The Shrine of the Bab, this Israeli port city’s most distinctive architectural feature, is the final resting place of Siyyid Ali Muhammad, born in Shiraz, Persia, in 1819, one of the two founders of the Baha’i faith, and best known as the Bab, Arabic for “gate.” He was the forerunner of the other founder, Mirza Husayn ‘Ali, also an Iranian and known as Baha’ullah, or “Glory of God.” The Bab was persecuted and executed in 1850 for ideas that Persia’s Muslim authorities deemed heretical, and Baha’ullah was chased into exile in the Holy Land. Given that their teachings are still relatively fresh for a part of the world where shepherds have chatted and wrestled with God in the desert for millennia–Baha’ullah only died at the turn of the 19th century–the Bahai faith is often referred to as the most recent of the world’s great religions. Its most famous adherents are the 70s folk-pop duo Seals and Crofts, and University of Michigan professor and blogger Juan Cole, who is apparently a Bahai dissident. “The Bahais are also really big in Hawaii,” says my friend Cathay, an American journalist I’m traveling with in a group tour hosted by the Israeli Tourism Ministry. “The Bahais,” she says, “are part of the New Age scene on the Island.” In Israel, however, the Bahai are just part of a large mosaic of religious sects that includes Muslims, Christians, and Druze along with the Jewish majority. The varied nature of Israeli society comes as a surprise to most of my traveling companions, all of them Americans. The real composition and texture of Israel is so different from how the country is typically represented as the homeland of European Jewry, that it is easy to forget how much the Ashkennazi establishment here has invested in a Euro-centric narrative that gives room to the country’s critics to label it racist. But, among others, there are the Oriental Jews, the Ethiopians, and the Russians, all of it making even Haifa familiarly multicultural enough for this group of mostly New Yorkers here to see a side of Israel that seldom appears in the international media, like luxury hotels and restaurants, wine tours of the Galilee, treks in the Judean desert, Tel Aviv fashionistas, and, of course, the the Shrine of the Bab. Elsewhere throughout the Middle East, as in neighboring Egypt, the Bahai are repressed and persecuted, but in Haifa they have pride of place in the middle of town where the shrine’s beautiful hanging gardens, carefully attended by Bahai volunteers from around the world, surround the large pink shrine that is capped by a dome covered with 14,000 golden bricks. It occurred to me that the shrine must have been a very vulnerable target during Hezbollah’s summer 2006 war against Israel. And had it been destroyed by a katyusha rocket, no doubt there would have been celebrations throughout the strongholds of South Lebanon and Beirut, where the Islamic Republic of Iran has seeded a version of Islamic intolerance and obscurantism that is not exclusive to hatred of Jews. The Israelis traveling with us do not recognize I am only half joking when I suggest that maybe the shrine was the real target of the rocket blasts that kept Haifa underground for a month. As generous as the Israelis are, it is difficult for them to understand that they are not the only Middle Easterners who have real enemies. Indeed, while this society is various and multiracial, one of the more regrettable, if understandable, aspects of the Israeli mindset is that they see themselves surrounded by enemies without being able to discriminate between their neighbors and discern their real intentions. In this instance at least, the problem with seeing only foes is not that you will be in a constant state of war, but that you will be always seeking peace even if there is none to be had. In the Middle East, this is quite dangerous.
Since my arrival I have heard many Israelis talk about the prospects of peace with Syria–or, as the oft-repeated phrase has it, we Israelis will soon be dining on hummus in Damascus. The man most responsible for pushing this canard right now is Defense Minister Ehud Barak. While it is true that Barak’s “engage Syria” campaign is largely an attempt to show up Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Barak’s incompetence in Lebanon-Syria affairs can hardly be overstated. After all, Prime Minister Barak pursued a peace deal with Syria so that once he withdrew Israeli forces from Lebanon there would be no more troubles with Hezbollah. Obviously, that is precisely why there was no deal to be had with Hafez al-Asad–the Syrian president was not about to throw away a major strategic asset like the party of God when Barak was going to withdraw anyway. It is hard not to sympathize with Israeli citizens who would just like to move on with their lives, raise their children in safety and enjoy the fruits of their labor. But, alas, there is no real peace on the horizon–not with the Palestinians and not with Syria. And so the problem is not that Israeli leaders have not prepared their people for war; rather, they have not prepared them for the fact that they will not have peace. How would a responsible political and media class conduct such a public discussion? Maybe it would look like a history lesson. The Christians of Lebanon have never had peace in the Middle East, which is why the Maronites live in the mountains where they have fought for their lives against the Ottomans and other powers for over a millennium. At present, part of that community has made a deal with the Sunnis and the Druze, whom they fought bitterly during the civil war years; and the rest of the Christians have a bargain with the Shia that may soon come crashing down on the head of Michel Aoun. The Shia have never had peace in the region, but rather have been victimized by the Sunnis for almost fourteen hundred years, a fact that the US-sponsored Shia awakening in Iraq has not corrected but only exacerbated. Nor have the Alawis ever had peace here, which is why in order to rule Syria, a 70 percent Sunni nation, the Asad regime has advocated for almost forty years a hard-line Arabism that somewhat obscures their minority status and as such protects them against the rages of the Sunni majority. And that is why Israel will not have a deal with Syria as long as Bashar al-Asad reigns in Damascus. All the big decisions in the region are made by the Sunnis, the majority, and such has been the case since the death of the prophet of Islam. This is why the two states that have treaties with Israel are Sunni regimes, Egypt and Jordan, and why the Alawites cannot make a decision that would very likely constitute the closing chapter of a sectarian community that has existed in the Middle East for over a thousand years. How have the Alawis managed such a remarkable feat, outgunned and outmanned by neighbors who think them heretical dogs worthy of nothing but death? Because they know there is no such thing as peace in the Middle East.
