Rabbi Michael Lerner went to a conference on “dialogue” in Saudi Arabia and was impressed by the humanity of the Saudis. He has filed this long report on a dinner table conversation he had with several members of Saudi King Abdullah’s cabinet. The highlight is when Lerner speaks of Israel’s fears of being obliterated by the Iranians and the ministers are dumbfounded.
Incredulously, they asked if any Jews in
the US believed that that was possible. I responded that such fears
were frequently voiced in the organized Jewish community, though many
younger Jews did not share that fear.At this point, the Saudis were so astounded they almost lost interest
in the conversation. They found it impossible to believe that anyone
could believe that Israel was in any danger of destruction. Israel,
they pointed out to me, had close to two hundred nuclear bombs–no
state would dare seek to destroy Israel for fear of being wiped off the
face of the earth.
Similarly, they perceived Iranian threats from
Ahmadinejad to be a joke, since everyone knew that Iran did not have
any nuclear capacity whatsoever and was unlikely to have anything in
the next decade.
Many of the Saudis at the table felt that at this
point they were listening to a typical Israeli propagandist (me) and
that there was no point in continuing to talk since they believed that
I knew and all Israelis and Jews knew that there was no possibility of
Israel ever getting destroyed by the weak Arab or Islamic world, and
that taking such concerns seriously were about as rational as thinking
that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.
Wonderful reporting. Some other points in Lerner’s piece: the Saudis are justifiably irritated that no one has advanced the Arab nations’ initiative of 2002 or so to return to the ’67 borders and call it a draw. Lerner says the ’67 borders are impossible because of the Western Wall. The Saudis say, Jerusalem is negotiable. Lerner keeps hammering the Saudis about why they haven’t done more to improve conditions in Palestinian refugee camps. I don’t know about that issue. The conditions of Jews in Displaced Persons Camps in 1947 in Europe was an important impetus for the U.N. decision to declare a Jewish state in the Arab world, something the Arab world did not want. And yes I know, in my clement mood yesterday, I said that a pagan worldview instructs us to live where we live, not to think about where our grandparents lived. But why isn’t Lerner pushing for Nakba reparations?
Myself I have heard good things about
King Abdullah. Says an Arab friend: “Even before he was King he was
popular because, unlike his brothers, he
was viewed as incorruptible. To this day none of his sons is known to
have a private plane, while many of their cousins have huge palaces and
private planes that were funded from commissions on Government
contracts or land grabs.“ Lerner seems to echo that mood:
there is a modernizing elite that sees
those reactionary aspects of their own society as equally problematic,
and hopes to change that (indicated to me in many comments made during
the two hours we sat together and which I’ve only partially summarized
here).I am not an advocate for the Saudi regime, but I now see its humanity,
the fundamental decency of some who are engaged in an effort to “reform
from within,” and am reminded once again of how ridiculous it is to
talk about a whole society as though it represented a single
perspective or shared a single worldview, the need to work with the
most progressive elements, and the need to avoid “Othering the Other.”
The world is changing. The old alliances are crumbling. The old religions have outlived their usefulness.
