Religious Leaders Fight to Keep Lines of Communication Open

In a heartfelt letter to his congregation at Temple Israel of Hollywood, Rabbi John L. Rosove described the first stage of the breakdown. One of the members of the Jewish Muslim peacemakers group he belongs to had just resigned.

He spoke of being deeply disappointed about prospects for peace in the Middle East and recognized that many in his congregation felt the same way. He wondered what the future can possibly hold for Israeli-Palestinian relations and feared that years of suffering could lie ahead for Muslims as well as Jews.

The Jewish Muslim Dialogue group Rosove belongs to is made up of about 10 to 15 local community leaders, with about twice as many Jews as Muslims. They have met every month for more than a year, focusing on issues that affect them all.

The group did not form to critique events in the Middle East, but while the violence is exploding there, more than 7,000 miles away, the tension is very real here, as well. On Oct. 17, Hussam Ayloush, a Muslim who is local director of the Council on American Islamic Relations, or CAIR, quit the group, calling the dialogue a waste of time.

Since Ayloush withdrew, two more members have resigned, one Jewish and one Muslim. On Tuesday, Ayloush sent out a statement about his decision that circulated via e-mail to tens of thousands of CAIR subscribers around the world. In it he challenged the Los Angeles group’s ability to be objective about the issues that divide Jews and Muslims.

In a time of crisis for the group, many remain committed. “I’m not walking out on this,” Rosove said in an interview last week. “I wouldn’t walk out on a marriage, and I’m not walking out on this.”

Salam Al-Marayati, executive director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, also reaffirmed his participation. “The dialogue is moving on,” he said. “It won’t be held up by any one individual.”

The group’s first statement of purpose is a code of ethics some of its founding members published last December. They agreed to speak as one voice against racism, stereotyping and violence. They promised to verify rumors with one another before making public statements and to keep their criticisms directed toward the issues rather than indulge in name-calling. The original statement was co-signed by more than 65 Jewish and Muslim religious and civic leaders.

Early supporters included Jewish and Muslim leaders known for their views on community relations, among them Rabbi Harvey Fields of Wilshire Boulevard Temple, Rabbi Allen Freehling of University Synagogue, Elaine Albert of the Jewish Community Relations Committee, Maher Hathout, former spokesman for the Islamic Center of Southern California, now the senior advisor to the Muslim Public Affairs Council, or MPAC, and Al-Marayati. Rosove and Ayloush and others joined later.

Education and Dialogue Were First Priorities

The first order of business was to list their priorities. Education, dialogue and crisis intervention surfaced as the main objectives. Longer-range plans include publishing scholarly papers on how the two faiths view such topics as mercy, justice, truth and goodness.

Ayloush joined with high hopes. “We had a great beginning,” he said. ‘We were getting to know each other, forming personal relationships.” At a retreat, members told their stories. One Holocaust survivor explained how his five months in a concentration camp led him to work for peace. A Muslim described being jailed in Pakistan for political activism and later saving the life of the man who informed on him.

From the start, some members have been criticized from within their own communities for joining the group. “You run the risk of being judged a traitor to Israel,” said Arthur Stern, 75, the Holocaust survivor and longtime peace activist. “The number of people willing to look at the Middle East situation from both sides is a tiny minority. Most people feel they already know exactly what is going on there.”

Rising stresses within the group remind Stern of how difficult it is to sustain this kind of dialogue. As part of an Arab-Jewish Speakers Bureau here in the early 1990s, he witnessed the same cycle. Muslim and Jewish members of the bureau spoke in synagogues, colleges and mosques on how to achieve peace in the Middle East. “Some disagreed on how to do it, but we all agreed on one thing--the need to proceed peacefully,” Stern said. Recurring outbreaks in the Middle East between Israelis and Palestinians divided the group, however. “We had six months of general goodwill, thereafter there was suspicion,” Stern said. Finally the group dissolved.

Part of what makes solidarity difficult is that both Jews and Muslims consider the land now known as Israel to be their spiritual home. “For Jews, Israel is the resurrection after the Holocaust,” said Stern. “But for Muslims, the fact is they were treated terribly,” he said of the formation of Israel as an independent state in 1948. “There has been trauma on both sides; the involvement is heavy and emotional.”

Pressed to Condemn Ariel Sharon

Ayloush said he initially tried to work his issues out within the Jewish Muslim Dialogue group. The latest collapse of the peace accord and the escalating conflict in Israel worried him. He pressed the group to condemn Israeli politician Ariel Sharon, whose appearance, accompanied by some 700 armed police, at a Jerusalem site sacred to both Jews and Muslims sparked the first riot. “I was not asking to condemn the Israeli government,” Ayloush said. “Muslim holy places in Israel are dear to Muslims all over the world. When the Middle East exploded, I wanted to be sure we were all on the same page.”

His request was turned down. Rosove said he suggested instead that the group should issue a resolution to condemn the violence, urging a return to peace negotiations. But Ayloush took the refusal as a painful lesson. “Some members of the American Jewish community see themselves as totally bound to Israel, and it is not OK to criticize,” he said. “At the same time, the Muslim community does not hesitate to condemn acts of violence by Muslims anywhere.”

E-mail messages and phone calls flew between group members. It got so time-consuming that David Gardner, a Jewish immigration lawyer who has worked with a number of Muslim clients, withdrew in frustration. “Issues in the Middle East don’t belong in this dialogue, but it’s almost impossible to separate them,” he said. “The goals of the group are not focused enough to avoid that kind of conflict.”

He saw a basic problem. Too many members are full-time public advocates for their own community. It is difficult for them to take objective positions concerning events affecting their communities in the Middle East.

Ayloush’s reasons for quitting speak to that concern. “CAIR represents the Muslim community,” he said of the international network whose Southern California office he directs. “Our community would not accept my meeting with a dialogue group that would not condemn what happened in the Middle East in October.”

Gardner joined the group to help support the ethics code and because he wanted to learn more about Muslim religious beliefs and traditions. “If we had a structure in place that would help avoid blowing up Jewish and Muslim people, I’d work all day and night for that.” On his own he is developing a program to bring Palestinians to the United States for job training.

Al-Marayati retains some hope: “We need a modest appraisal of where we are now,” he said. “The priorities for our respective communities are to end stereotyping and violence, locally, which sometimes are a repercussion of events in the Middle East. There are extremists on both sides who do not want to see us succeed,” he said. “Just being in dialogue is important right now.”