serious exponent of the former. For him, the ominous alternatives to Palestine and Israel living side by sides as sovereign states are “Lebanon or apartheid South Africa.” Those duped by political slogans and cynical analyses “are not helping us by sanctifying the status quo.”
Though Melchior brings few concrete arguments, his testimony of meetings with Muslim leaders is compelling. Exponents of churches, mosques and synagogues in Canada and elsewhere may have an important role in this not by calling for boycotts and other punitive measures nor by uncritical adherence to every extremist position, but by moral and tangible support for this rabbi and all others who know that speaking peace is a precondition for making peace.
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Dow Marmur is rabbi emeritus at Toronto’s Holy Blossom Temple. This article initially appeared in The Star of Toronto. He may be contacted at dow.marmur@sdjewishworld.com