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Holy days during unholy wars

Inside Israel, both religious Muslims and Jews celebrate major religious holidays in ways that may bend the war in Gaza toward peace.

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REUTERS
Orthodox Jewish men prepare matza, a traditional unleavened bread eaten during the Jewish holiday of Passover, at a bakery in Kfar Chabad, Israel, April 18.
  • By the Monitor's Editorial Board

Despite nearly seven months of war between Hamas and Israel, and lately attacks between Iran and Israel, both Jews and Muslims living in Israel have not forgotten their religious holidays – and the meaning attached to them by prayer and ritual.

 

On Monday, Jews begin the seven-day celebration of Passover. In early April, Israeli citizens who are Arab Muslims ended the monthlong Islamic observance of Ramadan. These days of spiritual introspection, in their own ways, may be contributing to peace.

Israeli Arabs, who represent about a fifth of the country’s population, have been remarkably supportive of Israel during the war. More than half told a pollster that the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas does not reflect their values or those of Islam. And while they worry about the plight of Palestinians in Gaza, nearly two-thirds believe Hamas bears a great deal of responsibility. At the end of Ramadan, some 120,000 Muslim worshippers from both Israel and the West Bank prayed peacefully at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem – despite calls by Hamas for violence.

For decades, many Israeli Muslims and Jews invited each other to celebrate their respective celebrations. During this latest war in Gaza, however, such visits have been canceled or diminished. “The feeling is that everything is sensitive and complicated,” Ilanit Haramati, program manager at Shared Paths, an organization that conducts walking tours for Jews in Arab communities, told Haaretz.

Despite that, some Muslims still invited their Jewish neighbors to help them break the daily fasts of Ramadan. In early April, as Ramadan ended, Israeli President Isaac Herzog hosted Arab mayors for a dinner at his residence, asking them to “join hands together against hatred and extremism.”

“Even if it seems distant, difficult, and impossible, I believe that peace will come,” he said.

The relative lack of violence between Israeli Jews and Arabs does not make much news. Yet the peace “is a cause for hope that religious faith may henceforth play an enhanced role in ending the horrible warfare presently ravaging a land sacred to all the Children of Abraham,” wrote Marc Schneier, president of the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding, in The Jerusalem Post. Despite the tensions of war, the power of prayer, fasting, and even togetherness may be making a difference.

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