12 · Michael M. Laskier and Yaacov Lev
persecutions in the dispersion as reflected in Jewish and Zionist sources.
They regarded these as an excuse to legitimize the Jews’ return to the
“land of their forefathers” and as a ploy to seize Palestine in its entirety
from the Arab Muslims.
Maissy-Noy’s approach relying on Arabic sources is reciprocated
by Hanita Brand’s literary Arabic perspective in “The Road Not Taken:
Isḥāq Mūsā al-Ḥusseini and His Chickens.” This is an intriguing account
of a novel written by Isḥāq Mūsā al-Ḥusseini, a Palestinian intellectual
and a relative of the former mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Ḥusseini.
Published in 1943, Isḥaq Mūsā’s Memoirs of a Hen is the story of a hen
and her chicken coop. The hen relates how one day a family of outcast
chickens invaded her domain and caused friction. All efforts by the hen
to settle the tensions proved difficult. In interpreting the motives behind
the story, Brand, who also interviewed Isḥāq Mūsā in October 1979, raises
two questions: Was the novel specifically devoted to the Zionist-Pales-
tinian conflict that gained notoriety at the time? Or did it go beyond this
“narrow” issue in the quest to promote a world devoid of hatred and
universal peace at the height of World War II? Brand concludes that the
plot resembles the conflict in Palestine.
Perceptions about the legitimate rights of Arabs and Jews in Arabic
sources are also found in Hebrew literary works. An innovative study
prepared by Carmela Saranga and Rachel Sharaby, “Space as a Demon
and the Demon in the Space: Jewish-Muslim Relations in the Israeli Space
in A. B. Yehoshua’s Literary Works,” attests to it. Saranga and Sharaby
dissect the oeuvres of A. B. Yehoshua, one of Israel’s most renowned nov-
elists, and expose his worldview about modern-day coexistence. More-
over, they interpret his descriptions concerning the destinies of the two
peoples in the Israeli space through different geographical settings. For
instance, Haifa, Yehoshua’s current home, symbolizes for him an island
of sanity and accommodative multiculturalism. On the other hand, Jeru-
salem, his place of birth, is the lost paradise, a divided city geographi-
cally, socially, and culturally. There, the prevalence of “unhealthy” senti-
ments of mutual resentment is translated into tensions that threaten to
ignite dangerous confrontations.
The challenges of accommodative cultural interaction are clearly evi-
dent in Ben Mollov’s “Interreligious Dialogue and the Israeli-Palestinian
Conflict: An Empirical View.” A political scientist at Bar-Ilan University,