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April 18, 2003
In search of love, law, peace
Speaker says an international arbitrator is needed in the Middle
East.
CYNTHIA RAMSAY SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH BULLETIN
People were jammed around tables and lined the stairs at Bukowski's
Café April 6 to hear Dr. Leonard Angel speak about love,
law and peace as they relate to Israel and what Angel referred to
as "Palestine."
Angel is a representative of Tikkun Community Vancouver and president
of the Vancouver branch of World Federalists. He was the featured
speaker at the Philosophers' Café sponsored by Jews for a
Just Peace on the topic Love, Law and Peace in Israel/Palestine.
He began his talk with a disclaimer.
"I'm not very comfortable," he said. "The reason
I'm not very comfortable is that I don't know very much about Israel
and Palestine.... But sometimes we get involved in issues about
which our factual knowledge may not be as good as we would like
because we feel that there is no choice – we have to get involved."
Angel described himself as a Jew, born in Montreal, who "went
to Jewish parochial school from kindergarten right through to university."
He has studied philosophy and came to Vancouver to do graduate work.
Here, he got into various forms meditation and, eventually, he became
involved with Jewish Renewal. He was "impressed with the fundamental
values in Judaism." In his opinion, these values can be summarized
by well-known quotations such as "Love thy neighbor as thyself"
and "Justice, justice, shall thy pursue."
The original pious ones, said Angel, used to be still for an hour
or so before engaging in any form of prayer or affirmations. "So
it seems to me that in the ancient world, there was a real emphasis
on love and law and peace," he said. "Meditation to me
seems to be connected with peace."
Angel then discussed the Cain and Abel story, characterizing farmers
(Cain) as acquirers of land and proponents of boundaries, and shepherds
(Abel) as wanderers, tent-dwellers who are open to meditation and
a broader consciousness. Looking at how Judaism evolved, argued
Angel, there was a complete switch, and Judaism became connected
with a particular territory of land and it became connected with
the idea of a king, the establishment of a standing army. But the
original notion, he said, was that of no king and no standing army.
"So what is this relationship between love and law and peace
as it applies to Israel and Palestine, as Israel/Palestine exists
now?" asked Angel.
The first thing is very simple, he said: "Love the neighbor
as thyself." People are people and, in this global village,
everybody is our neighbor, he said.
What we want to do, he continued, is to fulfil this loving neighbor-to-neighbor
relationship, but there will be times when two people are in real
dispute with each other and this is where there is a relationship
between love and law.
"We need to have a legal system which can enable the resolution
of disputes," said Angel.
"This is really a 4,000-year process that we've been undergoing
in which we transform from systems of vengeance into systems of
law," he explained. "In a vengeance system, you have no
law.... Somebody from family No. 1 came and killed somebody from
family No. 2 and so, in vengeance, somebody from family No. 2 goes
and kills somebody from family No. 1."
Angel said that we are half-way through the transformation from
a vengeance- to law-based society, because the states themselves
are still not governed effectively by international law. He lauded
the establishment, a year ago, of a permament international court
to try people for crimes against humanity, crimes of war and acts
of genocide.
"Of course, the United States is not a member of this criminal
court ... neither is Iraq," he said.
Bringing the presentation back to the Middle East situation, Angel
listed some of the "crimes" committed by both the Israelis
and Palestinians. His examples included the killings of civilians
by both peoples prior to 1947, and the expulsion of Arabs from Israel
and Jews from Arab countries in 1948. Since then, said Angel, Israel
has "violated international laws" by promoting and practising
the establishment of settlements in what became the occupied lands,
and Palestinian groups have violated well-recognized laws by killing
civilians within Israel. He gave other examples of violations, then
went on to explain how to bring love, law and peace to the situation.
According to Angel, Israel should return to its 1967 (or earlier)
boundaries and there needs to be some adjustment to the boundaries
of Jerusalem, negotiated over a period of time. If there is no resolution
between the two parties, he said, then there should be an international
arbitrator (associated with the International Court at the Hague)
to impose a solution.
Angel said that access by Jews to holy sites needs to be secured
and the rights of the Palestinian refugees must be recognized. Israel
must publicly recognize its role in creating the refugee problem
and its responsibilities in solving the problem, he said. He made
no mention of compensation for Jewish refugees from Arab countries.
In the discussion period that followed, the first question put to
Angel was how two parties develop a loving relationship when one
party refuses to recognize the right of the other to exist, the
implication being that the Palestinians do not believe in Israel's
right to exist. After initially attempting to defer the response
to someone in the audience, Angel said that this was a "false
question," as there are many different opinions in the Palestinian
community about Israel's right to exist.
As to why the Israeli-Palestinian relationship has not successfully
developed, Angel said, "There hasn't been a willingness on
the part of the Israeli government to look at the law, [and say]
'we're violating the law here' ... the law of the occupation, of
the residential settlements in the occupied territories."
When asked what the specific laws were to which Angel was referring,
he replied that he didn't remember them off the top of his head
and could not produce anything in written form to show to the audience.
The only other question relating directly to Angel's talk was about
the process of negotiation and how, in a negotiation, both sides
usually give up something. The questioner noted that Angel recommended
that Israel return to its 1967 boundaries but said nothing of what
he expected from the Palestinians. Angel answered that he would
expect the Palestinians to recognize Israel's right to exist and
to stop their illegal activities, such as the suicide bombings.
The rest of the discussion focused mainly on what certain audience
members claimed to be Israel's violations of the law and human rights,
with examples being given of abuses of power by the Israeli army,
the devastation caused by home demolitions, the negative attitude
of Israelis towards Palestinians and Israel's "racist"
Law of Return. A few people in the audience attempted to defend
the Jewish state's actions, pointing to Israel's willingness to
give up land and create a Palestinian state under the Oslo Accords,
the openness of
Israel to Arabs while there are few Jews left in surrounding Arab
countries, and the suffering caused to Israelis by terrorist attacks.
Most of the people who took the microphone – even those supporting
Israel – spoke of Palestine, as if the state had already been
created.
Although there was some heckling of speakers on both sides of the
issue and the refrain "That's a lie" was heard after various
comments, the discussion remained mostly civil. Many of the people
who took the microphone spoke with great emotion.
There was one optimistic person who spoke directly about the Israeli-Palestinian
situation.
"The way things are set up," she said, "is that there
are the Palestinians on one side and the Israelis on the other,
and they all hate each other. For the most part, that's not the
case." She said that she considered the two sides to be comprised
of those "who are working together to try and figure out a
peaceful and just solution that makes sense, and extremists on both
sides who think that they can win and are stuck in some sort of
prejudice and hate and don't want to see other people as human beings.
Those are the two sides.
"It's not a question of choosing the Israeli or the Palestinian
side," she continued. "It's working with all the people
who are interested in working together. That's where I think we
can be useful."
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