Introduction

Nothing is absolute or eternal in relations between peoples. Neither friendship nor hatred is immutable. Who could have imagined, forty years ago, when the smoke of Auschwitz had hardly receded, that the peoples of Israel and Germany would so soon enter into relations of mutual respect? Today, in the heat of an apparently insoluble conflict between Jews and Arabs, amid the devastation of dead and wounded strewn over airports and refugee camps, supermarkets and bombed-out suburbs, it requires a tremendous effort of imagination and analysis to realize that change is possible, that recrimination and intransigence could give way to understanding and peace. One of the major obstacles in the conflict, as in any longstanding national conflict, is the impasse arising from opposing demonologies.