Water from Stones: Conflict-Resolution through Gentleness

who fed them with false hopes and imaginary expectations. Stirred up by the latter’s rhetoric, the Jews were provoked against their enemies. But this reaction only resulted in their defeat and further degradation. This facet of Jewish history is described in considerable length in the Bible, in the Book of Jeremiah (Chapters 27-30). From these details in the Bible we learn several things: 1. The Bible attributed the responsibility for the repeated defeat and destruction that the Jews faced in the period of their decline entirely to the Jews themselves. In the pages of the Bible that tell of this history, there is no ranting and raving against the oppression and conspiracies of other communities. Rather, the Jews themselves were told that whatever they were faced with was only a consequence of their having angered God. The situation that they had to confront was a divine warning, rather than strife and persecution engineered by their human foes. And so, what the Bible suggested to the Jews was that they should put all their efforts into pleasing God, only after which they could regain their lost position. In other words, the secret of whatever happens to people in this world must be searched for in divine principles laid down for this world, rather than attributing them to the conspiracies of other people. 2. In this period of the Jews’ degeneration and decline, they were clearly forbidden from what could be called ‘jihadist action’. Instead, they were exhorted to try to harmonise with the then dominant communities. Instead of confronting others, they were told to focus on their own progress. This suggests that in such circumstances, jihad is the work of internal construction, rather than an externally-oriented action. 3. In the period of their decline, poets and preachers emerged among the Jews, seeking to stir them up in the name of ethnic or communal pride