Zionism, Jihad, Integration and the Postbellum South: Lessons in Conflict Resolution from America's Slaveholding Past
By Al Swearengen
Actually, I probably won't get around to writing this. But I was inspired a couple of days ago by the apparition of an Israeli on our forums. How do the people of Israel struggle so much to achieve a meaningful peace with their neighbors? Certainly it's not 100% their fault nor is it exclusively the fault of their neighbors.
But often it really appears that they're going about it all wrong.
Certainly there is historical precedent for two peoples mutually surviving a terrible conflict against each other, then rapidly building an effective peace. During the Roman invasion of ancient France, for example, Roman soldiers slaughtered more than 39,000 civilians and captives during a single military campaign. However within only a few generations, the ancient French were among the most enthusiastic adopters of Romanization.
More recently, an effective program of partial assimilation has taken place in the American south, where only a few generations ago one demographic of people completely owned another demographic of people as slavery. Surprisingly, both groups are now largely integrated economically, with lots of recent progress in terms of social integration.
Why not so for the participants in the Arab-Israeli conflict?