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Interreligious Coordinating Council in Israel
Rabbi Ron Kronish, Fr. Michael McGarry Rector Tantur, Isa Jaber, Abu Ghosh

Isa Jaber, Director of Education and Mayor of Abu Ghosh, was not able to make it.

• There has been some attempt to religionise the problem in Israel/Palestine.
  
• The Heads of Churches have gone to Hamas to ask for no more bombings.
  
• What has been the impact of the Intifada on inter-religious dialogue? Within Israel proper in the past 2 years relations have picked up. We need to talk more not less the efforts at coexistence (peace) are done by secular humanists. The religionists stay out of it. But after 13 Arabs were killed in 2000 Jewish-Muslim dialogue was seen as more needed rather than less.
  
• There is great media distortion:
  
  • Jewish media portray all Arabs as extremists
  • The majority of Israeli Arabs are moderates
  • Within the Territories the number of extremists is larger but not enormous.
  • Jews in Israel: there is a noisy extremist minority of Settlers who are seen to represent more people than they really do.
  • Jewish leaders are more to the right. Melchior is atypical.

McGarry spoke of the fruits of the Enlightenment in the following way:

• The Enlightenment privatised religion.
• Separation of church and state
• Separation of rationality/ spirituality
• Dialogue is also a child of the Enlightenment
• You can separate what you believe from what you explore in talking about your faith.
• Middle Eastern religions have not gone through an Enlightenment.
• Fundamentalism is the western denotation given to M.E. religions.
• So they have inter-religious relations, but not inter-religious dialogue

“Truth is getting harder to discern” – Ron

Anti-Defamation League is a major Advocacy group in Israel. It is polemical.

“There are 2 narratives in this land. Each has to at least hear the other’s narrative even if they cannot yet believe it. This is the absolute first pre-requisite for a journey to peace.

“ I’m shocked that you are not going to the West Bank (Bethlehem). The advice you were given not to visit the West Bank was political and not security based”. Michael McGarry [this was soon after the bomb in Tel Aviv]

‘There is no history here, only ideological history’

“Keeping hope alive” is the most important contribution that you can make.