Israel, Iran, and the Middle East

Israel, Iran, and the Middle East

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704107204574471282155997704.html

My guess is that an attack on Iranian nuclear sites is coming closer to reality. I hope not, but I don’t really see a way around it. In my view, Obama’s Iran strategy is flawed (by the way, Bush’s was no better). The Iranian government sees Obama as weak, especially in light of the recent anti-government protests in Iran. Many Iranian protesters are very upset with Obama’s diplomacy, as it gives credibility and authority to a government that stole an election. And, in the Middle East, if you use a carrot, you’d better also use a stick—Obama has not done that. You have to be tough. Sanctions may have been the way to go, but the time may be too late now. What worries me is that the U.S. and many other countries (in Europe, maybe even Russia, and in the Middle East, including Egypt, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, etc.) are going to let Israel do the work that they do not have the courage to do–most of them will quietly (in spite of what they say publicly) give Israel intelligence and tactical military support. Sadly most of the pain will fall on Israel, which will face the fury of Hezbollah, Hamas, Syria, and Iran. The other nations will get some of the venom, but nothing compared to Israel.

The reality is that, for Israel, this is an existential question: the Iranian government will have no hesitation in obliterating Israel and slaughtering every Jew it finds. So what is Israel supposed to do? Jews cannot allow a second holocaust only seventy years after the first one (which itself culminated a 2500-year history of persecution).

Israel may have no choice. This would be a tragedy, but it would be an even greater tragedy to allow a nuclear attack on Israel. Sometimes there are only bad choices; you just pick the one that’s less bad.

I pray that this does not happen, and every day I envision a world in which peace and healing prevail. Everyone should come together at this time to do what they can to bring a vision of healing and peace to the current crisis. I have no idea what the solution is to avoid the need for a military strike, but I would call on all to do whatever they can to bring wholeness/shalom to a deeply fragmented world. For those who cannot imagine what they might do, a simple smile, a kind thought, or breathing out compassion has a way of spreading healing energy which all of us genuinely need. That’s a start. It doesn’t matter as long as we bring our energy to focus on healing, particular in the Iran-Israel-Middle East context. To quote Rabbi Hillel: “If not now, when?”

War and Peace in Middle East

I wrote this this to a friend who was very upset with Avigdor Lieberman’s statement, “those who want peace should prepare for war.”

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I know that this sounds awful and that Lieberman has used racist language toward Arabs.  This is certainly true, and that part is wrong.

At the same time, I agree with his statement that there is no peace without preparing for war.  That is a part of Jewish thought for millennia and is encompassed in the Jewish notion of “shalom.”  Shalom means “wholeness,” not peace.  In this case, “wholeness” includes both the retreating and assertive sides of human nature and of nature itself.  I did not like Ronald Reagan’s domestic policies, but he was right in the way that he dealt with the Soviet Union.  And, in the Middle East, that is even more true.  You have to be tough, and you have to take into account that those who hate you will use various means at their disposal to annihilate you.  That’s the way it is, and anyone who wants peace also has to understand this fact.  Otherwise, you invite aggression and violence.

If I were in Lieberman’s position, I would not say what he said publicly about preparing for war, but preparing for the possibility of war is what I would do.

I am attaching an article by Yossi Klein Halevi who understands the Middle East as well as anyone that I know.  He wrote a wonderful book called “At the Entrance to the Garden of Eden:  A Jew’s Search for God with Christians and Muslims in the Holy Land.”  He is a political centrist, very realistic, but very much wanting peace.  This article expresses much that is in my view true:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123846458281572307.html.  The idea right now of negotiations toward a two-state solution is naive and foolish.  I believe in a two-state solution, but the Palestinians are at this time nowhere near in a position to have a functional, democratic state.  The best that we can hope for is movement in the Palestinian and Arab world toward a civil, democratic, tolerant society.  That is a precondition and prerequisite for a meaningful peace settlement.  Olmert and Livni (and Barak in the past) did everything they could to engage in dialogue with the Palestinian leadership about an agreement.  They failed primarily because the time was not yet ready for them to succeed.  Palestinian society needs to change in order for peace to even have a chance.

Should Reference to “Antisemitism” Stop Discussions on the Middle East?

This is a substantial excerpt from an email of mine to a friend who was disturbed when I called much of the anti-Israel discourse antisemitic:

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I don’t think that a description of anti-Semitism or racism should stop a discussion.  In fact, that’s when the discussion should really begin.  If we don’t acknowledge the racism that is endemic in our society, how can we have a meaningful discussion among African-Americans and whites?  If whites admitted their own prejudices and the discriminatory features of much of our culture, then we could all really get down to business.  Focusing on peripheral issues and proxy arguments, rather than the substantive matters (the hard stuff),  allows tension to fester and exacerbates the problem.  I’ve seen this in dialogue groups since I’ve been working in this profession:  they’re often feel-good sessions rather than meaningful exchanges.  We never really seem to get around to what matters because we’re so busy avoiding painful words, topics, and emotions.  I hope that we have reached a level of maturity where can be forthright and straightforward with one another without degenerating into name-calling and shouting.

As to anti-Semitism itself, we do need to call something for what it is.  In this case, the arguments detailed in the denominational resolutions simply make no logical sense and are purely emotional appeals to sympathy for a favorite victim.  Upon analysis, and with the added benefit of evidence and accurate information, the arguments of resolution supporters do not cohere or withstand minimal scrutiny.  I tried to explain this fact in my letter.  From this I can only reasonably infer that anti-Semitism is a major factor.  How else does one explain the silence of church leaders regarding the atrocities committed by totalitarian governments in the Arab and Muslim world of the Middle East?  How else can one explain resolutions that advocate divestment from Israel, but let all repressive regimes of the Arab Middle East completely off the hook?  How else can one explain the sympathy for suicide bombers, and the concomitant lack of concern for Israeli victims of terrorism?  In what other way can we interpret resolutions that focus on the ugliness of the security barrier (an aesthetic issue), when human lives (including spouses, parents, and grandparents) are at stake, than to infer that Jews do not have the right to defend themselves?   How is it that very few in the church leadership acknowledge that Israel acquired Gaza and the West Bank because Arabs tried to conquer Israel, destroy the country, and kill as many Jews as possible (“drive them into the sea,” as Gamal Abdul-Nasser and Yasser Arafat so succinctly put it)? How can it be that no resolution demands that the PLO (not to mention Hamas) remove references in its official charter that condemn Zionism and call for the annihilation of the state of Israel and the removal of any Jews who settled in Israel in the nineteenth century and afterwards?   How is it that, given the complicity of many European Christians in the holocaust, their churches have not given more attention to the precipitous rise of vandalism and violence against Jews in North America, and especially in Europe?

Lives are at stake, and most church leaders do not seem to notice (or care) that many of these lives are Jewish.  Now I hear some say that the war in Iraq is a pro-Israel, Jewish war.  This is ugly and dangerous stuff and has serious consequences for real living people.

Hatred of Jews is especially deep in the Arab and Muslim world.  If you want to know how large numbers of Arabs view Jews, take a look at these attachments, especially the video clips from an Egyptian state television soap opera (2002) that depict the Protocols of Zion (the notorious, forged anti-Semitic document) and even the more ancient blood libels against Jews–these clips are among the most chilling and disgusting I’ve ever seen.  And this is not fringe, but mainstream Arab and Muslim opinion in the Middle East.  If you don’t have the stomach for it, I understand, but this is the ugly truth [See my post from August 9, 2005, for some of these documents: http://mysticscholar.org/2005/08/09/antisemitism-in-the-middle-east/]

There are many congregants at the local level who don’t agree with their leaders . . .  I’m sure that this is true of churches and seminaries in other communities.  This is the level at which we must now work, because only with personal contacts can people recognize the humanity of those who are different.  Jewish-Christian dialogue at the upper level of organizations has run its course.  We now must find a meeting point at a more personal level like ours.

Let’s keep this discussion going.  This is very important.

1948 in Modern Imagination: Anti-Zionism and Antisemitism

I wrote the following email in response to a friend who sent me an article (by Alain Epp Weaver) arguing that much of Christian critique of Israel is not antisemitic: http://divinity.uchicago.edu/martycenter/publications/sightings/archive_2005/0818.shtml

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This is interesting.  The events of 1948, however, are far more complex than the author indicates.  Arab nations not only rejected Israel’s statehood, but also rejected the U.N. partition plan that would have offered Palestinian Arabs almost half of what is now Israel.  Arabs preferred to destroy Israel and kill all Jews, even though Jews had lived in then Palestine for two millennia.  In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, there were many areas with Jewish majorities. In 1948, Arab nations encouraged Arabs in Palestine to leave their homes so that they could create a crisis that would lead to the destruction of Israel.  The Israeli military was implicated in some expulsions, but Arabs nations took an even greater interest in seeing the Arab residents of Palestine expelled.  In general, Arabs simply did not like Jews and wanted them out.  The Mufti of Jerusalem had even sided with Hitler and the Nazis.  If the Germans had ever taken charge of the Middle East, you can imagine what Arabs would have done to resident Jews.  The bottom line:  in 1948 Israeli Jews wanted to make accommodation with their Arab neighbors, but the Arabs despised Jews and (later in the words of  Gamal Abdul-Nasser and Yasser Arafat) preferred to drive them into the sea.

If you want to know how large numbers of Arabs view Jews, take a look at these attachments, especially the video clips from an Egyptian state television soap opera (2002) that depict the Protocols of Zion (the notorious, forged anti-Semitic document) and even the more ancient blood libels against Jews–these clips are among the most chilling and disgusting I’ve ever seen.  And this is not fringe, but mainstream Arab and Muslim opinion in the Middle East.  See my August 9 post in this blog on these documents: http://mysticscholar.org/2005/08/09/antisemitism-in-the-middle-east/

Antisemitism in the Middle East

Here are some links to documents that deal with Arab/Palestinian/Iranian antisemitism:

1) An overall summary: http://www.memri.org/report/en/print2680.htm

2) Mickey Mouse and the Blood Libel

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDpZFmC54mg&playnext=1&list=PL25B74E23BA87C6D1&index=24

3) Knight Without a Horse:  Some Plot Summaries: KnightWithoutAHorse

4) Hamas Summer Camp:  http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/07/31/HAMAS.TMP

5) Protocols of Zion among Palestinians: http://www.palwatch.org/STORAGE/OpEd/Protocols_of_the_Elders.pdf

Musings on Jews and Christians: Israel

This is a substantial excerpt from a letter I wrote in 2005 regarding an anti-Israel resolution:

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Now that the Disciples’ General Assembly has finished its work (passing a resolution that denounces the Israeli defense barrier), we need to think long-term about how to respond to the current crisis in the mainline Protestant denominations.  As someone who is Jewish and works as a faculty member at a Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) seminary (Lexington Theological Seminary), I would be glad to contribute to this discussion in any feasible way.  At present, we are in a troubling period (and for Jews an anxious one).  Though we can be glad that no one slipped in a divestment resolution at the General Assembly, I assume that this is coming down the pike.

Jewish-Christian dialogue has achieved some significant goals, but it has obviously not succeeded in getting enough Christians to understand and acknowledge the full extent of persistent anti-Semitism.  This problem of prejudice against Jews has several different elements in the context of Israel.

First, the right of Israelis and Jews to defend themselves evidently exists only when they are perceived as victims.  Once Jews are perceived as self-sufficient and secure, Jews are no longer seen as having the right to engage in the same security measures that other nations use to protect themselves.  For Jews this is painful, because it seems that the only palatable Jews in some Christian eyes are casualties (as in the holocaust) or submissive and self-loathing dependents.  What does it mean to have a right to exist, if you cannot defend yourself?

Second, Israel and Jews are held to different standards than are other countries and peoples.  Of all the nations and groups engaged in gross violation of human rights in the Middle East, mainline Protestant denominations have seen fit to condemn only Israel:  not Saudi Arabia nor Iran nor Syria, which have all engaged in various kinds of ghastly violence and oppression, including the killing of ethnic and religious minorities, mass murder, and imprisonment and execution of dissidents–not to mention promotion of anti-Semitic literature and videos.  Nor do some mainline Christians consider suicide bombings and other terrorist acts of Palestinians and others to be worthy of the kind of serious critique that they apply to Israeli actions.  Mainline denominations do not make proposals to divest from Palestinian businesses on account of their acts of terror.  In fact, divestment, and now educational boycotts (as now proposed by British higher educators), recall the Nazi boycotts of Jewish businesses during the 1930’s.  Apparently, in liberal Christian eyes, Israel’s human rights violations are viewed as the worst in the Middle East.  Israel has received virtually all the blame and responsibility, while Muslim nations and peoples barely register any notice for their human rights abuses.  As has happened throughout history, some Christians have developed a new twist on an old procedure to scapegoat Jews instead of recognizing the complexity and multi-faceted dimensions of a difficult problem.

Third, some Christians seem to believe that they understand anti-Semitism and can determine whether or not they are anti-Semitic.  After centuries of prejudice and persecution of Jews by Christians culminating in the holocaust, one might think that such persons would at least have the humility to keep silent on such matters.  It is true that not every criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic, but one-sided resolutions that do not acknowledge the pain of Israelis, that were composed without the consultation of mainstream Jewish leaders in the U.S. or Israel (but with the extensive consultation of Palestinians), and that treat the conflict in terms of simplistic cliches can only lead to the conclusion that the writers and supporters of such resolutions simply do not care much for Jews.

For those like me, deeply involved in Jewish-Christian dialogue, this is all rather depressing.  I have devoted my entire professional life as a scholar and teacher to studying and teaching both Judaism and Christianity.  I studied New Testament and early Judaism at Harvard and Yale and have had the privilege to teach New Testament, Hebrew Bible, comparative religion, and Jewish studies (as well as many other subjects in religion) in several different contexts.  Now I teach at a Christian seminary and have always been committed to working in this kind of interfaith and intercultural context.  From time to time, I wonder what I’m doing when I see the same problems come up again and again and again.  But sometimes you have to follow Sisyphus–just keep trying to roll that rock up the hill.

I still strongly believe in dialogue.  Otherwise, the extremists win and the vast mainstream of peace-loving human beings lose.  In addition, many members of mainline denominations do not share the political beliefs of their leaders and representatives.  Somehow, we have to reach these people and empower them.  Anti-Israel resolutions are essentially done-deals before the national meetings take place and reflect the interests of certain elites.  Jews and Israeli victims of terrorism have certainly not been part of the process.  We need to move proactively at the beginning, not at the end, of the development of these resolutions, if we want to have a significant effect.  At the same time, dialogue has to begin from a different place.  No more can we simply sit and be nice to one another and muse about our commonalities.  We have to find a way to talk about painful topics that engender strong emotions and recognize and celebrate our different approaches to life and spirituality.  Honesty has to enter into the discussion.  Self-criticism on all sides is vital.  I certainly am ready to criticize Israel where appropriate (e.g. on settlement policy), yet am still strongly Zionist.

But, in the end, enough Christians have to decide that Jews are as fully human and as fully accepted by God as are Christians.   The view that they are not is something that ideologues on the Christian left and right seem to share.  Some liberal Christians engage in dehumanization by treating Israel unjustly and expecting Jews to sit quietly and meekly while under attack, by talking primarily to far-left, anti-Zionist Jews outside of the Jewish mainstream, and by viewing Zionism as contemptible.  Some conservative Christians engage in dehumanization by promoting the idea that Jews (and other non-Christians) will not be saved, by attempting to convert Jews to Christianity, and by advocating a conflagration in the Middle East that will culminate in the second coming of Jesus and the triumph of Christianity.

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