And the Sea Is Never Full (53 page)

B
EGINNING WITH
the Nobel laureate conference in 1988, the Foundation for Humanity that Marion and I created at the end of 1986 has been organizing international conferences on a single theme: “The Anatomy of Hate.”

“Hate,” the key word, describes the passions, often contradictory and always vile, that have torn and ravaged the twentieth century. Only the twentieth century? In truth, the word contains and illustrates the full recorded memory of human cruelty and suffering. Cain hated his brother and killed him; thus the first death in history was a murder. Since then, hate and death have not ceased to rage.

Hate—racial, tribal, religious, ancestral, national, social, ethical, political, economic, ideological—in itself represents the inexorable defeat of mankind, its absolute defeat. If there is an area in which mankind cannot claim the slightest progress, this surely is it. It does not take much for human beings, collectively or individually, to suddenly one day pit themselves like wild beasts one against the other, their worst instincts laid bare, in a state of deleterious exaltation. One decision, one simple word, and a family or a community will drown in blood or perish in flames.

Why is there so much violence, so much hate? How is it conceived, transmitted, fertilized, nurtured? As we face the disquieting, implacable rise of intolerance and fanaticism on more than one continent, it is our duty to expose the danger. By naming it. By confronting it.

In our own way, with the limited means at our disposal, we do what we can. This goes for me in my writings as well as in my activities inside and outside the framework of the seminars organized by our foundation in the United States, the Middle East, and Europe.

At Boston University, which recently celebrated its 150th anniversary, we specifically explored the religious aspect of hate. Bishop Krister Stendhal of Stockholm, dean of the Faculty of Theology at Harvard; Rabbi Yitz Greenberg, former chairman of the Department of Judaic Studies at City College; Professor Mohammed Arkoun of the Sorbonne, as well as another twenty or so scholars and researchers, participated in this seminar. Chaired by the humanist scholar David Hamburg, president of the Carnegie-Mellon Foundation, the sessions tended to be long, passionate, and mostly tolerant. Looking back, I realize that there were important gaps in this conference: We should have invited representatives of other religions. Neither Buddhism nor Shintoism was represented. In ecumenical circles, the tradition of studying the traditional clashes among the three major monotheistic religions is so strong that one easily forgets all the others.

How is one to explain fanaticism’s attraction for so many intellectuals, to this day? And what can be done to immunize religion against its pull? For once it absorbs absolutist trends, religion too becomes aggressive and to the same extent as the nations that flout the right of their neighbors or even that of their own citizens to security and happiness, by means of either ideology or force of arms. Wars between races, religions, political ideologies, economic interests—what they have in common is the faith of the fanatics and the moral power derived from their material superiority.

Fanaticism is dangerous not only for the layperson who fights it, but also for the believer whom it fascinates. The fanatic inspires and breathes fear. It is the only tie that binds him to his fellow-man and God. So afraid is he of doubt that he pushes it outside the law. Whether his dictatorship is intellectual or theocratic, he pretends to possess a unique and eternal truth. Insist on a discussion, and he takes offense. He accepts questions only if he alone has the right to answer them. It comes to this: The fanatic accepts only answers—his own—while his tolerant adversary prefers questions.

Since the beginnings of history, man alone suffers from fanaticism and hate, and he alone can stem it. In all of creation, only man is both capable and guilty of hate.

The last decade of the twentieth century, also the last of the millennium, began rather auspiciously. A contagious current of freedom or desire for freedom electrified oppressed nations. It was as though society wished to purge itself of the phantoms and demons brought to
life by the violence of the dictators under both Nazism and Communism. All of a sudden, people were moving toward the twenty-first century with confidence, looking forward to a radiant destiny under the sign of alliance rather than vengeance.

Then came the dawn of disenchantment. Joy had lasted but one summer. Had it, too, fallen victim to fanaticism?

We are back to the question: What is fanaticism? How ought one to deal with it? And at what precise point does a belief become integralist or fundamentalist?

An idea degenerates into a fanatical postulate the moment it excludes those who oppose it. By denying the burgeoning independence of ideas or beliefs, religious or political fanaticism deprives them of their ability to function as well as of their right to exist. One confronts its closed fist in every one of the monotheist religions. Catholic integralism matches that of the Protestants, which matches that of the Muslims, which matches that of the Jews. It repels me in all its forms. Whoever declares that he knows the path leading to God better than others causes me to turn away. If he tries to take me there by force, I resist.

Does this mean that I avoid a debate with him? Usually it is the fanatic who shies away from a real debate, a civilized dialogue. He is convinced that he does not have to fight to win, that he has won before hearing the first word. For him, used as he is to monologue, any exchange is an aberration. His discourse is monolithic, closed to doubt and hesitation, hostile to external influences. He listens to himself in order not to hear you. He evolves in a reductive universe deprived of diversity. He inhabits it alone with himself; he becomes the object of his own passion.

For the fanatic is a zealot, a madman of faith. It is he whom Nietzsche was talking about when he said it was not doubt but certainty that leads to madness. Blinded by passion, he turns divine beauty into human ugliness. For him and because of him, the nostalgia for God degenerates into an irresistible desire to hate. He usurps God’s place in Creation. He takes himself for God. Like God he strives to make every man in his own image, but smaller. He wants everyone to resemble him yet remain smaller, humble and humiliated, bowed before his throne. Convinced that he is the sole possessor of the meaning of life, he gags or kills the Other in order not to be challenged in his quest. And finally, the religious fanatic sees God not as his judge and king, but as his prisoner.

Let us not deceive ourselves—fanaticism is not exclusively religious in essence. Secular fanaticism is no less vile. The secular fanatic is sometimes more eloquent but no less evil. Both tend to see in the Other not a subject of pride, but an object of contempt.

Fanaticism is a pernicious cancer that undermines the promise of man and crushes him with the weight of evil. The fanatic is tireless because he is never satisfied. He constantly tries to acquire more power, devoting all his energy to that end—one does not hate in the abstract. A fanatic can feed his hate theoretically, but he will soon put it into practice—sometimes he will not relent until he has turned his country into a jail. Since other people’s freedom frightens him, the fanatic does not feel free and alive except when others are not. The more crowded the prisons, the more his own liberty flourishes. Thus the fanatic will do the impossible to prevent others from dreaming, loving, thinking in pursuit of their own quest for identity. His goal? To imprison the ideas of others, to paralyze their imagination. For the fanatic, the Other should remain locked in the present, without memory and without hope.

The aim of our conferences? To combat fanaticism, which is the major component of hate, and vice versa. More precisely, not all fanatics are filled with hate, but all those who are filled with hate are fanatics. Their conduct leads inexorably to the destruction of the Being in being. By the time this becomes evident, it is already too late.

I used to say over and over that the opposite of love is not hate but indifference. There is no reciprocity. Hate is always gratuitous, sterile. It is a powerful, insurmountable barrier that permits no intrusion. In other words, nothing good, nothing great, nothing that is alive, can be born of hate. It denies all possibility of metamorphosis or transcendence. Hate begets only hate. It is urgent and imperative to defeat it before it overwhelms us. How can we achieve this? By attacking its visible form—fanaticism.

Combating fanaticism means denouncing the humiliation of the Other. It means celebrating the freedom of the Other, the freedom of all Others. Ultimately it means freeing man from the humiliating chains the fanatic forces upon him. It means opening the prisons and giving back to men, women, and God Himself the freedom the fanatic has stolen.

The sessions often have recourse to psychology. In Boston, Leo (Sjua) Eitinger, of Oslo University, explores the absence of hate among victims, and Robert Jay Lifton, professor of psychiatry at
CUNY, examines with us the power of hate but also the ethical apathy among the killers. He is elaborating on a theme that we have been trying to explore for years, that the absence of hate in the killer is even worse than the hate. The members of the
Einsatzgruppen
massacred thousands and thousands of Jewish children they did not hate.

And God in all this?

Robert McAfee Brown, the most eminent of Protestant theologians; Harry James Cargas, an audacious Catholic thinker; John Roth, an insightful essayist and inspired teacher, all contribute to the theological debate. Could there be a God of hate? The prophets enumerate what the Lord abhors. But is it conceivable that He has come to hate His own creation?

At Haifa University it is the pedagogic aspect of hate that absorbs the conference participants. At what age can one detect the first signs of hate in a child? There is a discussion of the suggestion that a child is incapable of hate until the age of three, that hate is something that is learned, acquired. But if that is so, can it be unlearned as well?

There are some difficult moments at this same conference in Haifa. The great Israeli novelist A. B. Yehoshua, true to his provocative self, overemphasizes his Israelo-centric line. According to him, the Diaspora should “liquidate” itself. After I received the Nobel, he took into account my work and activities on behalf of Israel and the Jewish people and wrote me a letter in which he deigned to grant me—in jest, of course—a
heter
, a sort of purely personal exemption, authorizing me to stay where I am. How is one to explain such a closed mind in a gifted, generous, inspired writer, someone I am fond of?

On the other hand, the dialogues with Muslim participants provoke little embarrassment. Arab journalists, teachers, and students participate in the debates. They are ready to listen as well as to express themselves in an atmosphere of total freedom, I would almost say comradeship. The same desire is evident on all sides: that of finding a middle road. And all this was happening in 1990, well before the peace process was started between Israelis and Palestinians.

At the reception in honor of the conference, in a splendid Druze mansion, a group of Arab journalists from the Old City of Jerusalem approach me. Among them is a young couple. She is beautiful; he has an open, friendly face. They would like to record an interview for Arab television and Arabic-language magazines. They are familiar, they tell me, with my work on behalf of human rights and express
their appreciation. But… I know what is about to follow: “Why are you ready to listen to everyone who suffers except us? Why do you refuse to hear us?” They speak without hate or anger, as though they wished only to elucidate a purely philosophical problem. Are they expecting me to justify myself in their eyes? Not even. It seems to be a simple matter of intellectual curiosity. They don’t resent me; they are not reproaching me in anyway. I owe it to them to be truthful: “First of all, don’t think that I am deaf or indifferent to what you are enduring. I am listening to you, and I hear you. But since you say you are familiar with the nature of my testimony, you must also be aware of my attachment to Israel. Now, you cannot deny that Israel is living in fear, for reasons that may or may not be valid, and that it is a fear inspired by you. Help me dissipate that fear, and I promise you that my friends and I will do everything we can not only to hear you but to make others hear you as well.” Unlike their Israeli defenders, they take up the challenge. The understanding created between us justifies hope.

The next conference is held in August 1990 in Oslo. The theme is “The Anatomy of Hate and Conflict Resolution.” In a historic precedent, the Nobel committee itself is our co-organizer. The Norwegian government, supportive as always, places its infrastructure and its considerable means at our disposal. Everything works magnificently, miraculously, without a hitch. Airplane tickets, hotels, restaurants, programs, transportation, simultaneous interpretation, press relations—more than four hundred accredited journalists ensure an international coverage worthy of a summit conference. Under the direction of Geir Grung of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Geir Lundestad of the Nobel Institute, and Chief Rabbi Michael Melchior, the event runs as smoothly as a Swiss watch. From the moment they get off their plane, all participants are taken in hand by a member of the reception committee and a representative of the government. There is no passport check, no customs inspection; no customs officials are to be seen. Every guest is treated like the star of the conference. Of course, the list of participants is impressive: François Mitterrand; Václav Havel; Nelson Mandela; the Lithuanian president, Vytautas Landsbergis; Jo Benkow, speaker of the Norwegian Parliament; Jimmy Carter; John Kenneth Galbraith; Conor Cruise O’Brien; Ehud Olmert, Israeli minister of health; Hanna Siniora, editor in chief of an Arabic daily in Jerusalem; the Cuban poet Armando Valladares; the German novelist Günter Grass, the Hungarian novelist György Konrád;
the journalists Herbert Pundik from
Politiken
in Copenhagen and Abe Rosenthal and Arthur Gelb from the
New York Times…
. All told, some fifty politicians, intellectuals, scientists, educators, psychiatrists from many different countries have gathered to seek together a response to the hate that continues to haunt and afflict nations.