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Four Muslims who save Jews and a Jewish woman who holds on to Catholic-Jewish dialogue in the most difficult of times: On Sunday, they were presented with the “Mount Zion Award” by the Jerusalem Benedictines.

A Jewish historian and four Bedouins are the winners of this year’s “Mount Zion Award”, which was presented on Sunday at the German-speaking Benedictine Abbey of Dormitio in Jerusalem. Karma Ben-Johanan had “very recently awakened the Catholic-Jewish dialogue from its slumber”, the abbot of the monastery, Nikodemus Schnabel, told the Catholic News Agency (KNA). Ismail, Rafi, Chamad and Dahesch Alkrenawi had been honoured as the “greatest civilian lifesavers” in connection with the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel on 7 October 2023.On 7 October, the Alkrenawi cousins drove to the site of the Nova music festival near the southern Israeli kibbutz of Re’im to bring their cousin Hisham to safety. They saved the lives of around 40 Israelis by evacuating them from the area. Hamas terrorists murdered around 400 festival-goers on 7 October and abducted dozens more as hostages in the Gaza Strip.According to the Dormition Abbey, 7 October 2023 intensified anti-Semitism and brought dialogue initiatives to a standstill. The Hamas attack was “an earthquake for Jewish communities around the world”, said Karma Ben-Johanan in an earlier interview with KNA. The Jewish thinker, who teaches religious studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, wrote an open letter to the late Pope Francis shortly after the massacre. In it, she recalls the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), which emphasised the common spiritual heritage of Jews and Christians with the declaration “Nostra aetate”. The friendship that has grown since then must be strengthened.

“Religion must be part of the solution”

In his laudatory speech, Bundestag Vice President Bodo Ramelow was impressed by the courage of the four Alkrenawi cousins, who had not looked the other way during the Hamas attack, but had risked their lives to save many lives. It was important to him to clearly remind people that “Bedouins also have the same citizenship rights as everyone else” in Israel. According to the spokesperson for religious policy for the Left Party in the Bundestag, all five award winners have in common that they have brought religions together instead of dividing them.

“Religion must never be part of the problem. Religion must be part of the solution,” said Ramelow. Religion should never be a justification for wars or violence, he said, referring specifically to the war in Ukraine, Islamist terror and the violence of the new Syrian rulers against Druze and other minorities. If it were possible for everyone to remember that they are “children of Abraham”, religion could also and especially in Jerusalem succeed in seeing itself as a community beyond the divisions.

Saving one soul saves the whole world

According to the Bedouins, it was not the danger of death, in which they had undoubtedly found themselves, that was at the forefront of their decision, but the idea that the lives of others were no less valuable than their own. “We did everything in our power and saved 40, maybe more people that day,” said the cousins. In Bedouin culture, it is said that whoever saves one soul saves the whole world.

When she discovered the Council Declaration “Nostra aetate”, which Pope Paul VI proclaimed exactly 60 years ago, on 28 October 1965, around 15 years ago, without which her work would not have been possible, it was an “era of dialogue”, hope and thoughts of peace, said Karma Ben-Johanan in her acceptance speech. Now this world is falling apart, which is why dialogue is so important at the present time, even if it can be “very hard and very painful”.

30,000 francs prize money

The “Mount Zion Award” has been presented every two years since 1987 by the Institute for Jewish-Christian Research at the University of Lucerne and the Dormition Abbey in Jerusalem to honour commitment to dialogue between Jews, Christians and Muslims in the Holy Land. The founder is the priest Wilhelm Salberg from Essen, who died in 1996 and bequeathed his legacy to the Mount Zion Foundation based in Lucerne. The award ceremony is held at the German Benedictine Abbey of Dormitio on Jerusalem’s Mount Zion. This year’s prize is endowed with two awards of 15,000 Swiss francs (16,200 euros each).

Previous winners include the author Amos Oz, Rabbi David Rosen and, posthumously, the 24-year-old Muslim Omri Jadah, who died saving a Jewish boy from drowning.