BOB ABERNETHY, host: Beneath the Jerusalem hills, near the entrance to the city, are the remains of the former Arab village of Lifta. All of Lifta’s Arab residents fled or were forced out during Israel’s war for independence in 1948. Today, it’s the only once-Arab village in Israel that has not been destroyed or resettled by Jews. Lifta’s former Arab residents want it back. The Jerusalem government wants it developed for luxury housing, and some preservationists, on both sides, want it kept as a monument to what life there used to be. Menachem Daum is an American Jew from Brooklyn. He traveled to Lifta recently to hear all sides of the story.

MENACHEM DAUM: I may have a family link to Lifta. My uncle, Meyer Yosef, a member of the Betar Zionist youth, left Poland for Palestine in 1937. He joined the Lehi militia, also known as the Stern Gang. He was my hero. While the rest of my family were victims during the Holocaust, he was a fighter for the Jewish people.

NECHAMA NUSBAUM (Meyer Yosef’s Wife): He was convinced that Israel was home. That’s what he told his mother when she was crying at the train station when he left Poland. She was crying so much. He said, “Don’t cry, I’m going home.” The Arabs—we didn’t think about them at all.

DAUM: In 1947, my uncle’s Stern Gang and other Jewish militias were fighting Arab forces near Lifta. On December 28, Jewish fighters entered Lifta’s coffeehouse and killed at least five villagers, allegedly in retaliation for an attack on a passing Jewish bus. Fearing for their lives, most of Lifta’s Arab residents fled. None have ever been permitted to return. On a visit to Lifta’s spring I met a group of Israeli youngsters and was curious to hear what they knew about Lifta.

DAUM (speaking to Israeli children): So what about the history of this place?

FIRST GIRL: When we came to capture the land, so they didn’t like Israel so they escaped. They just want to kill us.

DAUM: What would you think if some people who used to live here 60 years ago wanted to come back?

FIRST GIRL: That it’s theirs.

SECOND GIRL: No, that’s ridiculous. It’s our land.

THIRD GIRL: God promised to give the land to us.

DAUM: For most of my life I held the same simplistic attitudes as these girls and until today have never heard spoken to Palestinians to hear their side of the story.

YACOUB ODEH (Former Resident of Lifta): Here was my home. You see these stones? Here was my home. No time I forget when I was playing here.

DAUM (speaking to Yacoub Odeh): Did you have phones here, by the way?

ODEH: No, we are shouting. I want to call my young cousin or uncle, “Mahmoud!” I shout, and he answered me in the same way: “Yacoub!”

DAUM (speaking to Yacoub Odeh): I always looked upon my uncle as a hero. All my other relatives died in the ovens, and he was a fighter.

ODEH: Now my question for you: How do you look on a person kicked you from your house, destroy your life to become a refugee, to be in a tent and in winter cold or in summer hot? I think who steal, who theft your freedom, your dignity, your right to live with your community, and kick you out in a miserable life—no time you will see him a hero. If I do it, sure you will hate me. You will attack me. You will attack me.

DAUM: Yacoub’s description of his village reminded me of the memories that were passed down to me of my ancestors’ destroyed shtetls in Poland. If the development of Lifta goes through, will its Arab heritage and memories also be erased? I went to Ramallah in the West Bank to meet other former residents of Lifta and collect their memories.

MRS. HAMUDDEH (Former Lifta Resident): We had Jewish neighbors and Christian neighbors. We all lived together happily. Our Jewish friends would come to our weddings and parties. The Christians also came. We were like one family.

YACOUB KHALIF (Former Lifta Resident): If they were to tell me now you have the right to go back to Lifta, it would take me one hour. I would walk. I would not even take a taxi or car to go to Lifta. I will walk it, and if I die without getting it back, my children will get it back, my grandchildren will get it back.

JALAL AKEL (Former Lifta Resident): I took all my children to Lifta. I showed them where our house used to be. I showed them everything. Of course, we always tell them there is hope. Even if only for the children of our children, the hope is still there.

You can see those cars? They are exactly up the wadi of the valley of Lifta.

DAUM: So you look here from your roof and you see.

AKEL: I can see, but what can I do?

DAUM: Neither Lifta’s former residents nor their children are likely to return if the government allows Lifta to be developed. Under its plan, the 54 existing ruins will be rehabilitated and sold as villas and will be surrounded by luxury housing, hotels and shops. Proponents of the plan say it will actually preserve Lifta and save it from further deterioration.

ITZIK SHWEKY (Society for Preservation of Israel Heritage Sites): We are not interested in erasing heritage. The plan addresses the heritage of Lifta, to leave the old architecture. We are not building new buildings that will be tall, but will be in the style of old Lifta.

DAUM: Wouldn’t it make symbolic sense to somehow not develop Lifta right now and hold it as a symbolic gesture for some better future?

SHWEKY: I think that you are wrong. I have a different opinion. If I turn it into a monument and say on this site there was an Arab village, that will only lead to hatred and painful memories, because we would then be causing conflict, and then they’re going to say that this is how we once lived and then the Jews came and threw us out. No, I’m not going to do that. We are the State of Israel. We are Jews. We don’t have to save the Palestinian heritage. They will know that it was Lifta, but we are a new nation that has to progress.

DAUM: While some Israelis see the ruins of Lifta as a threat to peace, others believe just the opposite. They want to preserve Lifta as a place of education and hopefully reconciliation.

DAFNA GOLAN (Sociologist, Hebrew University and Lifta Preservation Activist): Lifta is also a village of hope. It can be a place where we can talk about our future, where we can remember the past, where Israelis could see how Palestinians used to live, could understand what it means for Palestinians to lose their houses, what happened to them in 1948. So why destroy this little hope that we still have?

DAUM: My uncle dreamed of a land where Jews could walk the streets proudly as Jews. He saw Arabs as an impediment to that dream. I have come to believe that Lifta is important for Jews as well as for Arabs. If Jewish and Arab youth grow up believing they have always been natural enemies, peace will be impossible. We need to preserve Lifta to challenge the simplistic memories we often pass on to the next generation.

ABERNETHY: Menachem Daum says he has made many trips to Israel, but this was the first time he ever talked with Palestinian Arabs. They all had grievances, he said, but no one expressed hatred of him because he is a Jew. They want to live in peace, they told Menachem. Muslim, Jew, and Christian together the way they used to.

BOB ABERNETHY, host: As the so-called Arab Spring spread out from Egypt and Tunisia, the New York film makers Oren Rudovsky and Menachem Daum were in Israel listening to the hopes and concerns of Palestinian Arabs and Israelis. Here is a sample — unscientific but still revealing.

SHMUEL GROAG (Israeli Architect): The revolution in Egypt, the first reaction of the Israeli public was kind of being in panic as if, you know, you see democracy on one side and people are panicking.

SHWECKY (Israeli Environmentalist): Listen, the situation is not good for us or for them, because there won’t be a strong leadership, and we are the ones who have to be strong or else they’ll wipe us out.

DAFNA: (Israeli Sociologist): I understand the fear of Muslim Brothers, but it doesn’t seem that’s what people in Egypt or in Tunisia want. They really want freedom, and I think we should trust them on what they want. They want to live properly. They want to have jobs. They want to live like everybody else.

ROBBY: (Israeli Founder of Organ Donor Society): I think we need to focus on democracy, human rights, freedom of expression, and hope in the marketplace of ideas that tolerance of other people in the region will play out to Israel’s benefit.

SHEIK NAMIR: (Palestinian Historian): The Palestinian people have had a lot of problems. Every time an event like that happens in an Arab country it’s good for Palestine. Every flag raised calls for the liberation of the Palestinian people, and we’re witnesses to that.

TAHU: (Palestinian Poet and Elder): We are now in front of a bright, new beginning, hopefully. Look at the Europeans. They are supporting the Libyan people, not their rulers. Before they used to side with the rulers. Now everybody knows the truth and feels sorry for the Palestinian people and all other people who are oppressed by their governments, as if they were imprisoned.

JALAL AKEL (Palestinian Businessman): All this will have an impact on the Palestinian youth, who will be affected by the events in the Arab world. Now they can claim back their freedom the same way they see it happening in Egypt and Tunisia and hopefully soon in Libya.

DAFNA: You know, something is changing, and I don’t know but I think it will come here. It’s very difficult to believe that the whole Arab world will be in riots and Jerusalem and the West Bank are going to be quiet.

ABERNETHY: The Palestinian Bureau of Statistics has released figures showing that in the area between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River, there are 5.5 million Palestinians, and 5.8 million Jews. Because of their higher birth rate, the number of Palestinians is expected to equal the number of Jews in about three-and-a-half years.

In the UN resolution and in much of the debate leading up to the launch of the operation, the word “responsibility” has been in the air. The popularity of this term goes back to 2001, when a Canadian commission proposed the idea of a “responsibility to protect” as the framework through which debates about humanitarian intervention and human rights should be understood. In 2005, the UN General Assembly proposed the concept as part of its reform of the UN system in order to avoid politicking over matters that demanded immediate action. Since then, it has been invoked not only by academics, but also by policy makers and even military officials in support of various interventions in support of human rights.

“Responsibility” is not just a legal term, but a moral one as well. Indeed, some analogue of the term is central to philosophical and religious traditions around the world, including the just war tradition. The idea is linked to concepts such as duty and obligation, although there are some crucial differences, according to some philosophers.

What does it mean to say we have a responsibility to others? In one morally extreme version, responsibility means having to care for the ills of all people. Especially when one is powerful and can provide aid to many around the world, this notion of responsibility becomes more resonant. The just war theorist Jean Bethke Elshtain has referred to it as the “Spiderman Ethic”: for those with great power comes great responsibility.

One response to this might be to say that no matter how powerful, no one state or coalition of states can be responsible for all the problems in the world. The 2001 report on the “responsibility to protect” recognized this when it proposed an overlapping set of responsibilities, starting with the responsibility of the state to protect its own citizens, which then expands out to the larger international community when the state cannot or will not aid its own citizens.

But there is perhaps another way to think about responsibility, one that helps us better understand what is happening in Libya and that might be more relevant for the future. The Lithuanian Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas famously proposed an “ethic of responsibility.” Educated as a Talmudic scholar, but one who influenced French philosophers such as Jacques Derrida, Levinas argued that responsibility does not mean having a duty to solve the problems of the world. It is really about recognizing other peoples and communities as unique and worthy of respect in their own right. This recognition means challenging assumptions about oneself and one’s certainty about the rightness of one’s own cause.

Levinas was not proposing simple hand-wringing about one’s own sins or faults, nor was he recommending inaction. Rather, in the moment when one is called to act for the other, one must always recognize the danger of imposing the self on the other or assuming that one’s own ideas are the only ones.

So what does this have to do with Libya? As anyone with a passing interest in or knowledge of international affairs knows, relations between the countries leading the assault on Libya and the wider Arab world have been fraught with conflict and misunderstanding. These relationships have not been ones of recognition, from any perspective. Many in the Arab world believe North Americans and Europeans are simply interested in oil or supporting Israel, while those leading the intervention often demonstrate an embarrassing lack of knowledge about diverse political and religious Arab communities.

Rather than argue that the coalition forces should not act, the point here is that in acting, American, British, French, Canadian, and Italian forces need to be sensitive to their history of colonialism, occupation, and intervention in the region. While they may have a responsibility to protect the civilians in Libya, they also have a responsibility to recognize the reality of others who may not simply accept their aid with open arms.

Responsibility as recognition is not easy, but if there is to be any real ethics in international affairs, perhaps we need to look to new sources for understanding that responsibility.

Anthony F. Lang Jr. is senior lecturer in the School of International Relations at the University of St. Andrews. He has written most recently for Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly on Afghanistan.

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BOB ABERNETHY, host: As the crisis in Egypt continued to unfold this week, many questions emerged about the religious implications. What role will religion play in a new government, and in particular, what role will the Muslim Brotherhood play? How will the new situation in Egypt affect the rest of the Middle East, including Israel and the peace process, and how will Egypt’s Christian minority fare? We explore all this with Qamar-ul Huda, a senior program officer at the US Institute of Peace. He’s a consultant in many parts of the Middle East on conflict resolution. Dr. Huda, welcome.

QAMAR-UL HUDA (Senior Program Officer, US Institute of Peace): Thank you.

ABERNETHY: In the demonstrations in the streets there wasn’t much evidence of a religious influence. It seemed pretty secular, but lots of people expect that in a new government there will be strong religious representation. Is that fair to say?

HUDA: That’s a fair assessment. We know that the mass protest in Egypt is a mass public crossing all ideologies. This is a national issue for Egypt, and it’s not contained to any one group. The new government or the transitional government that will be formed in the near future—I think the religious voices or the religious parties will be at the table but will not dominate the party.

ABERNETHY: Now there’s a lot of fear around, as you know and have read, about the Muslim Brotherhood—what it is, what it means, what its place might be in a new government, and what the implications of that are.

HUDA: Well, the Muslim Brotherhood is almost seven decades old, and it’s basically a group that reacted to a secular nationalist movement in Egypt. It’s—right now it’s been regulated to do mainly social welfare and social services.

ABERNETHY: Is it what you would call a radical Islamic group?

HUDA: I think there are fringes of the Brotherhood that had radical groups and voices. They’ve been, I think, mostly eliminated under Mubarak in the ’90s. Right now it’s a very small group that’s mismanaged but also has very little influence as we speak today.

ABERNETHY: And in a new government, whatever the name of it, you would expect there to be religious representation, and what does that mean? What does that imply?

HUDA: I think that what that means is that the religious representatives will try to push for more Islamic values in the government, perhaps more Islamic teachings and ethics in schools, and perhaps have law to represent more Islamic values, but I don’t think they’ll have any real influence in the beginning, because the concern is now constitutional reform and unemployment.

ABERNETHY: And what about the religious minorities, especially the Christians, the Copts? There are ten million, about, of those?

HUDA: Yes.

ABERNETHY: What would be the outlook for them?

HUDA: Well, at this time we know they are participating with the protests. They are looking for a change in Egypt. I think right now they are most likely positioned to take part in the government, and we’re hoping and many people are hoping there will be a more pluralistic government that will embrace the Christian Copts.

ABERNETHY: They might even have a place in the government?

HUDA: I think they will.

ABERNETHY: Well, what about Israel and the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians? What are the implications of that whoever makes up the government, the new government in Egypt?

HUDA: Yes, I think this is the big question and the big concern for many of the Western thinkers and analysts. What will happen to the treaty signed with Israel? What is the security risk for Egypt? But for what it seems like that right now the government, the transitional government will take care of internal matters but also may be—stay with international treaties that it signed with Israel. There’s no indication that radical Islam will come to the forefront, and there’s no indication that it will abdicate with current treaties.

ABERNETHY: And what about between Egypt and the US?

HUDA: Well, it’s looking like on the streets there’s some discontent with Western forces and American influence in terms of its delay in moving the regime out. But I think Egyptians are very positive with their alliances with the West, and I think they will continue with those alliances.

ABERNETHY: Dr. Qamar-ul Huda from the US Institute of Peace. Thank you.

HUDA: Thank you for having me.

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Rabbi Avi Weiss

Rabbi Avi Weiss, Hebrew Institute of Riverdale, New York:
America is my home. I’m grateful to the US forever and ever. Israel is my homeland and that’s where my family lives, literally and figuratively. When I think about existentially who I am I think of Israel. My roots, I’m grounded, my ancestry all there.

The biblical narrative, and even if one doesn’t buy into the biblical narrative, the history of the Jewish people is wed to the land of Israel. The Bible talks about a special mission that the Jewish people has, and whenever it talks about the covenant which is our contract with God, it talks about children, people, and land, and from the very beginning that land is defined as the land of Israel. That’s where Abraham and Sarah walked.

As wonderful as I feel in America, in Israel I feel like I’m spiritually flying. I can’t explain it. It’s like asking someone why they are in love.

When you love something there could be different opinions, and I think those different opinions aren’t a bad thing. I think it’s a good thing. I think a consensus is being reached, and we are at a point now where there is an interdependence within the Jewish community. Israel is not going to make it with the political right alone or the political left. It’s not going to make it with the religious alone or those who couldn’t care less about religion. It’s only going to make it with the both, and there has to be a sense of interdependence between the two.

The political right has to understand that it has no monopoly on loving the land of Israel. The left loves the land just as much, but it thinks you’ve got to give away land for the sake of peace. The left has to understand that it has no monopoly on wanting peace. The right wants peace just as much. If both sides would stop impugning each others motives then that unity, interdependence, will be able to allow us to move forward.

Blessed be the nation that has as its army the Israeli defense forces, not only a strong army but, I believe, one of the most moral armies on the face of this earth. I know the families of the soldiers who fought house to house in Jenin at a great price, because when we went into Jenin back a couple of years, Israel could have taken out Jenin from the air but wanted to minimize loss of civilian life. Look, I mourn the loss of innocent Palestinian life. I mourn that. It’s a Jewish concept. But one must talk about intentionality. The intention of the Israeli defense forces to limit civilian losses, it’s only to target military who, unfortunately, they hide themselves amongst the civilian population. The intention of the other side: to murder as many men, women and children as possible. Are there aberrations? Of course, but it’s not part of the mainstream. It’s not part of the very system which Israel is about. Unfortunately, on the other side terrorism is very much a part of their whole motif.

I feel for Palestinians. The fault lies with Palestinian leadership. It lies with Hamas. It lies with Hezbollah. This is not a Ghandi-Martin Luther King movement. If the rockets stop lobbing into Sderot, if they are going to stop the terrorism Israel is the first one to want peace. Unfortunately, the more Israel has given, the weaker Israel is perceived from the other side, and the more the other side wants.

All I can say that whenever we have withdrawn up to this point, it has precipitated the other side wanting more. We withdrew from Lebanon and what happened was suddenly the rockets came in. We withdrew from Gush Kativ, from Gaza, the rockets came into Sderot, and I have great fears if we are going to withdraw from the West Bank, from Samaria and Judea, then Tel Aviv is right there in the line. And I think America has to understand that Israel today is the frontline against the spread of terror. I think this is one of the most important debates. Some people think that Israel’s war on terrorism is kind of isolated to the Middle East. I say no. Israel’s war against terrorism is America’s war against terrorism. I believe with all my heart when an Israeli soldier falls fighting terror, he is not only fallen in the defense of Israel and the Jewish people, he has fallen in the defense of the West, of the free world.

Israel is alone and Israel needs as much support as possible, and so it’s critical that there ought to be support not only from Jews, but from non-Jews as well. But as much as American Jewry helps Israel and as much as America helps Israel, I think it’s reciprocal. I think Israel is America’s greatest friend in the Middle East. I think today Israel really stands strong, being the bulwark against the spread of terror as it was the bulwark against communism during the cold war era.

I see the grassroots as being front and center and being in absolute solidarity with the people of Israel. There are of course those who would criticize, but by and large the support is overwhelming, and what I would do is, I think, it’s important for American Jews to visit Israel. I think it’s important for them to live in Sderot. If you live amongst those wonderful people you will see how peace-loving they are. I take second place to no one when it comes to an understanding the spirituality and potential holiness of all people, including Palestinians. I desperately want to live in peace with Palestinians. Rabin used to say you have to make peace with your enemy. You can only make peace with an enemy who wants to make peace with you. Having Gaza which is controlled by Hamas, by terrorists, or withdrawing from the West Bank, which could then be taken over by Hamas or Hezbollah— that is not good for Israel, and it’s not good for America.

I walk the length and the breadth of Israel. I don’t only see Israel being involved in a political kind of equation. I see Israel as a place of spirituality. I see it as an extraordinary place where people reach out for the vulnerable. I see a medical system; I see a social service system. Yes, I see Jews and Arabs in many, many places doing everything they can to find a language to talk peacefully and embrace each other. I see it as an extraordinary light, as Isaiah would say, to the nations of the world.

I take second place to none of those critics when it comes to concern for the Palestinians. Where we part company is where you place blame. They are placing blame on the state of Israel, on the army. I place the blame squarely on the heads of Hamas, and I will say it clearly. I would say to the Palestinians, if they had a Martin Luther King, nonviolent disobedient movement, they would have had a state many years ago. But when you’ve got a movement where you go bomb buses and you go into restaurants lobbing rockets and you maintain that it can be justified—nothing justifies terror.

We have to find some kind of way of making peace with the Palestinians, which I believe the settlers desperately want, while allowing people who have lived in these places to continue doing so. I can only tell you this: If from the other side there would be a show of trust in real peace rather than terrorism, the history of Israel is that Israel made peace with every Arab country who wanted to make peace with Israel. I believe it’s very fair for there to be natural growth [of the settlements]. Imagine someone turning to an American family saying you can’t have more children, or if you have more children you can’t add a home. What I find very difficult is when America and an American administration starts bullying Israel and starts pushing Israel around. Israel is a sovereign state, and I believe Israel knows best what is in its best security interest. From my perspective Israel knows more about security-wise in the Middle East than America knows. It’s got the experts, it is on the ground, and in that sense it makes an extraordinary contribution to America as well.

I think the mission [of Israel] is to be in a place where one has sovereignty and autonomy and can develop a society that really cares for the oppressed and for the vulnerable. It does so in its own place, in its own land, and does its share to set an example for others. That’s the Israel that I know. That’s the Israel that I love. That mission, I think, is ultimately going to evolve with people of all political persuasions and all religious backgrounds.

In the rabbinic literature Israel is compared to a dove. A dove can’t fly with one wing. You need both wings, and they may have disparate ideas, but there’s got to be a blending together and a consensus and a coming together. I think that’s the most critical challenge Israel faces today.

Rabbi Michael Paley

Rabbi Michael Paley, scholar-in-residence and director of the Jewish Resource Center of the UJA-Federation of New York:

I stand with Israel, and I love Israel. I love the Jewish people, and I love Israel. It’s been one of the most important aspects of my whole life. I came of age at 1967, and it fired my identity. But Israel has to make a choice: a democratic state, a Jewish state…and my particular flavor is a Jewish democratic state with territorial compromise. This does not take away my love for Israel or my hope for its security.

Because I love Israel, because I stand with Israel, I believe and hope and pray in its destiny. I believe its destiny is probably better within or closer to the 1967 borders. I’m not critical of Israel; it’s a democratic state. I don’t want to take away the rights of the voters who live there, like my brother, or my nephew who is in the Army now, are people who live and vote in Israel.

The 20th century for Jews was a difficult century, and we had to, for morality reasons, take power, and power is more difficult. We haven’t been very good at it. We haven’t had to decide the fate, as a Jewish people, of other people who are not Jews. We haven’t been in control of even the Jewish faith. We are in control of other people and sometimes we’ve been too aggressive, sometimes we haven’t listened to their rights, sometimes we’ve blotted out their voices. Sometimes they made us blot out their voices. Sometimes our trauma of the last century comes out and bites us and we say, “oh, what, are you crazy, you are not going to have any compromise at all? You know what happened the last time.” Of course, I’m conflicted. I don’t like to see these things. But still I stand with Israel. That’s the unique contribution of the Jewish people right now, and it’s a place in which our destiny is going to be wrapped up. It comes from our deep history, and it will also be our future. I hope we can do it with vision and understanding, even prophetic wisdom.

Abby Bellows

Abby Bellows, Jewish activist and community organizer:
I grew up in the Havurah movement. It was founded in the early ’70s as a breakaway from the Conservative movement and the Reconstructionist movement. It was people who wanted a more vibrant, more social justice-oriented Judaism. There were rabbis who were part of the movement but weren’t presiding over it. I grew up in one of the original Havurot in DC, Fabrengen. I’m involved in a lot of independent minyanim in New York—independent prayer communities. My Judaism has always been kind of free-form.

I feel complex in my feelings towards Israel. My grandmother escaped from Germany. A lot of our family was killed there. I get the need for a Jewish state from that kind of visceral level, and I recognize that anti-Semitism still exists in the world, but at the same time I feel that there is something fundamentally tense for me about having a state that by definition gives preference to one group over another, because my Jewish values taught me about egalitarianism, and I feel like they are not being represented necessarily in the policies of Israel.

The lack of Palestinians being able to get permits for building homes easily or the challenges with civil rights for a lot of Arab Israelis, Bedouin Israelis. Those things really concern me. The way that the Orthodox community is privileged over other types of Jews in Israel is really concerning to me and in a lot of ways I feel doesn’t reflect the Jewish values that I have been taught.

A lot of my friends are into progressive Israel activism. They are post-Zionist or they are progressive Zionist. They find some way with organizations like the New Israel Fund, J Street—organizations that are trying to better Israel with a progressive bent. But I have a lot of other friends who just feel really alienated from the state. I’m a community organizer, and a lot of left-Jews really don’t connect or are embarrassed by Israel or feel really alienated.

For a lot of people in my generation, we are struggling to understand the connection to Israel, the relevancy of it. For a lot of us anti-Semitism isn’t a daily reality, although the attempted attacks in Riverdale brought it close to home for a lot of us in New York. We still question how our values are reflected in the world, given Israel. For a lot of us what comes up more often than not, people in my circle at least, is friends of our who are on the left saying disparaging things about Israel or saying things that are particularly critical. I think a lot of people my age aren’t equipped to respond in a way that’s not just total right-wing-they-can-do-no-wrong, and I think that the path to fighting anti-Semitism is not only about drawing inward and protecting the Jewish state. It’s about educating and building relationships with people who are different than us. It’s painful for me to see Israel activists who are only in the paradigm that my grandmother told me: “Jews need to care for the Jews.” That’s not the interpretation that I’ve taken from the Holocaust and from the history of persecution of our people. Yes, we need to have a fall-back position of protection. What’s really going to change our future is building relationships that are interfaith, intercultural, and reflect the best of Jewish tradition, which is about being questioning and critical and open-minded.

For me it’s about the treatment of Palestinians. It’s also about the treatment of Bedouins, the Arabs who have become Israeli citizens. It’s also about Jews who aren’t Orthodox in Israel. I have friends who have made aliyah and had to do an Orthodox conversion, when previously they were very strong, practicing Conservative Jews.

I think Israel has to be much more upfront about human rights as a first, bottom-line priority, and that is something we can be proud of because Jews believe in human rights.

The most recent time I went, last summer, I went for my cousin’s wedding, who made aliyah. It was a feeling of home culturally. I love the feeling of walking down a street that’s called Hillel and the feeling of integration, of having the words that I use to pray be the words I hear on the street. The last trip I was on was a narrow trip. My vision was within my family and my friends, and it was pretty easy to not see what was happening in the West Bank, at the checkpoints, at other sites of contestation in Israel.

My Judaism has always been fully expressed in this country. I have never been raised with a Judaism that is referential to Israel necessarily, and when I was the president of Hillel I remembered having a conversation with the other leaders about taking down a sign in the entry way of Hillel that said “Wherever we stand, we stand with Israel,” which was Hillel’s motto, because it turned off a lot of my friends who didn’t feel comfortable coming into the space. I always try as a Jewish leader to create a Judaism that doesn’t have to be about Israel for the sake of the continuity of our people, celebration of all the richness of our heritage. I think right now for young Jews, it’s really important to have a Judaism that can be a Jewish home where people can feel comfortable even if they don’t put out their credentials about their support of Israel.

Steven Cohen

Professor Steven Cohen, Hebrew Union College:

In 1948, the State of Israel is born and American Jewish involvement with Zionist and other organizations is at its peak; it will never be as high as it is then. It plummets in 1949 and kind of putters along. There is a blip in 1956 with the Sinai campaign and still Israel is not a major part of the American Jewish consciousness until 1967. In 1967, we have the Six Day War. American Jews are mobilized and because they are coming out and becoming full-fledged Americans and proud Jews and ethnic Jews Israel will play a major role in their consciousness from ’67 probably through the 1980s. And since the 1980s there has been a declining American Jewish interest in Israel, in large part because of changes in the identity of American Jews. They are becoming more personal, less collective, more religious, and less ethnic, and Israel is a very unusual symbol for a religio-ethnic group in America. American Jews regard it as their homeland, but hardly any have ever lived there. Israel is their quasi-national symbol. They love the country. It represents ethnicity, nationality, culture, pride, heart, soul to the vast majority of American Jews.

In part, [American Jews] are reacting to Israel as a response to the Holocaust. For years, Jews have suffered from persecution. That persecution never reached the height that it did in the destruction of 6 million Jews in Europe. A fragment of those Jews joined other Jews who had been in the land of Palestine, then Israel. Before that Israel is born as a result of a Zionist movement and the return of Jews to Israel and American Jews are very aware of that narrative from ashes to the glorious, miraculous state of Israel, and that really cements the American Jewish relationship with Israel starting with 1948.

Both Jews on the left and Jews on the right want to blame Israeli politics for the alienation of some American Jews from Israel. The right says the left is too critical of Israel, the left says Israel deserves to be criticized. If it had better policies, it would hold the attention of American Jews.

The real engine of declining American Jewish interest in Israel is changes in American Jewish identity, the way American Jews think of themselves as Jews, and in particular intermarriage. The more Jews marry non-Jews, the more they adopt a definition of being Jewish which is very much like American Protestant Christianity, and American Protestant Christianity is spiritual. It’s about faith, it’s about religion, and there isn’t an automatic place for a national homeland.

On measure after measure, older people outscore middle-aged people, middle-aged people outscored younger people. Older people are more attached to Israel than younger people. Why is that? In large part, younger people are more likely to marry non-Jews, and it’s the result of that marriage, that their attachment to Israel is lower than older people. Among non-Orthodox Jews, most young Jews marry non-Jews. Were we to only look at the in-married, we would find that in-married Jews today are as if not more attached to Israel than in-married Jews of yesterday.

The Orthodox is a growing segment of American Jews. Eight percent of Jews my age, I’m in my 50s, twenty-three percent of American Jewish children are being raised in Orthodox Jewish homes. They are the China of American Jewish life, the growing force. Orthodox Jews, as opposed to everybody else, have become more attached to Israel. More travel to Israel, more study in Israel, more settlement in Israel. It may be that one-fourth of American Jewish Orthodox people will move to Israel in their lifetime. That is an amazing number, and it reflects the deep commitment of Orthodox Jews to the land, state, and people of Israel.

Orthodox Jews will come to exercise even more influence over the ways of which American Jews relate to Israel politically, culturally, religiously and in other ways. They are more conservative, some say hawkish, about Israel’s conflict with its Arab neighbors, and their approach to Middle East politics will come to more and more influence the way American Jews relate to that part of the world.

Left of center American Jews—and let’s remember Jews are the most left of center group in America—left of center American Jews are adopting more dovish stances towards the conflict, pretty much in keeping with the current American administration’s approach to the conflict. They want a two-state solution to the conflict, Palestinian state alongside a Jewish state. They want peaceful negotiations, and they want the withdrawal of settlements from the West Bank.

We have more left-of-center Jews than Orthodox Jews, but we have more Orthodox Jews who are deeply involved with Israel. Most Jews see themselves as progressive, liberal, left-of-center sorts of people. Israel is very unpopular in the American left, and in fact the world left. The same principles which make the non-Jewish left unhappy with Israel make the Jewish left uncomfortable with Israel. So they are attached to Israel as a family matter, but they are unhappy with this member of the family, and they somehow would like this member of the family to behave a little better.

American Jews who would like Israel not to be there are a very small number. They get a lot of attention from the press, they get a lot of attention from American Jews, but when we go to the surveys we find very few Jews are in opposition to the Jewish state of Israel. The vast majority like the fact there is a Jewish state in Israel. They care about Israel; they care about the Jews who are there.

Israeli officials recognize that America is Israel’s primary strategic ally, and in that equation American Jews play a vital role. If American Jews don’t support Israel, then America won’t support Israel, and Israel will stand alone in the world against all of its enemies. Most Israelis think that way.

One of the problems that highly engaged Jewish young people have is that right now they have a choice either to be advocates for Israel or to be apathetic, and by creating other ways and other spaces in which Jews can be pro-Israel these people can be engaged with Israel and still, like many Israelis, take issue with particular policies of the Israeli government.

I have long been what we call a Labor Zionist. I believe in partition, the 1947 resolution that divided the land of Israel into an Arab state and a Jewish state. I would like to see a return to partition, a Palestinian state and a secure democratic Jewish state of Israel, and I think the way to get there is through serious negotiations with our Palestinian counterparts and a strong American and European presence in those negotiations and guarantees for the state of Israel. Without security, I am not willing to countenance significant withdrawals. But I believe that withdrawals from the West Bank will enhance Israeli security in the long run.

From our surveys we know that American Jews are widely concerned about the Iranian threat to Israel and to world peace as well. They, like our leaders, are unclear about what is the appropriate response, what will work to prevent Iran from becoming a serious nuclear threat to world peace and to the very survival of Israel.

America is an exceptional country. It has made Jews different from Jews everywhere else in the world, including Canada, Argentina, the UK, France. American Jews have adopted a more religious, faith-oriented definition about what it means to be Jewish. Jews in those other countries are still more cultural, more national, more ethnic, and therefore, in certain senses, more patriotic about their connection to Israel.

I’m very concerned about changes in American Jewish identity. The lack of interest in Israel among Jewish young people is important in and of itself, and important for what it says about changing Jewish identity. I’m a Jew who happens to believe that Jews need to be fully Jewish, religiously and ethnically Jewish. I’m very concerned that the ethnic aspect of being Jewish is in decline.

If secular Jews are angry at Israel for the way their way of being Jewish is being treated, by definition they are Israel-engaged. My concern is with secular Jews who don’t even know that secular Jews in Israel from their point of view are getting a raw deal.

No one is more critical of Israel than Israelis. Criticism of Israel indicates engagement with Israel. American Jews should be worried when their children stop criticizing Israel.

Philip Weiss

Philip Weiss, writer and blogger:

I didn’t have much of a relationship with Israel until after the Iraq war. Close friends of my family moved there when I was young, but it didn’t really interest me, and it was only after the Iraq war when I really began to look at my country’s relationship with Israel. My best friend told me, “oh they just destroyed the air force in Egypt and Syria on June 5th, 1967, and I was somewhat indifferent to that, I confess. I was 12 years old; it just did not mean that much to me. My family were secularized, academic Jews and they were tempted—because they thought anti-Semitism was an important factor in American life, a belief I don’t share with them—they certainly thought about moving to Israel. But I think the importance of opportunity for their children in the US came before that.

Israel is pursuing disastrous policies on its own that, as a Jew, I have to stand up and say this goes against all my training as an American, this goes against the civil rights struggle in which I took a part, this goes against the Vietnam War struggle in which I took a part, so I’m going to stand up as a Jew, a proud Jew, and denounce these policies and say you have to find a new path—the Jim Crow policies in the West Bank, the 600-700 checkpoints, the destruction of all hope for Palestinians for one-and-a half million Palestinians under occupation, for the Palestinians who were blockaded in Gaza, this sort of contempt for Palestinian human rights for certainly the last 40 years. It’s not just Jewish in my view. I come to this as a very proudly identified Jew. I grew up, that was my whole identity of being Jewish, and I developed a more diverse, American Jewish identity. As I became an adult I intermarried, I broke Jewish law in that respect. I don’t keep a kosher household, so there are many ways in which I represent sort of a typical kind of integrating Jew. I’m not very religious. I’m certainly not an observant Jew and I’m—no other religion calls to me. I go to synagogue a couple of times a year. I define myself as a Jew because apart from the fact that my mother and father are Jews, that I was raised Jewish and I feel Jewish all the time, I would say the ways in which I’m Jewish are that I’m a very bookish person. Books and reading are very important to me. I think of myself as Jewish because I bring a kind of an intellectual sensitivity to issues that I think is very Jewish. This sort of universal tradition in Jewish life of “rachmanes,” concern for others, is something that is part of me.

There is a little bit of love. I think about that often, because I criticize Israel night and day. I spend a lot of time criticizing Israel, just as I think I would have been criticizing the American South when it was segregated in the 1960s, I would have been criticizing it night and day. I would have been a Freedom Rider. The things that I love about Israel, and I’ve only spent a week there, but the things that I love, and I study the place, I think that journalism is wonderful journalism. Right now, the best journalism in the world is coming out of Israel. You have very brave Jews who are exploring things in a very open way. I think that intellectual tradition that I associate with Jewish life is very alive in Israel. When I’ve walked in Jerusalem, when I walked in small towns on my one visit, it was very pretty and beautiful.

I have been frequently been accused of being disloyal, and I think it is—I don’t care about that. I think that I’m being very loyal. I respect the power of communities to define themselves, and so in the 1600s the Jewish community in Amsterdam defined itself in such a way that Spinoza was outside. He was excommunicated, he was considered disloyal, and I respect that religious communities can do that, and today the religious community and the Jewish leadership of the US is trying to exercise a monolithic orthodoxy. In some ways it is reminiscent of the Soviet Union in terms of its tolerance of heretical ideas. What are my heretical ideas? They are that one man-one vote, all men are created equal. These are values I was given by Abraham Lincoln, by the civil rights struggle, by my American experience. So I think they have Jewish roots, too. I actually feel very strongly that I am trying to help my people. I feel a real, as assimilated as I am in many ways, I feel a great loyalty to the Jewish people, and I think the leadership, especially when it exercises these loyalty oaths or any prohibition on open discussion on this is making a very bad call. And so I assert myself as a Jew, and I say Jews have to talk about these things.

What I think is intolerable is a state that is oppressing a minority to the degree the Jewish state is doing so now. So I think Israel is facing a choice right now, that the two-state solution which Obama is pushing is truly its last opportunity to save the Jewish state, and if it fails, if it fails to take the two-state solution, it’s going to be involved in governing a majority population of Arabs in a Jewish state.

A million Jews have left Israel. They are living in Europe, they are living in the US. They don’t want to live there, and these are largely secular Jews, and they are Jews like me, who seek opportunity in a diverse society that respects minority rights. So I think Israel, which has taken a very sharp turn to the right under Netanyahu and Avigdor “Loyalty Oath” Lieberman, Israel faces a choice what kind of society it wants to be. I think it should grab the two-state solution.

Israel should learn from its Jewish cousins in the US that minority rights are essential, and diversity is essential, and these things make Jews safe.

You will notice Netanyahu has not said one word against the settlements. There is now a move to close down outposts. He can’t say he’s going to close down settlements because his coalition falls apart, and those settlements include these people of a fanatical religious character.

Take down the checkpoints in the West Bank is the first thing they should do. I think they should start taking down the wall, I think they should lift the blockade on needles and cloth and everything else that can’t get into Gaza.

I am obviously a minority and a very distinct minority. I represent a fringe of American Jewish life and yet the concern of the American Jewish leadership in the US is the concern that my fringe is getting bigger by the moment, and it is getting bigger because of the Gaza slaughter which woke up a lot of American Jews, thinking what kind of society is this? By the election of Avigdor Lieberman, of Netanyahu. There are many demographic changes that are going on in American Jewish life that is giving me more and more company by the day.

The tradition that I cherish in Judaism is respect for man in God’s image, the words “bitzalem,” which the human rights organization in Israel has, that God created man in his own image. That means all men, and so that kind of respect for all human beings, regardless of their ethnicity, I see as Jewish and is it true that many Jews do not accept my definition? Absolutely, but do we also understand in America that identity is fluid? Yes. I think that I represent a strain in Judaism. If Judaism is going to survive as a sort of a meaningful, moral presence, which I want it to be, then it’s going to have to embrace my views, and it’s why I have so much company now.

Under 35, 60 percent of American Jews are doing what I’m doing. They are intermarrying. They are fully enjoying their minority freedoms in the US, and I think many of them do not see Israel as sort of necessary. Israel came out of a movement that responded to horrific conditions for Jews in Europe. This is something that I think everyone has to remember, that I have to bear in mind whenever I’m criticizing Israel. If it were 100 years ago, I think I would have been a Zionist. If I were living in Vienna or Berlin, which is what I would have been doing, trying to be a journalist in the early 20th century, I would have been a Zionist, because there was a glass ceiling for Jews and worse, there were programs that my ancestors fled in Russia. Those are all real conditions that Zionism came out of. It’s why it captured the Jewish people, and those conditions don’t exist anymore and that is why summoning the Holocaust, which is what the Jewish leadership is reduced to again and again in order to maintain support for Israel in the American Jewish population—that has run its course. And for Jews under 35, I think their attitudes are going to be much more detached about Israel, and that’s the big threat the special relationship faces.

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: We have a discussion today of President Obama’s speech to the Muslim world and the reaction to it. Kate Seelye was a longtime Middle East correspondent, based in Beirut. She is now a vice president of the Middle East Institute in Washington. Vali Nasr is a professor of international relations at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and is also serving as a special adviser to Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, who is leading US diplomacy in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Professor Nasr speaks here for himself, not for the US government.

Welcome to you both. Professor Nasr, let’s begin with you. The reaction throughout the Muslim world — what do you hear?

Dr. VALI NASR (Professor of International Relations, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University): Very, very positive. There’s no doubt that the speech exceeded expectations from the vast majority of Muslims all the way from Indonesia to Nigeria. Even though the president did not go deeply into policy, I think the level of respect and empathy and seriousness that he showed in terms of engaging the Muslim world was very well understood by the public and very much appreciated.

Kate Seelye

ABERNETHY: On the other hand, Kate, there was a lot of criticism, wasn’t there, or some guarded comments from officials?

KATE SEELYE (Vice President, Middle East Institute, Washington, DC): Well, there were. I think people are—there are some who are holding reservations. They want to see if he’s going to translate his words into action. There was also some disappointment on the part of democracy activists who wanted him to be tougher, let’s say, on Arab leaders, who wanted to put more pressure on them. And there were some who wanted him to be tougher on the Israelis. But by and large, people were very positive and felt that he went out of his way to try to bridge this gap between America and the Muslim world.

ABERNETHY: What could be the deeds now that would satisfy the people to whom Obama was talking?

Dr. NASR: I think one of the ways to look at this is that the speech or the series of speeches he’s given is a deed in itself. In other words, our habit in this region is that administrations come up immediately off the bat with a plan of action for something, whether it’s Iran, Arab-Israeli issue, Afghanistan. This president understood that there is no point trying a new policy before you change the context in which you engage the other side. So I think his very first policy, his very first deed has been to gain trust, and I think the first way in which he has to be measured is by trust, and I think Kate’s point, which is correct, there are — I think he’s been successful enough that some actors like the Iranian government or Hezbollah or the Muslim Brotherhood may worry that he’s quickly changing the game on them very fast and effectively, and some of the reaction we’re seeing has to do with that.

Bob Abernethy

ABERNETHY: But a specific deed now to follow this, Kate, what could that be?

Ms. SEELYE: Well, I mean everybody’s waiting to see what he’s going to do vis-a-vis the Arab-Israeli peace process. What steps he is going to take to pressure the Israelis perhaps to halt settlement building. This is what Arabs and Muslims are looking for — concrete deeds with regard to the peace process, frankly.

ABERNETHY: Did you feel on that that he was tilting a little bit toward the Palestinians?

Ms. SEELYE: Well, he acknowledged the Holocaust, he acknowledged the suffering of the Jews, and he also acknowledged the suffering of the Palestinians, and this was really a first. Many presidents have acknowledged the need for a two-state solution, but few have said, you know, I feel for the suffering of the Palestinian refugees. He won high marks for that.

ABERNETHY: I was struck by the language, especially the references to the Qu’ran and other phrases that come out of the Islamic tradition. That can’t help but have helped him in the Muslim world.

Dr. NASR: Absolutely. I mean, there are ways of using the Qu’ran and then there are ways of using the Qu’ran. Often Western commentators or leaders usually use the Qu’ran in order to hit the Muslims on the head with it. In other words, use their own scripture in order to preach to them very selectively. This president, I think, has used a very light touch in terms of trying to use the Qu’ran to convince the Muslims that he believes they belong inside the tent — that there is no such thing as a Judeo-Christian tradition with the Muslim standing out there. The way he used the Qu’ran, particularly at the end, was to say that there is an Islamic-Judeo-Christian civilization—that your values are the same as our values and our values are the same as your values, and look, here is the example by referring to all three scriptures at the same time, and I think that’s what’s most effective.

ABERNETHY: And as you said, this attempt to build respect with the audience he was talking to is the first step in new policy?

Vali Nasr

Dr. NASR: Well, absolutely. If you looked at the Bush administration, their approach was that you are either with us or you’re against us. It’s either black or white, and the burden was on Muslims to prove themselves innocent. In other words they’re guilty unless proven innocent, and they set down a set of markers which basically meant abandon your faith, change it, reform it, change everything, and then you’ll be sort of acceptable. This president is starting from a very different point of view. First of all, he’s creating a massive gray area in the middle. It is not either us or you, that we have a common arena in which we share, and the burden is not on Muslims to prove that their religion matters or that their values are world values. He immediately off the bat said, “I agree with that, and I’ll give you better examples than you can yourselves.”

Ms. SEELYE: Yes, and if I might add to that, I mean he was very sensitive about language and Muslim sensitivities. He never once used the word “terrorist,” because over the past eight years the word terrorist has become synonymous with the word Muslim and Islam. So he avoided these words, and he used language that people applauded. When he talked about the Prophet Muhammad he said “peace be upon him.” That was very important for Islamists and traditionalists watching his speech.

ABERNETHY: What about nuclear weapons? What can you divine in the speech about how that problem can be addressed now?

Dr. NASR: That’s a problem that has to be solved at the negotiation table, and we will not see where it is going until the day the United States and Iran are sitting at the table and discussing it. But I think the president is trying to make it easier or in some ways compel the Iranian government not to hide behind excuses that Americans are not sincere, they’re not serious, there’s no point talking to them. To say that you — look, there is a pathway for you to come in, and the United States is going to engage Iran over these very serious issues from a position of respect.

ABERNETHY: Kate, did you hear anything from people you know in the Muslim part of the world about what we’re talking about? Did anybody say anything to you?

Ms. SEELYE: Oh, absolutely. I had some blogger friends from Saudi Arabia say that they were thrilled by this speech because it wasn’t directed toward Arab leaders. Obama never once mentioned the name of Hosni Mubarak, the host. He was speaking to the youth, to the women, to the people of the Arab world, and that’s very rare in a region where people don’t feel like they’re being addressed by their leaders. Here was this leader of the world superpower saying, “I care about you. I want to help you. Your education is important. Let’s invest in you.” That was profoundly appreciated.

ABERNETHY: Many thanks to you, Kate Seelye, and to Professor Vali Nasr.

PAUL MILLER: The owner of this pharmacy not far from the Arc de Triomphe in Paris is thinking about leaving France because she is Jewish.

PAULETTE BENHAIM (through voice of translator): There is an anti-Semitism which you can feel. We are thinking about going somewhere else unless our security can be assured.

MILLER: Paulette Benhaim’s family had felt secure living in France for decades. But recently they’ve become alarmed by attacks against Jewish institutions and against Jewish children at school. They are not alone. In 2002, more than 2,300 French Jews left for Israel, twice as many as in 2001.

MICHEL FRIEDMAN (Chairman, European Jewish Congress): Jews in France and Jews in other countries are again threatened by an anti-Semitism that is growing, by right radicals, right extremists, by neo-Nazis, but also by extreme Muslims and Arabs who are using the situation for their aggression against Jewishness.

MILLER: There has always been a persistent strain of anti-Semitism here, although the French say it’s no worse than in other countries. An increase in violence — synagogues and school buses burned or vandalized, a rabbi stabbed — started last year because of events in the Middle East, specifically Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in response to suicide bombings. TV coverage of events in the Middle East, especially on Arab satellite channels watched by many Muslims here, is strongly pro-Palestinian. Jewish leaders fear that war in Iraq will mean more attacks against the country’s 700,000 Jews. American Jewish leaders who attended a recent conference in Paris between Catholics and Jews said too many French tolerate the violence.

Rabbi MARC SCHNEIER (President, North American Board of Rabbis): On the issue of anti-Semitism — that the French are bystanders, that they are afflicted with moral laryngitis — there is a deafening, deafening silence.

MILLER: But some Catholic bishops at the conference said anti-Semitism is overpublicized, and the violence is the work of a small number of young people of Arab descent.

Cardinal JEAN LUSTIGER (Archbishop of Paris): I don’t think it’s very deep nor significant. Maybe it’s very aggressive in some places.

SELIM BEN ABDELSELLEM (France Fraternite): If you speak about the Muslim-Arab community in France, I think that most of them live in peace with the rest of the French people and especially the Jewish.

MILLER: There are four to six million Muslims, mostly Arabs, in France. They are a diverse community, but there is a substantial element that has become the underclass in France — poor, unemployed, and undereducated. Four percent of immigrant children get into university, compared to 25 percent of those of French stock. They feel discriminated against and until recently have not had an official voice. In suburbs such as Montreuil, the high-rise apartment blocs are now filled with second- or third-generation Arabs and Muslims who feel neither French nor foreign and who are angry. Some are angry enough to become violent, or to join extreme Islamist organizations. Muslim leaders say the government has done little for their community.

Mr. ABDELSELLEM: I think it is necessary for them to care about this subject and to do something to change the law and to have a positive action on the way of thinking.

MILLER: The government of President Jacques Chirac says it is helping both Jews and Muslims. The government toughened penalties for anti-Semitic acts and is trying to stop anti-Semitism in schools, which the education ministry calls a real danger. It says there were almost 500 incidents in the fall term alone. It blames Arab and Muslim teenagers. France’s interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, has been denouncing discrimination in all forms.

NICOLAS SARKOZY (French Interior Minister — through voice of translator): It’s not a situation of Jews on one side and the rest on the other. All patriots who love the Republic and love France will never accept that anyone is inferior by virtue of their religion, their place of birth, or their skin color. We have zero tolerance for that kind of thinking.

MILLER: The government has now recognized Islam by naming a Muslim council that is the equal of official bodies for Catholics, Protestants, and Jews. It gives the government someone to talk to about education, employment, and possible terrorism. Minister Sarkozy said making Islam an official religion would help offset underground extremism that breeds terrorism. The government is trying to deal with tensions between two large minority communities. The concern now is that war in Iraq may exacerbate those tensions and the violence they might produce.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, I’m Paul Miller in Paris.