Kerux: a portfolio of Calvin Theological Seminary - Volume 44.4 - 24 Feb 2010

I remember: Reflections on Christmas

by Jonathan Moore

I am grateful for the encouragement to read Elias Chacour’s Blood Brothers and for the three panelists who helped us in our reflections at the Town Hall Meeting on November 19. What is so moving and powerfully encouraging about the book is Father Chacour’s profoundly Christian heart-posture to his blood brother Jews: “Do not demonize the Jews!” After our hour-long town hall I left disquieted because I was not sure we had been faithful to that spirit---the conversation moved increasingly to an assumed anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian stance. A good part of the reason for that was an apparent desire to distance ourselves from dispensational schemes that give preference to the State of Israel as a fulfillment of biblical prophecy and even a sense that evangelical Christians are the major determiners of American foreign policy which is exclusively pro-Israel.

I fully agree that Darbyite interpretations of biblical prophecy have no place in our judgments of international law and the conduct of nations; only proper principles of justice and law may do that. Israel as a nation must be judged with the same standard that all nations are judged; she has no divinely appointed special privilege. My own sense, which is debatable and discussable, is that Israel is not judged in the same way as other nations but that the standard set before her is impossibly high and one to which she will never measure up, indeed cannot ever measure up. Essentially, my own view is that we should not be simply pro-Israel or pro-Palestinian but even-handed in our desires and prayers for justice, liberty, and peace. Let me briefly outline why I think we have a long ways to go beyond the direction we were headed in the town hall meeting.

  1. The Middle East is a mess when it comes to land claims and counter claims. In fairness it is necessary to acknowledge that at least as many Jews were forcibly exiled from their homes in Arab lands with much more in property assets taken from them than was taken from Palestinians who fled the territory of what became Israel after 1948.
  2. Israel became a homeland for these exiles and they were fully incorporated into its national life. The Arab states surrounding Israel did not embrace the Palestinian refugees they had encouraged to flee but put them into refugee camps.
  3. Israel does have a policy of return for Palestinians and has enfolded those who remained in 1948 into its national and civic life. Today there are 16 Arab members of the Knesset. No such reciprocal response has ever taken place in the Arab states. Israel has never attempted to eliminate all Arabs from the state of Israel as Jordan did in the West Bank and as Israel’s neighbors have done to Jews.
  4. When the six Arab states attacked Israel in 1948 with the intent to destroy Israel, they strongly urged Arabs to flee and the Jordanian army occupied Judea and Samaria (the West Bank), expelled all the Jews (many who had roots there going back to biblical times) in order to make it a Judenfrei territory. This attitude toward the Jews remains a policy of Palestinian organizations.
  5. When the Arab states again attacked in 1967 (and 1973) they were defeated and Israel took over control of the West Bank (from Jordan) and Gaza (from Egypt). Israel then resettled Jews in those areas; the land resettled was either appropriated (with recompense) or purchased. Who owns what, who is properly settled and where etc., is a very complicated matter and not as simple as usually portrayed. To claim that the “settlements” issue is the major obstacle to peace seems overly simplistic.
  6. In the many years (since the Carter presidency especially), the “peace process” has seen Israel make “land for peace” concessions repeatedly with no reciprocal action on the part of the Palestinians; instead each overture is met with escalations of violence (Intifadas). To suggest that Israel is the obstacle to peace seems one-sided; it is just as fair to say that Israel has tried and the Palestinians have been found wanting.
  7. Our world is awash in increasing and increasingly aggressive anti-Jew hatred; our times remind one of the 1930s. While no one should defend Israel’s IDF if it engages in activity that violates international rules of war (not international opinion!), it is fair to wonder about a double standard for Israel and the jihadists devoted to destroying it, and it is fair to ask whether Israel or Islamofascism is the greater threat to world peace.

In sum, I am concerned that we as Christians who are concerned about justice in our world do not once again make the fateful error that has been made far too many times in the twentieth century of letting our utopian dreams get in the way of addressing the real dangers we face and of taking sides (in the name of the oppressed) in a way that really indirectly supports totalitarian evil. (The parallel is with Christians who sided with the Soviet Union and its proxy states [Cuba, Nicaragua] out of social-justice concerns combined with anti-Americanism.)