Small Signs that Reason Can Prevail Over Extremism Posted by Suzanne Nossel

Sari Nusseibeh has long been one of the most level-headed and forward leaning Palestinian leaders around.  Now, as President of the West Bank's al Quds University he has joined with Menachem Magidor, the President of Hebrew University in Jerusalem, to call for the British Association of University Teachers to end a boycott of Israeli Universities enacted at the behest of 60 Palestinian organizations.

Nusseibeh said this:

"The reason I don't believe the boycott is the way to go is that I believe peace must be built on the bridge between two civil societies," Professor Nusseibeh said.

While some people believed that one way to deal with Israelis was "to bash them on their heads," he said, "the other way is to reach to their hearts, and it's the reaching out that's important."

Speaking separately, Professor Magidor said: "Academic cooperation is extremely important for creating the infrastructure for, eventually, a peaceful Middle East. What people don't realize sometimes is that while you report a lot about the violence and confrontation, there is below the screen a lot of academic research and collaboration going on."

This is exactly right.  Reconciling divided societies depends heavily on wresting individuals away from the extremes by giving them a stake in the center, and building on the relationships that quietly develop between ordinary people who have something to gain from cooperation and even more to gain from peace and normalcy.  It shouldn't take a don understand that.

Comments

[Jeff Owen]

It's very good to read things like this.

It seems that progressives would benefit more by focusing on these sorts of issues than from the simplistic "Palestinians are all wrong/Israelis are all wrong" debate.

If someone can't agree that Israel should be safe and Palestinians should have their rights respected, they probably aren't worth having as constituents.

[Oren Levine]

I'm also happy to read thhings like this. If there's anything that's needed now, it's more attempts to reduce the overall emotional level of the conflict, so that pragmatic people on all sides can just work things out.

I like to think of the current situation as a clear choice between Peace and Victory. You can't have both, as even Arik Sharon has learned.

It's clear to me which choice the advocates of the boycott have made.

[manoppello]

Or to put it more succinctly: "remove religion from the equation."

The only policy 'wonks" will ever be successful at architecting real peace in the Middle East will be when they realize that people must relinquish the sad, racist
stereotypes that the gentry associate with Sephardic Jews, Arabs, Shi'i, Sunni, Ashkenazi Jews, Kurds, Persians, Turks, Maronites, Chaldeans, Samaritans, etc.

The "myths" and racial bias that each ethnic group applies to the others seems to be the fuel that keeps the fires of extremism, and in particular, violent terrorism going. One can readily see why Putin might be nostaligic for the days of Communism when religious celebrations were banned per Marxist formulas.

By now, proponents of the LIkud should realize that the notion that Ashkenazi Jews (Europeans) are somehow economically and intellectually superior to other Jews and Arabs is patently false. Otherwise, there would be no "constant danger" threatening the existence of Israel. As it is this "constant danger" and "emergency condition" seems to preclude granting those inalienable rights that European democracies usually desire to foster. We in the US should see this as a "distant mirror" of what we may become all too quickly.

its time to find a way to take the torch out of the hands of the extremists and the terrorists. And that torch is the antipathy that daily grows between the world's largest religious entities and their associated sects.

[Guy Koretz]

Unfortunately it is Nusseibeh and Magidor who are the extremists in the sense that they are the outliers. The fanatics are the ones closer to the middle of the Bell Curve. The closer one gets to the centers of religious beliefs (i. e. "Holy Places"), the worse the situation becomes. When it comes to insanity, Israel (especially Jerusalem) is Ground Zero.

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