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Response 1: from Jim Eighmey
Dear
Mac,
Your
query was forwarded to me by Aba Ata with a request to respond.
Others, I am sure, will bombard you with analysis of scripture,
Christological exegesis, and much else I am not qualified to present,
let alone defend. However I would only ask for a brief moment
of your time to propose a couple of points to fairly consider.
Let
us strip away the endless midrash of historical explanations and
get to the central issue.
If
grace and charity is the example of Christ, even when he was with
the Gentiles or those far outside the fold, then how do we condone
persecution and oppression of any person even if that oppression
was (and it wasn't in this case) furthered by choice? What sin
or suffering doesn't involve some choice, even if it is unknowing?
Did the choice of Jews to be Jews and to live in Poland mean they
deserved the Holocaust? Did family who happened to be Cambodian
deserve to be hauled to the killing fields? What about the following
generations and their choices? This line of thinking simply transfers
the moral onus onto those who are defenseless or who deserve our
compassion. No greater hubris can I imagine than for us to set
ourselves in the place of God, to make the determination of who
and what deserves love or salvation, to usurp the role of Jesus
Christ in judgement and to somehow view this paltry speck of dust
populated by tiny sentient primates as the thing which determines
God's vision. Only the father knows the time. Not me, not the
Zionists, not even Christ, and certainly not you.
But,
even if we were to accept the general thesis that somehow the
latest round in the historical quagmire which is the "Holy
Land" has something to do with the end-times, what is it
to any of us? What kind of twisted person is willing to consciously
use an entire nation of people as a sacrifice for their own salvation?
Who would use such an idea to persecute someone or worse, to supposedly
act as their friends and to promote their agenda when they truly
believe in their heart that most of them will be wiped out and
sent into the void (at best)? In this sense we could be referring
to either the Jews or the Palestinians. Either way it is cynicism
at its worst. This is the ultimate expression of selfish narcissism,
the ultimate placement of one's own well-being over that of others,
the blasphemy of all blasphemies. It is, in a sense, another crucifixion.
Indeed, even if I were remotely inclined to believe all this nonsense
(and I certainly am not) it would seem to me that the final cut
is being made but certainly not in the direction you might suppose.
We
cannot force the world into a particular relationship with the
divine. Hate and persecution IS the human condition. That is the
deterministic, the necessary, the socio-biological response, the
curse, the eternal us vs. them which Judaism and Christianity
have wrestled with for 3000 years. It is simply tribalism, and
God is not a member of a tribe. By acting in this way you are
not promoting the end of THE world, but the end of YOUR world
and several other people's worlds along with it. It is just another
chapter of suffering which has been repeated over and over and
over again in the name of so many gods in so many places.
Finally,
as an archaeologist I think I can say with some authority that
the people of Palestine (Jews and Arabs alike) have maintained
their continuous presence in that land despite invasions, wars,
persecution, genocide, deportations, and oppression without pause
for many millennia. The ancient people who identified themselves
as Judah did not wipe out the indigenous populations of Palestine
because many of them were themselves indigenous to Palestine.
So it remains today. The simplistic notions of anthropology, history,
and prehistory which many people propose when speaking about Israel
usually reflect a deep methodological and subjective ignorance
of these fields of knowledge. In terms of the substance of your
claims about Zionism, it would seem that the history of the movement
is well documented. I have copied a
recent article below which you might find informative
and succinct. It is not my place to criticize the theological
ideal of Israel or its meaning in Judaism and Christianity. The
reality of it, however, is another matter.
Peace,
Jim
Eighmey
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Response #2
From:
Marvin Wingfield
Mr.
Dominick:
Mr. Ata asked that I respond to your note.
1) Why did the Palestinians leave their homes in 1948? A new generation
of Israeli historians has disproved the Israeli claims that they
left voluntarily or because of Arab radio broadcasts urging them
to leave. There are official records of such broadcasts which
have been studied by scholars and found to contain no such urging.
The actual reasons, as you might expect, are varied. People act
out of different kinds of motives. Some were forced out at gunpoint
by Jewish military forces. Some fled in fear as news spread atrocities
and incidents of mass murder in Palestinian villages committed
by Jewish extremist forces, e.g. the village of Deir Yassin where
over 100 were murdered and bodies stuffed down a well. Perhaps
some fled to escape areas of military operations. Much of this
has been officially acknowledged by the Israelis. Under the Labor
government, the history curriculum in the schools was revised
to take account of the findings of the historians, which in many
ways matches and validates the stories which Palestinians have
told about their experience for decades.
No matter why Palestinians left , they did not give up their natural
right to their homes, land and country. This is attested in international
law, common decency, and in common human decency. The mistreatment
of Palestinian Christians is mostly because of their nationality,
not their theology. But Israeli pressure and policies have resulted
in the erosion of the Christian community, so that it is in danger
of disappearing. This was the community founded by Jesus and the
Apostles, now increasingly scattered in exile around the world,
being destroyed as a community.
For the story of Palestinian Christians within Israel, I suggest
the books of Fr. Elias Chakour, Blood Brothers and We Belong to
the Land.
If you are serious about studying what happened in 1948, I will
look for a bibliography of the new historians. One book you might
look at is by Simha Flaphan. I believe the title is The Birth
of Israel: Myths and Realities.
2) So what about divine right and promises? If you are a New Testament
Christian, you might recognize that the Old Testament is to be
interpreted as "types" and as foreshadowing of the truth
revealed in and through Jesus. The land, the kingdom and the kingship
are fulfilled in Jesus, but not as a worldly state like that of
the other nations. The New Testament Kingdom is a spiritual kingdom,
the heavenly Jerusalem, not a political power ruling by military
force. God's kingdom comes when God's spirit of loving-kindness
and mercy is manifested, in acts of justice and goodness, in healing
and faith. God's will for his people was always to establish a
community of justice, peace and right worship of the true God,
as a city on the hill and a light to the nations. This was the
meaning, purpose and condition under which the OT promises were
given. It was by the Israelites' insistence and not the will of
God that kingship was first established in ancient Israel. This
was a falling away from the true vision. But in the words of the
prophets and person of Jesus, the image of a king and kingdom
became a symbol of the reign of God.
Modern Israel is not the Kingdom. It is another kingdom of Saul,
another Maccabean or Herodian state, or just another European
colonial garrison state, like South Africa and Algeria used to
be. The Jewish people, like the Christian people, are meant to
embody the Kingdom of God. But modern Israel is not a light to
the nations. The policies of the state of Israel towards the Palestinians
are a shame to the Jewish people. Remember the words of Jesus:
If your light be darkness, how deep that darkness is.
Christians and Jews (and Muslims) are called to be people of justice,
peace and true worship. What a mockery when Christians have such
a distorted understanding of Scripture that they think the Word
of God mandates and justifies the violent oppression of the poor,
the destruction of homes, the theft of land, the building of colonies,
the use of torture, indiscriminate violence against unarmed people,
an aggressive policy of conquest and occupation. The only sword
Jesus used was the sword of the Word. The gospel I was taught
had something in it about love even for enemies, about forgiving
those who wrong us. If you want a relevant text about the confiscation
of the land of the poor and the weak, look up the story of Naboth's
vineyard.
These are the issues at the heart of the gospel and the Biblical
message. Not fanciful and unfounded speculations about the symbolic
texts of prophecy. If we are truly saved and "in Christ"
as the gospel of John teaches, then we are to have the mind of
Christ, not the mind of Joshua. Interpretations of visionary prophecy
cannot exempt us from the central demands of the Biblical message.
Real Christians will stand with both the Palestinians suffering
injustice and Israeli victims of suicide bombers, with all people
who are the victims of arbitrary power and cruelty.
These are my personal views that are based in my experience in
religious communities, Biblical study, and the struggle for peace
and human rights. I will be happy to hear your own views at greater
length.
Marvin Wingfield
Washington, DC
P.S. I just checked your website and it is obvious that you are
not going to agree with what I have to say. I would like to add,
however, that, apart from my negative evaluation of "fanciful
interpretations of prophecy", I don't think my views above
contradict your basic doctrinal formulations. I would agree that
a "social gospel" in isolation from the rest of the
Biblical message is not the full gospel. Nor is a privatized,
ahistorical, and exclusively eschatological message in which the
Biblical vision of justice and peace in actual human history and
everyday life has no meaningful place. My argument is about what
it means to be "separated from the world." The "world"
is first and foremost the political, economic and military institutions
of the nations. Peace "as the world gives it" was the
Pax Romana, the order imposed by military force and coercion,
rather than the peace that is the fruit of justice, loving kindness,
and the Spirit of God.
Israel, like the U.S. and all other nation-states, is to be evaluated
by the extent to which it does or does not embody the Biblical
vision for human community. I think that if you chose like Jesus
to go out to "the poor and the oppressed of the land of Israel"
and began to see the policies of the state of Israel through the
eyes of the Palestinian victims of those policies, you might make
at least some modification in your viewpoint. I honestly don't
see how you, like many others, can consider yourself a Biblical
Christian and yet ignore matters which are integral to the Biblical
message. In the message of the prophets: "I don't want your
burnt offerings, your empty praise. But rather do justice, practice
mercy." (I paraphrase.) In the message of Jesus, again in
paraphrase: "My Father does not want your doctrinal purity,
he wants a compassionate heart. The just man and true 'neighbor'
is the Samaritan heretic who binds up the wounds of strangers."
Who is the neighbor in Palestine and Israel today? Are you a neighbor
to the Palestinians?
