Amal Kiran's Correspondence with The Mother

1 August 1967

(The following text was published in the July 1967 issue of Mother India. On the typed sheet sent for approval, the Mother added the final sentence in her own hand.)

THE JEWS AND THE ARABS

SOME ANSWERS BY THE MOTHER

How is one to explain this age-old enmity between the Jews and the Arabs (although having a common ancestor), hating each other generation on generation up to the impasse in which we have been living from some days back?

Perhaps the enmity exists just because they are neighbours!...

Violence and enmity . . . when brothers hate, they hate much more than others. Sri Aurobindo has said: “Hate is the indication of the possibility of a much greater love.”

Could we think that these two great peoples in conflict represent the symbolic Forces called to decide the fate of our civilisation?

It is not this conflict that will decide the future of our civilisation.

The Mussulmans and the Israelites represent the two religions where the faith in God is the most extreme. Only, the faith of the Israelites is a faith in an impersonal God and faith of the Mussulmans is a faith in a personal God.

The Arabs are passionate natures. They live almost exclusively in the vital, with its passions, its desires, while the Israelites live chiefly in the mind with a great power of organisation and of realisation, which is quite exceptional. The Israelites are intellectuals with a remarkable will. They are not sentimental, that is to say they do not like weakness.

The Mussulmans are impulsive, the Israelites are rational.

1 August 1967