To stand against Israel is to stand against God.
—Jerry Falwell
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I was raised evangelical. I was weaned on love for Israel. I was a Christian Zionist.
No longer.
I’m glad the world’s 16 million Jewish people have a state, a place they can feel relatively safe, especially after the 19th-century pogroms in tsarist Russia and the 20th-century Holocaust.
I’d also be glad if the 25 million Kurds had a state. They, too, have been persecuted and slaughtered. The Iranians, Iraqis, Syrians, and Turks show them no mercy.
I’d also be glad if the 11 million Uyghurs had a state. They, too, have been persecuted and slaughtered. The Chinese show them no mercy.
It’s too late, of course, for Native Americans who valiantly resisted European colonization for centuries and suffered unspeakable atrocities, including beheadings and massacres of women and children. White settlers showed no mercy. No state for the Indigenous people.
American evangelicals have little love for the Kurds or the Uyghurs. And they had little love for Native Americans. Evangelicals cited the Bible to justify the eradication of “savages” from their “New Israel.”
And evangelicals cited the Bible to justify the expulsion of Arabs from Palestine to make room for God’s chosen people.
On November 2, 1917, Arthur Balfour, the United Kingdom’s home secretary, made a pronouncement, later known as the Balfour Declaration, in a letter to a prominent Jewish Zionist: His Majesty’s Government views with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.
Balfour had been strongly influenced by British Christian Zionists who claimed that the restoration of the Jewish people to Palestine would fulfill biblical prophecy and hasten “the Second Coming.”
According to evangelicals, when Christ returns, he will destroy Israel’s enemies and demand the conversion of the Jews. (One reason Israel has mixed feelings about stalwart evangelical support.)
The last step before Christ’s return is the rebuilding of the historic temple in Jerusalem. Evangelicals in Texas (and elsewhere) have funds ready to go as soon as the site is available. Unfortunately for them, that site is home to the Dome of the Rock, Islam’s third most holy shrine.
Love for one people or the other doesn’t have to be blind. Education can open our eyes. I’ve read a lot.
I have sympathy for the Israelis.
More for the Palestinians.
None for the weapons industry.
And just a little for evangelicals.
Thank you for this morning’s blog which was a masterpiece. Kierkegaard said, “If you label me, you negate me.” Your writing pointed to that historic and longstanding “othering” and negation of many diverse peoples, all of whom are human, complex and nuanced. Organized religion, including Christian Zionism, has played a role in this latest humanitarian crisis and massive injustice and slaughter.
Yet we all breathe the same air and we all walk the same earth. We all have hopes and dreams. Enlightenment is a spiritual form of education which includes “the head”, but also the heart. It transcends tribalism and nationalism. It listens to the heart. It still says peace is possible. As Audrey Hepburn put it, “Nothing is impossible. The word itself says, ‘I’m Possible.'” Yes, peace is possible—if enough people want it.
Labels can be pernicious. Objectifying. Allowing us to rationalize irrational behavior. Your examples of the results of labeling are spot on. I wrestle with the realization that organized religion is so much a part of ongoing labeling and grievous behavior.
For me, this was your most insightful and pithy post ever. Thank you.
Exactly. The dispensationalists are welcoming the destruction and it’s sick. Even scarier that it’s crept into the hallowed secular houses of our government here in the US.
What they said. And there is one overarching God or Spirit, no matter what religion you subscribe to. We all live on and share the same Earth.
Yes… so many have suffered, at the hands of fellow humans…& now it continues – so many innocents, among the occasional perpetrators… 🎶where have all the flowers…young men gone?🎶… when will we ever learn? Thank you for your lessons… may we learn peace💓🙏🏼
Unfortunately the current President has billions and billions of love for the weapons industry.
I have visited a Palestinian girl’s school in East Jerusalem and seen a map of Palestine before Israel and the names of 500 Palestinian villages that no longer exist. I have been in Palestinian towns that have been cut in half by an impenetrable wall – half the town in Israel have in the Occupied West Bank. I have seen the apartheid-like conditions that Israeli Palestinians live under. Segregated towns that are not allowed to expand even though the surrounding land is owned by the villagers. Government policy that says, educate the Israeli Palestinians and then make sure they don’t get jobs so they will emigrate. I have been told by my Israeli Palestinian colleague of 40 years, ” Michael, I want to call Israel my home, but they won’t let me.” I have also swam in the Galilee and River Jordan, stood atop the Masada where a handful of Jews stood against the Roman Empire, visited the beautiful fruit orchards on the Lebanese border, soaked in the hot springs built by the Romans (and other previous peoples) on the border with Syria and Jordan, where one could see the Jordanian and Israeli military outposts facing each other. I have reveled on the beaches of Tel Aviv and rejoice in my friendship with Israeli Jews that are some of the kindest, loving people that I have ever met. Jews that would help Palestinians fight against unlawful arrest and detention, who invited Palestinians to the wedding of their children. Now, so much pain in the name of Jihadists and Zionists. Please someone explain to me where belief in God has benefitted the world. Humanism, yes, Religion, No. How does one keep one’s faith in humanity?
I know guy who lived in Israel for a several years, who once confided to me that he was no longer sure that Israel should continue to exist. Yes, he’s Jewish. His point was that he could no longer see a path forward, no points of reconciliation between Jews and Palestinians. In his analysis, the way to peaceful coexistence was too clogged with blood and atrocities. Memories were too long and unforgiving. He finally pulled up stakes and returned to The US. Even though he has returned to Israel several times, the last time I talked to him, his opinion remained unchanged. There’s no peaceful way forward, no resolution. Sound bleak? Look at history. The message isn’t encouraging. Hamas is a direct outgrowth of the failure of the two state solution. Hamas is more than willing to use and abuse innocent Palestinian citizens as human shields, and for succor, in its blood thirsty quest to obliterate the Jewish state and to ultimately erase Jews from the face of the earth. Sound familiar? Many say, “I support a two state solution.” These Iranian proxies and their counterparts to the north, Hezbollah, operate under no such delusions. They both are out to destroy the Jewish state, kill Jews, and nothing else will do.
Let’s face it, many average Palestinian working stiffs don’t support Hamas or their tactics either, but what can they do about it? The same scorched earth policy awaits them if they seek accommodation and compromise with Israel. Does that sound eerily familiar when it comes to witnessing our own political dilemmas right here in the good, old US of A? Needless to say, my friend’s words continue to haunt me. I support a two state solution as the only way forward. But is this an achievable goal? If not? Exactly what is?
Faith is a powerful force. It is cataloged in Hebrews 11.
From Abel’s faith that led to his death at his brother’s hand to the prophets that channeled faith in support of atoning, conquering, and ruling. It is a long list of Old Testament all-stars. Yet, the punch line comes in verse 39, “These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised.”
Paul cooked with a different recipe: one cup of faith and two cups of work. Work in support of faith is akin to “all politics is local.” Having been a prime mover throughout history for extending the olive branch of peace to some, while persecuting and killing others.
Faith provides the motive. Works provide the means. And when the wheels come off the bus, generations to come will stand on the side of the road with a bucket filled with promises, gathered across the ages.
They will be wondering where they will go from here. Neo-modern faith and work will surely guide them.
Thank you for this.
Very few would tackle the world’s most intractable problem with such clarity and insight.
I often wonder if it would be more economical to resettle 9 million Israeli Jews in America than to continue to support with guns and iron domes an unwanted people in an indefensible homeland.
Might I be considered anti-semitic for suggesting such a thing? Was the reason the Brits and us (US), and the French and the Spanish and the Irish…, support a homeland there, is that we want no more Jewish people here? Maybe THAT is the real anti-semitism.
Thanks to you and to all who commented for the wisdom, love and compassion throughout this thread. Taking people’s homes is always wrong Torturing and imprisonment of Innocents is always wrong. Each member of our human community carries holiness in their soul. Religion is such a poor substitute for real spirituality–communion with the Almighty and our human family. Every person deserves the chance to grow their soul to its greatest potential. That is freedom. Time we re-learned the ancient lesson every attack on freedom threatens the freedom of everyone. No ethnic cleansing No genocide. Killing Palestinian for God’s will is heresy.
Thank you for gathering all of our observations, flitting and fleeting thoughts, frustrations, doubts and disbelief into one tightly knit, logical and true-from-the-heart treatise. I am so sick of hearing one side against the other I could scream. I am so frustrated when a nation of people who were subjected to the holocaust can turn around and disregard another culture, their neighbor, their cousin, so-to-speak, and just wipe them out, step on them, push them aside, take over their land, their homes. But you’ve said it all, and this practice has gone on and continues to go on all over the world. I am longing and waiting for our own native people to stand up as one and take charge of what is theirs. Thanks.