Featuring the Tibetan Monks of the Drepung Loseling Monastery

Sacred music and dance performance featuring the Tibetan Monks of the Drepung Loseling Monastery

Dr. Robert Kramer
Professor of History

In the centuries after the rise of Islam, relations between Jews, Christians and Muslims tended to be stable, and even cordial, in the region of Palestine. Political instability and economic stress of course affected these relations, but only to a limited degree, and the principle of religious co-existence prevailed. It was rather the occasion of foreign invasions--the Crusades and the Mongols in particular--that posed the greatest threat, as the Muslim majority sought to reassert itself from a position of fear and mistrust. As the long period of Ottoman Turkish rule drew to a close in the 19th century, new forces were at work in the Middle East: European imperialism, Western modernizing culture, and especially the rise of nationalism. These three things, combined with the increased persecution of Jews in eastern Europe, made possible the rise of Zionism, and with it, a steady Jewish colonization of "the Land of Israel." In the wake of World War One and the invention of nation-states in the Middle East, a "new order" came about in the region, and with it, a level of inter-religious strife previously unknown. While all countries in the Middle East have witnessed this strife over the last 100 years, it is in Israel/Palestine that the most significant and intractable conflict is located. This talk will explain the historical background to the conflict since the late Ottoman era, with a special emphasis on the later 20th century.