ATFP hosts book event featuring Aaron David Miller
(American Task Force on Palestine)
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE (April 25, 2008)
Contact: Hussein Ibish
Phone: 202-887-0177
On Friday, April 19, the American Task Force on Palestine (ATFP) hosted a discussion with veteran US peace negotiator Aaron David Miller about his new book “The Much Too Promised Land: America’s Elusive Search for Arab-Israeli Peace” (2008, Bantam Books). Miller served as an adviser to six secretaries of state and is now public policy fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
Miller told the audience at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace that peace between Israel and the Palestinians is not only a vital US national security interest but is more important now than at any time since the late 1940s. He was not optimistic about the likelihood of any agreements in the immediate future, but said that efforts to build on the resumption of talks at Annapolis last fall were essential. In both his book and his remarks, Miller urged the United States government to “make the issue a top and ongoing priority.”
Miller recounted his experiences in the quest for Middle East peace, focusing in particular on the failed Camp David summit in the summer of 2000. He said that all parties shared the blame for the failure, but that the United States, as host, had a special responsibility to ensure that it succeeded. He reiterated his long-standing criticism that the United States acted more as Israel’s advocate then as an honest broker, but also criticized errors made by then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian President Yasir Arafat. In an overview of the character of the past two US administrations, Miller told the audience that President Bill Clinton was “all tactics but no strategy” while President George W. Bush has been “all strategy but no tactics.”
Miller said that pro-Israel pressure groups were exceptionally effective and well organized, including many highly motivated Christian evangelicals, but that a determined president could overcome efforts to block US policies that moved both sides towards a successful peace agreement. He also urged the Arab-American community to stop simply complaining about US policies but to engage with the political system and “get in the game.”
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Do We "See" Lazarus?
April 21, 2008 (Marlin Vis Journal)
"They do not listen ..."
Jesus told a parable about a rich man and a poor man. The poor man’s name was Lazarus. The rich man is not named. But it is important to note that the poor man carries the same name as the man that Jesus raised from the dead – Lazarus.
Skipping the details of the story, which I hate to do because in this case the devil is in the details, both Lazarus and the rich man die. We too will one day die and so this story soon becomes our story. The rich man ends up in what sounds an awfully lot like hell, and the poor man winds up in the bosom of Abraham, himself a rich man. So we know that this story of Jesus is not primarily about rich and poor, but rather about something deeper, something that seems to be troubling Jesus, something about all people and especially something about his people, the Jewish people, those to whom Torah has been given, the people to whom Jesus has come.
The rich man wants the poor man to serve him, to give him a taste of water, life-giving water, one of humankind’s basic human rights. In this story, it is Abraham who speaks for God. It is Abraham who delivers the bad news to the rich man. No, Abraham tells him, Lazarus will not be serving you. No one will be serving you again. You had your times of being served, now it is Lazarus’ turn to be served, and I, Abraham, your father and his father, will do the serving. And then Abraham delivers the worst of all possible bad news - after death there will be no reversal of fortunes. But in this worst of all possible bad news is hidden the best of all possible good news: The time to repent is in life before death, not later, because then, in life before death, repentance is possible. In other words, you and I can change.
The rich man accepts this as his lot in life after death and now turns his attention to those whom he loves and who are still in the land of the living before dying – his five brothers. The rich man begs Father Abraham to send to his brothers poor Lazarus, whom he still does not see as his brother as well. Let Lazarus come from the dead as an eyewitness to tell them what is coming to them if they do not turn around and live differently than the way they are now living. We can only surmise that by this the rich man means that they should be more generous, more about giving than taking, more about helping than being helped. It seems that they are have seconds and thirds while some, like Lazaras, have not been through the buffet line even once.
But Abraham slams the door in his face, just as the rich man daily had done to Lazaras as Lazaras lay begging for crumbs by the rich man’s gate. “If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead” (Luke 16:31). If the living word cannot convict them of the need to be servants than even an eyewitness to the consequences of greed will not change their minds and hearts is the gist of it, I think.
It seems to me that Jesus is making sad commentary about we who live in the land of living before dying. We are so easily caught up in getting all we can for ourselves and our families, that we are unable to listen to the living word of God, or to those who would give an eyewitness account of the sufferings of so many who are so far behind that they can never catch up without our help. We believe the truths that best suit our own situation and refuse to listen to any witness, whether it be the still living word of God, or any other that might challenge those convenient truths, even when those witnesses tell us what they have seen with there own eyes.
“Marlin, why is it that almost everyone who lives in Israel/Palestine for a good length of time comes back with a very different story than the one we hear from our media sources here in the States?”
I have a different set of questions. Questions that go deeper, I think. Questions that I think help us go to the heart of the matter that was troubling Jesus when he told the parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man. Why was the Rich Man blind to the sufferings of Lazarus when Lazarus lay right before his eyes? Why are we blind? Think of how many times Jesus used this analogy to describe the people of his day, especially those who were rich and prosperous. Blind guides, he called them.
Let me get painfully specific. Why is it so few believe the eyewitness accounts of people like Sally and me? Why do so many label us as anti-this or anti-that, instead of listening for what we are for, which is peace and reconciliation in this region and around the world?
Why is it that so many do not believe us when we say that what we want more than anything else is for Jewish people to have a safe and secure place where they can recover from the abuses piled upon them over the centuries?
Why is it that we cannot want and work for the same kind of safe and secure place for Palestinians, especially Palestinian Christians who are slowly being choked out of the place they have called home for generations?
Why is it that we are so afraid of the truth about Israel and her oppression of the Palestinian people, and our complicity in what is happening here?
And why can we not see that this oppression is as bad for the Jewish people living here as it is for the Palestinian people living here?
Why are we so easily led to believe that the problems here are caused by only one group of people?
Why can we not see victims on all sides of this ongoing conflict?
Why is it that even some who come and see for themselves the suffering of the Palestinian people, whether in Gaza or the West Bank, cannot bring themselves to believe that the cause of their suffering is not entirely, or even primarily, the result of their own behavior?
And then let me leave you with two more questions, please.
Why is it that so many of us in the evangelical community refuse to see that these matters of injustice deeply bother God?
Is it because if we acknowledged this basic biblical truth, then we would have to be bothered as well, then we would be forced to ask questions of ourselves, our leaders, and our Bible that we would rather not have answered?
And Jesus said to them, “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions” (Luke 12:15).
"They do not listen ..."
Jesus told a parable about a rich man and a poor man. The poor man’s name was Lazarus. The rich man is not named. But it is important to note that the poor man carries the same name as the man that Jesus raised from the dead – Lazarus.
Skipping the details of the story, which I hate to do because in this case the devil is in the details, both Lazarus and the rich man die. We too will one day die and so this story soon becomes our story. The rich man ends up in what sounds an awfully lot like hell, and the poor man winds up in the bosom of Abraham, himself a rich man. So we know that this story of Jesus is not primarily about rich and poor, but rather about something deeper, something that seems to be troubling Jesus, something about all people and especially something about his people, the Jewish people, those to whom Torah has been given, the people to whom Jesus has come.
The rich man wants the poor man to serve him, to give him a taste of water, life-giving water, one of humankind’s basic human rights. In this story, it is Abraham who speaks for God. It is Abraham who delivers the bad news to the rich man. No, Abraham tells him, Lazarus will not be serving you. No one will be serving you again. You had your times of being served, now it is Lazarus’ turn to be served, and I, Abraham, your father and his father, will do the serving. And then Abraham delivers the worst of all possible bad news - after death there will be no reversal of fortunes. But in this worst of all possible bad news is hidden the best of all possible good news: The time to repent is in life before death, not later, because then, in life before death, repentance is possible. In other words, you and I can change.
The rich man accepts this as his lot in life after death and now turns his attention to those whom he loves and who are still in the land of the living before dying – his five brothers. The rich man begs Father Abraham to send to his brothers poor Lazarus, whom he still does not see as his brother as well. Let Lazarus come from the dead as an eyewitness to tell them what is coming to them if they do not turn around and live differently than the way they are now living. We can only surmise that by this the rich man means that they should be more generous, more about giving than taking, more about helping than being helped. It seems that they are have seconds and thirds while some, like Lazaras, have not been through the buffet line even once.
But Abraham slams the door in his face, just as the rich man daily had done to Lazaras as Lazaras lay begging for crumbs by the rich man’s gate. “If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead” (Luke 16:31). If the living word cannot convict them of the need to be servants than even an eyewitness to the consequences of greed will not change their minds and hearts is the gist of it, I think.
It seems to me that Jesus is making sad commentary about we who live in the land of living before dying. We are so easily caught up in getting all we can for ourselves and our families, that we are unable to listen to the living word of God, or to those who would give an eyewitness account of the sufferings of so many who are so far behind that they can never catch up without our help. We believe the truths that best suit our own situation and refuse to listen to any witness, whether it be the still living word of God, or any other that might challenge those convenient truths, even when those witnesses tell us what they have seen with there own eyes.
“Marlin, why is it that almost everyone who lives in Israel/Palestine for a good length of time comes back with a very different story than the one we hear from our media sources here in the States?”
I have a different set of questions. Questions that go deeper, I think. Questions that I think help us go to the heart of the matter that was troubling Jesus when he told the parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man. Why was the Rich Man blind to the sufferings of Lazarus when Lazarus lay right before his eyes? Why are we blind? Think of how many times Jesus used this analogy to describe the people of his day, especially those who were rich and prosperous. Blind guides, he called them.
Let me get painfully specific. Why is it so few believe the eyewitness accounts of people like Sally and me? Why do so many label us as anti-this or anti-that, instead of listening for what we are for, which is peace and reconciliation in this region and around the world?
Why is it that so many do not believe us when we say that what we want more than anything else is for Jewish people to have a safe and secure place where they can recover from the abuses piled upon them over the centuries?
Why is it that we cannot want and work for the same kind of safe and secure place for Palestinians, especially Palestinian Christians who are slowly being choked out of the place they have called home for generations?
Why is it that we are so afraid of the truth about Israel and her oppression of the Palestinian people, and our complicity in what is happening here?
And why can we not see that this oppression is as bad for the Jewish people living here as it is for the Palestinian people living here?
Why are we so easily led to believe that the problems here are caused by only one group of people?
Why can we not see victims on all sides of this ongoing conflict?
Why is it that even some who come and see for themselves the suffering of the Palestinian people, whether in Gaza or the West Bank, cannot bring themselves to believe that the cause of their suffering is not entirely, or even primarily, the result of their own behavior?
And then let me leave you with two more questions, please.
Why is it that so many of us in the evangelical community refuse to see that these matters of injustice deeply bother God?
Is it because if we acknowledged this basic biblical truth, then we would have to be bothered as well, then we would be forced to ask questions of ourselves, our leaders, and our Bible that we would rather not have answered?
And Jesus said to them, “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions” (Luke 12:15).
Friday, April 18, 2008
Where Are Moderate Jewish Voices?
For Israel’s Sake, Moderate American Jews Must Find Their Voice
By Jeremy Benami
In The Jewish Daily Forward, Opinion
April 15, 2008
http://www.forward.com/articles/13154/
In just a few short years, the “two-state solution” has gone from presumed conclusion to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to an increasingly distant hope. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has himself said that without such a deal, “the State of Israel is finished.”
By the dozens, Israeli dignitaries solemnly warn: The window is closing on a two-state solution, and Israel’s prospects for a second, safer 60 years grow are growing ever dimmer.
With such alarms sounding, one might expect pro-Israel Americans to be pressing for immediate, bold American action. Rarely are Israel’s allies in the United States slow to demand action when Israel faces meaningful threats to its security or survival.
Yet American politics moves in a parallel, disconnected universe when it comes to the Middle East. Here, being “pro-Israel” requires only mouthing scripted talking points about staunch support for Israel, the special American–Israeli relationship and the shared bond in the war on terrorism.
For the sake of Israel, the United States and the world, it is time for American political discourse to re-engage with reality. Voices of reason need to reclaim what it means to be pro-Israel and to establish in American political discourse that Israel’s core security interest is to achieve a negotiated two-state solution and to define once and for all permanent, internationally recognized borders.
For me, this isn’t just an abstract issue of politics or public policy. It is rooted in my family’s history and a generations-long search for safety and for a home for the Jewish people.
One hundred and twenty-five years ago, my great-grandparents arrived in Jaffa after a long and arduous journey from today’s Belarus in what became known as the “first aliyah.” They helped establish Petah Tikva, one of the first successful settlements in Palestine.
My grandparents went on to be among the founders of Tel Aviv. Family lore has it that my father was the first boy born in the city. A hard-line Revisionist, he worked closely with Zeev Jabotinsky, Menachem Begin and other heroes of the right in the struggle to create the State of Israel.
Dispatched abroad before and during World War II, he negotiated with Hitler’s henchman Adolph Eichmann over payments to smuggle Jews out of Europe and sparred with American leaders in urging greater American action to save Jews from extermination. After World War II, he was executive director of the American League for a Free Palestine, raising money and running guns to Irgun soldiers fighting the British.
I myself have lived in Jerusalem and experienced my own close brushes with terrorism on its streets. Over the past several generations, my family has suffered and survived the pogroms of the tsars, the gas chambers of the Nazis and wars with Israel’s Arab neighbors.
With this as my heritage, I say confidently that what today passes for pro-Israel politics in the United States does not serve the best interests of the people or the countries my family has lived and died for. In this, I stand squarely with a substantial portion of Israelis and American Jews.
Somehow, for American politicians or activists to express opposition to settlement expansion — or support for active American diplomacy, dialogue with Syria or engagement with Iran — has become subversive and radical, inviting vile, hateful emails and a place on public lists of Israel-haters and antisemites. For the particularly unlucky, it leads to public, personal attacks on one’s family and heritage.
Enough.
In early 21st-century America, the rules of politics are being rewritten, and conventional political orthodoxy is clearly open to once-inconceivable challenges.
It is time for the broad, sensible mainstream of pro-Israel American Jews and their allies to challenge those on the extreme right who claim to speak for all American Jews in the national debate about Israel and the Middle East — and who, through the use of fear and intimidation, have cut off reasonable debate on the topic.
A new political movement is a necessity not just for Israel but for the heart and soul of the American Jewish community. By and large, we are a progressive community, among the most liberal in the United States. Over the decades, we have been at the forefront of many civil rights, social justice and other causes. Many of us proudly regard that legacy as a defining cornerstone of the Jewish place in American history.
But in recent years we have drifted. In the name of protecting Israel, some of our community’s leaders became linked with neoconservatives who brought us the war in Iraq and now seek to extend that rousing success to Iran — even as the majority of American Jews opposed the war in Iraq and military action in Iran.
Some of our leaders have struck up fast friendships with far-right Christian Zionists who now headline “Nights to Honor Israel” at our communal institutions. Yet many of these are people with whom we disagree profoundly on values and beliefs that our community holds dear, and who hold troubling views on the long-run place of the Jewish people in their plans for salvation and redemption.
In our name, PACs and other political associations have embraced the most radically right-wing figures on the American political scene from Rick Santorum and Trent Lott to Tom DeLay and George Bush — all in the guise of being “pro-Israel.”
In Washington today, these voices are seen to speak for the entire American Jewish community. But they don’t speak for me. And I don’t believe they speak for the majority of the American Jews with whom I have lived and worked.
I support Israel. My family history ingrains in me the belief that the Jewish people need and deserve a home. I know that that nation must be strong and secure and that a deep bond between Israel and America is essential to its survival.
Yet I heed those in Israel who say we are fast approaching a point of no return beyond which it may be impossible to secure Israel’s future as the Jewish, democratic home envisioned by my father, the Irgunist, and his grandparents, the socialist Zionist pioneers. An immediate, negotiated end to the conflict is, simply, an existential necessity — and the time to reach it is running out.
I also know in my heart that this is not just a matter of survival. What will it say of us as a people if at a rare moment in our communal history when we have achieved success, acceptance and power, we fail to act according to the values and ideals passed down to us over thousands of years when we were the outcasts, the minority and the powerless?
All of these factors — realism, security and justice — demand action from moderate American Jews. We must establish boldly and forcefully that nothing is more pro-Israel than pressing for immediate, sustained and meaningful American action to end the conflict between Israel and its neighbors.
This requires a dramatic change in the dynamic of discussion about Israel in the American Jewish community and in the American body politic. It demands an end to simplistic slogans and name-calling that effectively shuts down debate and discussion in a community not known as shy and retiring in expressing its opinions.
My history demands that I say this. Our future and Israel’s future demands that we act on it.
By Jeremy Benami
In The Jewish Daily Forward, Opinion
April 15, 2008
http://www.forward.com/articles/13154/
In just a few short years, the “two-state solution” has gone from presumed conclusion to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to an increasingly distant hope. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has himself said that without such a deal, “the State of Israel is finished.”
By the dozens, Israeli dignitaries solemnly warn: The window is closing on a two-state solution, and Israel’s prospects for a second, safer 60 years grow are growing ever dimmer.
With such alarms sounding, one might expect pro-Israel Americans to be pressing for immediate, bold American action. Rarely are Israel’s allies in the United States slow to demand action when Israel faces meaningful threats to its security or survival.
Yet American politics moves in a parallel, disconnected universe when it comes to the Middle East. Here, being “pro-Israel” requires only mouthing scripted talking points about staunch support for Israel, the special American–Israeli relationship and the shared bond in the war on terrorism.
For the sake of Israel, the United States and the world, it is time for American political discourse to re-engage with reality. Voices of reason need to reclaim what it means to be pro-Israel and to establish in American political discourse that Israel’s core security interest is to achieve a negotiated two-state solution and to define once and for all permanent, internationally recognized borders.
For me, this isn’t just an abstract issue of politics or public policy. It is rooted in my family’s history and a generations-long search for safety and for a home for the Jewish people.
One hundred and twenty-five years ago, my great-grandparents arrived in Jaffa after a long and arduous journey from today’s Belarus in what became known as the “first aliyah.” They helped establish Petah Tikva, one of the first successful settlements in Palestine.
My grandparents went on to be among the founders of Tel Aviv. Family lore has it that my father was the first boy born in the city. A hard-line Revisionist, he worked closely with Zeev Jabotinsky, Menachem Begin and other heroes of the right in the struggle to create the State of Israel.
Dispatched abroad before and during World War II, he negotiated with Hitler’s henchman Adolph Eichmann over payments to smuggle Jews out of Europe and sparred with American leaders in urging greater American action to save Jews from extermination. After World War II, he was executive director of the American League for a Free Palestine, raising money and running guns to Irgun soldiers fighting the British.
I myself have lived in Jerusalem and experienced my own close brushes with terrorism on its streets. Over the past several generations, my family has suffered and survived the pogroms of the tsars, the gas chambers of the Nazis and wars with Israel’s Arab neighbors.
With this as my heritage, I say confidently that what today passes for pro-Israel politics in the United States does not serve the best interests of the people or the countries my family has lived and died for. In this, I stand squarely with a substantial portion of Israelis and American Jews.
Somehow, for American politicians or activists to express opposition to settlement expansion — or support for active American diplomacy, dialogue with Syria or engagement with Iran — has become subversive and radical, inviting vile, hateful emails and a place on public lists of Israel-haters and antisemites. For the particularly unlucky, it leads to public, personal attacks on one’s family and heritage.
Enough.
In early 21st-century America, the rules of politics are being rewritten, and conventional political orthodoxy is clearly open to once-inconceivable challenges.
It is time for the broad, sensible mainstream of pro-Israel American Jews and their allies to challenge those on the extreme right who claim to speak for all American Jews in the national debate about Israel and the Middle East — and who, through the use of fear and intimidation, have cut off reasonable debate on the topic.
A new political movement is a necessity not just for Israel but for the heart and soul of the American Jewish community. By and large, we are a progressive community, among the most liberal in the United States. Over the decades, we have been at the forefront of many civil rights, social justice and other causes. Many of us proudly regard that legacy as a defining cornerstone of the Jewish place in American history.
But in recent years we have drifted. In the name of protecting Israel, some of our community’s leaders became linked with neoconservatives who brought us the war in Iraq and now seek to extend that rousing success to Iran — even as the majority of American Jews opposed the war in Iraq and military action in Iran.
Some of our leaders have struck up fast friendships with far-right Christian Zionists who now headline “Nights to Honor Israel” at our communal institutions. Yet many of these are people with whom we disagree profoundly on values and beliefs that our community holds dear, and who hold troubling views on the long-run place of the Jewish people in their plans for salvation and redemption.
In our name, PACs and other political associations have embraced the most radically right-wing figures on the American political scene from Rick Santorum and Trent Lott to Tom DeLay and George Bush — all in the guise of being “pro-Israel.”
In Washington today, these voices are seen to speak for the entire American Jewish community. But they don’t speak for me. And I don’t believe they speak for the majority of the American Jews with whom I have lived and worked.
I support Israel. My family history ingrains in me the belief that the Jewish people need and deserve a home. I know that that nation must be strong and secure and that a deep bond between Israel and America is essential to its survival.
Yet I heed those in Israel who say we are fast approaching a point of no return beyond which it may be impossible to secure Israel’s future as the Jewish, democratic home envisioned by my father, the Irgunist, and his grandparents, the socialist Zionist pioneers. An immediate, negotiated end to the conflict is, simply, an existential necessity — and the time to reach it is running out.
I also know in my heart that this is not just a matter of survival. What will it say of us as a people if at a rare moment in our communal history when we have achieved success, acceptance and power, we fail to act according to the values and ideals passed down to us over thousands of years when we were the outcasts, the minority and the powerless?
All of these factors — realism, security and justice — demand action from moderate American Jews. We must establish boldly and forcefully that nothing is more pro-Israel than pressing for immediate, sustained and meaningful American action to end the conflict between Israel and its neighbors.
This requires a dramatic change in the dynamic of discussion about Israel in the American Jewish community and in the American body politic. It demands an end to simplistic slogans and name-calling that effectively shuts down debate and discussion in a community not known as shy and retiring in expressing its opinions.
My history demands that I say this. Our future and Israel’s future demands that we act on it.
Saturday, April 12, 2008
Can the US Afford Unqualified Support for the Zionist State?
Apri1 4, 2008
Should the U.S. End Aid to Israel?
http://www.counterpunch.org/weir04042008.html
Funding Our Decline
By ALISON WEIR
April 1st [2008] I participated in a debate in San Francisco that raised the question of US aid to Israel.
It was highly appropriate that this debate was held two weeks before tax day, since in Israel's sixty years of existence, it has received more US tax money than any other nation on earth.
During periods of recession, when Americans are thrown out of work, homes are repossessed, school budgets cut and businesses fail, Congress continues to give Israel massive amounts of our tax money; currently, about 7 million dollars per day.
On top of this, Egypt and Jordan receive large sums of money (per capita about 1/20th of what Israel receives) to buy their cooperation with Israel; and Palestinians also receive our tax money (about 1/23rd of that to Israel), to repair infrastructure that Israeli forces have destroyed, to fund humanitarian projects required due to the destruction wrought by Israel's military, and to convince Palestinian officials to take actions beneficial to Israel.
These sums should also be included in expenditures on behalf of Israel. When all are added together, it turns out that for many years over half of all US tax money abroad has been expended to benefit a country the size of New Jersey.
It is certainly time to begin debating this disbursement of our hard-earned money. It is quite possible that we have better uses for it. To decide whether the US should continue military aid to any nation, it is essential to examine the nature and history of the recipient nation, how it has used our military aid in the past, whether these uses are in accord with our values, and whether they benefit the American taxpayers who are putting up the money.
1. What is the history and nature of Israel?
Describing Israel is always difficult. One can either stay within the mainstream paradigm, or tell the truth. I will opt for the truth. Drawing on scores of books by diverse authors, the facts are quite clear: Israel was created through one of the most massive, ruthless, and persistent ethnic cleansing operations of modern history. In 1947-49 about three-quarters of a million Muslims and Christians, who had originally made up 95 percent of the population living in the area that Zionists wanted for a Jewish state, were brutally forced off their ancestral land. There were 33 massacres, over 500 villages were completely destroyed, and an effort was made to erase all vestiges of Palestinian history and culture.
The fact is that Israel's core identity is based on ethnic and religious discrimination by a colonial, immigrant group; and maintaining this exclusionist identity has required continued violence against those it has dispossessed, and others who have given them refuge.
2. How has Israel used our military aid in the past?
In all of its wars except one, Israel has attacked first. In violation of the Arms Export Control Act, which requires that US weapons only be used in "legitimate self defense," Israel used American equipment during its two invasions of Lebanon, killing 17,000 the first time and 1,000 more recently, the vast majority civilians. It used American-made cluster bombs in both invasions, again in defiance of US laws, causing the "most hideous injuries" one American physician said she had ever seen, and which, in one day in 1982 alone, resulted in the amputation of over 1,000 mangled limbs.
It has used US military aid to continue and expand its illegal confiscation of land in the West Bank and Golan Heights, and has used American F-16s and Apache Helicopters against largely unarmed civilian populations.
According to Defense for Children International, Israel has "engaged in gross violations of international human rights and humanitarian law. "Between 1967 and 2003, Israel destroyed more than 10,000 homes, and such destruction continues today. A coalition of UK human rights groups recently issued a report stating that Israel's blockade of Gaza is collective punishment of 1.5 million people, warning: "Unless the blockade ends now, it will be impossible to pull Gaza back from the brink of this disaster and any hopes for peace in the region will be dashed."
In addition, Israel uses US military aid to fund an Israeli arms industry that competes with US companies. According to a report commissioned by the US Army War College, "Israel uses roughly 40 percent of its military aid, ostensibly earmarked for purchase of US weapons, to buy Israeli-made hardware. It also has won the right to require the Defense Department or US defense contractors to buy Israeli-made equipment or subsystems, paying 50 to 60 cents on every defense dollar the US gives to Israel."
Israel has used US aid to kill and injure nonviolent Palestinian, American and international activists, as well as American servicemen. Israeli soldiers in an American-made Caterpillar bulldozer crushed to death 23-year-old Rachel Corrie; an Israeli sniper shot 21-year-old Tom Hurndall in the head; Israeli soldiers shot 26-year-old Brian Avery in the face. In 1967 Israel used US-financed French aircraft to attack a US Navy ship, killing 34 American servicemen and injuring 174.
Israel has used US aid to imprison without trial thousands of Palestinians and others, and according to reports by the London Times and Amnesty International, Israel consistently tortures prisoners; including, according to Foreign Service Journal, American citizens.
3. Are these uses in accord with our national and personal values?
Not in my view.
4. Do these uses of US aid benefit American taxpayers?
While some Israeli actions have served US interests, the balance sheet is clear: Israel's use of American aid consistently damages the United States, harms our economy, and endangers Americans.
In fact, this extremely negative outcome was so predictable that even before Israel's creation virtually all State Department and Pentagon experts advocated forcefully against supporting the creation of a Zionist state in the Middle East. President Harry Truman’s reply: "I am sorry gentlemen, but I have to answer to hundreds of thousands who are anxious for the success of Zionism. I do not have hundreds of thousands of Arabs among my constituents."
Through the years, as noted above, our aid to Israel has not resulted in a reliable ally. In 1954 Israel tried to bomb US government offices in Egypt, intending to pin this on Muslims.
In 1963 Senator William Fulbright discovered that Israel was using a series of covert operations to funnel our money to pro-Israel groups in the US, which then used these funds in media campaigns and lobbying to procure even more money from American taxpayers. In 1967 Israeli forces unleashed a two-hour air and sea attack against the USS Liberty, causing 200 casualties. While Israel partisans claim that this was done in error, this claim is belied by extensive eyewitness evidence and by an independent commission reporting on Capitol Hill in 2003 chaired by former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Thomas Moorer.
In 1973 Israel used the largest airlift of US materiel in history to defeat Arab forces attempting to regain their own land, triggering the Arab oil embargo that sent the US into a recession that cost thousands of Americans their jobs.
During its 1980s Lebanon invasion, Israeli troops engaged in a systematic pattern of harassment of US forces brought in as peacekeepers that created, according to Commandant of Marines Gen. R. H Barrow, "life-threatening situations, replete with verbal degradation of the officers, their uniform and country."
Through the years, Israel has regularly spied on the US. According to the Government Accounting Office, Israel "conducts the most aggressive espionage operations against the United States of any ally." Secretary of Defense Casper Weinberger said of Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard: "It is difficult for me to conceive of greater harm done to national security," And the Pollard case was just the tip of a very large iceberg; the most recent operation coming to light involves two senior officials of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Israel's powerful American lobbying organization.
Bad as the above may appear, it pales next to the indirect damage to Americans caused by our aid to Israel. American funding of Israel's egregious violations of Palestinian human rights is consistently listed as the number one cause of hostility to Americans. While American media regularly cover up Israeli actions, those of us who have visited the region first-hand witness a level of US-funded Israeli cruelty that makes us weep for our victims and fear for our country. While most Americans are uninformed on how Israel uses our money, people throughout the world are deeply aware that it is Americans who are funding Israeli crimes.
The 9/11 Commission notes that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's "animus towards the United States stemmed from his violent disagreement with U.S. foreign policy favoring Israel." The Economist reports that " the notion of payback for injustices suffered by the Palestinians is perhaps the most powerfully recurrent theme in bin Laden's speeches."
The Bottom Line
In sum, US aid to Israel has destabilized the Middle East; propped up a national system based on ethnic and religious discrimination; enabled unchecked aggression that has, on occasion, been turned against Americans themselves; funded arms industries that compete with American companies; supported a pattern of brutal dispossession that has created hatred of the US; and resulted in continuing conflict that last year took the lives of 384 Palestinians and 13 Israelis, and that in the past seven and a half years has cost the lives of more than 982 Palestinian children and 119 Israeli children.
By providing massive funding to Israel, no matter what it does, American aid is empowering Israeli supremacists who believe in a never-ending campaign of ethnic cleansing; while disempowering Israelis who recognize that policies of morality, justice, and rationality are the only road to peace. It is time to end our aid.
Alison Weir is Executive Director of If Americans Knew. For more information on the US-Israel relationship she especially recommends the books by Donald Neff, Paul Findley, Kathleen Christenson, Stephen Walt, John Mearsheimer, Grant Smith, Stephen Green, George Ball, and John Mulhall.
Should the U.S. End Aid to Israel?
http://www.counterpunch.org/weir04042008.html
Funding Our Decline
By ALISON WEIR
April 1st [2008] I participated in a debate in San Francisco that raised the question of US aid to Israel.
It was highly appropriate that this debate was held two weeks before tax day, since in Israel's sixty years of existence, it has received more US tax money than any other nation on earth.
During periods of recession, when Americans are thrown out of work, homes are repossessed, school budgets cut and businesses fail, Congress continues to give Israel massive amounts of our tax money; currently, about 7 million dollars per day.
On top of this, Egypt and Jordan receive large sums of money (per capita about 1/20th of what Israel receives) to buy their cooperation with Israel; and Palestinians also receive our tax money (about 1/23rd of that to Israel), to repair infrastructure that Israeli forces have destroyed, to fund humanitarian projects required due to the destruction wrought by Israel's military, and to convince Palestinian officials to take actions beneficial to Israel.
These sums should also be included in expenditures on behalf of Israel. When all are added together, it turns out that for many years over half of all US tax money abroad has been expended to benefit a country the size of New Jersey.
It is certainly time to begin debating this disbursement of our hard-earned money. It is quite possible that we have better uses for it. To decide whether the US should continue military aid to any nation, it is essential to examine the nature and history of the recipient nation, how it has used our military aid in the past, whether these uses are in accord with our values, and whether they benefit the American taxpayers who are putting up the money.
1. What is the history and nature of Israel?
Describing Israel is always difficult. One can either stay within the mainstream paradigm, or tell the truth. I will opt for the truth. Drawing on scores of books by diverse authors, the facts are quite clear: Israel was created through one of the most massive, ruthless, and persistent ethnic cleansing operations of modern history. In 1947-49 about three-quarters of a million Muslims and Christians, who had originally made up 95 percent of the population living in the area that Zionists wanted for a Jewish state, were brutally forced off their ancestral land. There were 33 massacres, over 500 villages were completely destroyed, and an effort was made to erase all vestiges of Palestinian history and culture.
The fact is that Israel's core identity is based on ethnic and religious discrimination by a colonial, immigrant group; and maintaining this exclusionist identity has required continued violence against those it has dispossessed, and others who have given them refuge.
2. How has Israel used our military aid in the past?
In all of its wars except one, Israel has attacked first. In violation of the Arms Export Control Act, which requires that US weapons only be used in "legitimate self defense," Israel used American equipment during its two invasions of Lebanon, killing 17,000 the first time and 1,000 more recently, the vast majority civilians. It used American-made cluster bombs in both invasions, again in defiance of US laws, causing the "most hideous injuries" one American physician said she had ever seen, and which, in one day in 1982 alone, resulted in the amputation of over 1,000 mangled limbs.
It has used US military aid to continue and expand its illegal confiscation of land in the West Bank and Golan Heights, and has used American F-16s and Apache Helicopters against largely unarmed civilian populations.
According to Defense for Children International, Israel has "engaged in gross violations of international human rights and humanitarian law. "Between 1967 and 2003, Israel destroyed more than 10,000 homes, and such destruction continues today. A coalition of UK human rights groups recently issued a report stating that Israel's blockade of Gaza is collective punishment of 1.5 million people, warning: "Unless the blockade ends now, it will be impossible to pull Gaza back from the brink of this disaster and any hopes for peace in the region will be dashed."
In addition, Israel uses US military aid to fund an Israeli arms industry that competes with US companies. According to a report commissioned by the US Army War College, "Israel uses roughly 40 percent of its military aid, ostensibly earmarked for purchase of US weapons, to buy Israeli-made hardware. It also has won the right to require the Defense Department or US defense contractors to buy Israeli-made equipment or subsystems, paying 50 to 60 cents on every defense dollar the US gives to Israel."
Israel has used US aid to kill and injure nonviolent Palestinian, American and international activists, as well as American servicemen. Israeli soldiers in an American-made Caterpillar bulldozer crushed to death 23-year-old Rachel Corrie; an Israeli sniper shot 21-year-old Tom Hurndall in the head; Israeli soldiers shot 26-year-old Brian Avery in the face. In 1967 Israel used US-financed French aircraft to attack a US Navy ship, killing 34 American servicemen and injuring 174.
Israel has used US aid to imprison without trial thousands of Palestinians and others, and according to reports by the London Times and Amnesty International, Israel consistently tortures prisoners; including, according to Foreign Service Journal, American citizens.
3. Are these uses in accord with our national and personal values?
Not in my view.
4. Do these uses of US aid benefit American taxpayers?
While some Israeli actions have served US interests, the balance sheet is clear: Israel's use of American aid consistently damages the United States, harms our economy, and endangers Americans.
In fact, this extremely negative outcome was so predictable that even before Israel's creation virtually all State Department and Pentagon experts advocated forcefully against supporting the creation of a Zionist state in the Middle East. President Harry Truman’s reply: "I am sorry gentlemen, but I have to answer to hundreds of thousands who are anxious for the success of Zionism. I do not have hundreds of thousands of Arabs among my constituents."
Through the years, as noted above, our aid to Israel has not resulted in a reliable ally. In 1954 Israel tried to bomb US government offices in Egypt, intending to pin this on Muslims.
In 1963 Senator William Fulbright discovered that Israel was using a series of covert operations to funnel our money to pro-Israel groups in the US, which then used these funds in media campaigns and lobbying to procure even more money from American taxpayers. In 1967 Israeli forces unleashed a two-hour air and sea attack against the USS Liberty, causing 200 casualties. While Israel partisans claim that this was done in error, this claim is belied by extensive eyewitness evidence and by an independent commission reporting on Capitol Hill in 2003 chaired by former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Thomas Moorer.
In 1973 Israel used the largest airlift of US materiel in history to defeat Arab forces attempting to regain their own land, triggering the Arab oil embargo that sent the US into a recession that cost thousands of Americans their jobs.
During its 1980s Lebanon invasion, Israeli troops engaged in a systematic pattern of harassment of US forces brought in as peacekeepers that created, according to Commandant of Marines Gen. R. H Barrow, "life-threatening situations, replete with verbal degradation of the officers, their uniform and country."
Through the years, Israel has regularly spied on the US. According to the Government Accounting Office, Israel "conducts the most aggressive espionage operations against the United States of any ally." Secretary of Defense Casper Weinberger said of Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard: "It is difficult for me to conceive of greater harm done to national security," And the Pollard case was just the tip of a very large iceberg; the most recent operation coming to light involves two senior officials of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Israel's powerful American lobbying organization.
Bad as the above may appear, it pales next to the indirect damage to Americans caused by our aid to Israel. American funding of Israel's egregious violations of Palestinian human rights is consistently listed as the number one cause of hostility to Americans. While American media regularly cover up Israeli actions, those of us who have visited the region first-hand witness a level of US-funded Israeli cruelty that makes us weep for our victims and fear for our country. While most Americans are uninformed on how Israel uses our money, people throughout the world are deeply aware that it is Americans who are funding Israeli crimes.
The 9/11 Commission notes that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's "animus towards the United States stemmed from his violent disagreement with U.S. foreign policy favoring Israel." The Economist reports that " the notion of payback for injustices suffered by the Palestinians is perhaps the most powerfully recurrent theme in bin Laden's speeches."
The Bottom Line
In sum, US aid to Israel has destabilized the Middle East; propped up a national system based on ethnic and religious discrimination; enabled unchecked aggression that has, on occasion, been turned against Americans themselves; funded arms industries that compete with American companies; supported a pattern of brutal dispossession that has created hatred of the US; and resulted in continuing conflict that last year took the lives of 384 Palestinians and 13 Israelis, and that in the past seven and a half years has cost the lives of more than 982 Palestinian children and 119 Israeli children.
By providing massive funding to Israel, no matter what it does, American aid is empowering Israeli supremacists who believe in a never-ending campaign of ethnic cleansing; while disempowering Israelis who recognize that policies of morality, justice, and rationality are the only road to peace. It is time to end our aid.
Alison Weir is Executive Director of If Americans Knew. For more information on the US-Israel relationship she especially recommends the books by Donald Neff, Paul Findley, Kathleen Christenson, Stephen Walt, John Mearsheimer, Grant Smith, Stephen Green, George Ball, and John Mulhall.
Thursday, April 10, 2008
The Settlements as Obstacles
The Settlements Are The Biggest Impediment To Security
By Yossi Alpher
In Bitterlemons,
Opinion
April 4, 2008
http://www.bitterlemons.org/issue/isr1.php
At the very heart of the roadmap phase I issues that dominated US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's visit a week ago are security and settlements. The West Bank-based Palestinian leadership that Israel is negotiating with has little to brag about in terms of improving security. But at least it is sincerely trying. The Olmert government is not trying as hard, particularly with regard to settlements. And settlements are the biggest impediment to security.
On the occasion of Rice's visit, Defense Minister Ehud Barak yielded to American pressure and offered a series of modest security concessions. These included the deployment of 25 Palestinian security force APCs in the West Bank and of some 700 Palestinian policemen in Jenin, the removal of a checkpoint near Rimonim east of Ramallah and the opening of 50 earth roadblocks preventing transportation between villages and main roads. These represent the minimum that Barak apparently believes the IDF [Israeli Defense Force] can implement without risking security damage.
Looked at in terms of the security status quo, Barak's and the IDF's hesitations are understandable. Take Nablus (biblical Shechem), a city of close to 200,000 that is controlled largely by Hamas and is considered the West Bank's biggest terrorism base, with bomb factories rooted deep in the subterranean warrens of the old Roman city and the city's four refugee camps. Because it is set amid high and imposing hills, a few checkpoints enable the IDF to control vehicular and nearly all pedestrian traffic into and out of the city. Vehicles using mountain paths to try to bypass the checkpoints are fairly easily spotted by lookouts and patrols. So high is the terrorist alert around Nablus that even every pedestrian leaving town is checked for ID and by a metal detector--whereas pedestrians leaving Qalqilya, another Hamas-controlled city that borders on the green line, are not checked.
The IDF officers in charge of the checkpoints around Nablus and other Palestinian towns in the West Bank are fully aware of the huge international controversy that surrounds the checkpoints and roadblocks they maintain. They are also proud of their excellent record in intercepting terrorists headed for Israel proper and are loath to jeopardize it by reducing the network of security barriers that they believe, when coupled with highly sophisticated intelligence, does the job. They realistically recognize that the checkpoint system is so demoralizing to the population that it creates new terrorists. But they believe it helps eliminate an even larger number. And they and the Israeli public recognize that a series of suicide bombings inside Israel, which almost certainly would trace their origins to Nablus, would totally unravel the modest accomplishments of the peace process thus far.
What, then, can be done to reduce the disastrous effect of checkpoints on Palestinian lives, freedom of movement and commerce? The introduction of technological improvements like biometric identity checks is beginning to speed checkpoint passage and ease the humanitarian burden imposed by Israel's restrictions. The deployment of Palestinian police in Nablus and, soon, Jenin, can improve the security atmosphere, though the IDF is convinced they will fight crime but not terrorism. And the IDF should consider replacing particularly intrusive checkpoints like Hawara south of Nablus, which blocks the all-important route 60 to Ramallah, with teams erecting mobile checkpoints at will, as a number of security experts have recently proposed.
But the biggest impediment to removing or streamlining the checkpoints and roadblocks has nothing to do with the IDF. The settlements are far and away the primary factor keeping all those checkpoints and roadblocks in existence and hindering the Palestinian and international effort to develop a viable West Bank economy and polity. According to senior IDF officers, some 50 percent of all terrorism in the West Bank is directed against the settler presence beyond the security barrier. Further, the weakest element in the entire West Bank security network is settler commuter traffic passing through security barrier passages to and from jobs inside Israel proper. There is no way the IDF can seriously check the thousands of Israeli-licensed cars making this trip daily; any driver of such a car, whether Israeli Arab or Jew, can transport illegal workers into Israel almost at will. Among these workers there is eventually and inevitably a terrorist or two.
In other words, removal of the settlements beyond the security fence and completion of that fence (which has been delayed precisely because of settlements) would make the IDF's security task dramatically easier and render many of the checkpoints and roadblocks superfluous. Until that happens, Barak and the IDF establishment will fight tooth and nail to maintain the present West Bank security network in place.
It all boils down to the settlements. Here, rather than fulfilling its international obligations to cease settlement construction and dismantle outposts or unauthorized settlements, the Olmert government is caught in the familiar pattern of maintaining the very coalition stability that is ostensibly required in order to move ahead with the peace process by fueling the settlement dynamic that obstructs and sabotages a two-state solution.
There can be no better demonstration of the futility of the current peace process than the Olmert government's failure to begin seriously rolling back the settlement movement. Given Olmert's clear understanding that the settlers' excesses constitute a genuine danger to Israel's future as a Jewish and democratic state, this is in many ways even more troubling than Palestinian leadership and security failings and the absence of a genuine American commitment to this process.
By Yossi Alpher
In Bitterlemons,
Opinion
April 4, 2008
http://www.bitterlemons.org/issue/isr1.php
At the very heart of the roadmap phase I issues that dominated US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's visit a week ago are security and settlements. The West Bank-based Palestinian leadership that Israel is negotiating with has little to brag about in terms of improving security. But at least it is sincerely trying. The Olmert government is not trying as hard, particularly with regard to settlements. And settlements are the biggest impediment to security.
On the occasion of Rice's visit, Defense Minister Ehud Barak yielded to American pressure and offered a series of modest security concessions. These included the deployment of 25 Palestinian security force APCs in the West Bank and of some 700 Palestinian policemen in Jenin, the removal of a checkpoint near Rimonim east of Ramallah and the opening of 50 earth roadblocks preventing transportation between villages and main roads. These represent the minimum that Barak apparently believes the IDF [Israeli Defense Force] can implement without risking security damage.
Looked at in terms of the security status quo, Barak's and the IDF's hesitations are understandable. Take Nablus (biblical Shechem), a city of close to 200,000 that is controlled largely by Hamas and is considered the West Bank's biggest terrorism base, with bomb factories rooted deep in the subterranean warrens of the old Roman city and the city's four refugee camps. Because it is set amid high and imposing hills, a few checkpoints enable the IDF to control vehicular and nearly all pedestrian traffic into and out of the city. Vehicles using mountain paths to try to bypass the checkpoints are fairly easily spotted by lookouts and patrols. So high is the terrorist alert around Nablus that even every pedestrian leaving town is checked for ID and by a metal detector--whereas pedestrians leaving Qalqilya, another Hamas-controlled city that borders on the green line, are not checked.
The IDF officers in charge of the checkpoints around Nablus and other Palestinian towns in the West Bank are fully aware of the huge international controversy that surrounds the checkpoints and roadblocks they maintain. They are also proud of their excellent record in intercepting terrorists headed for Israel proper and are loath to jeopardize it by reducing the network of security barriers that they believe, when coupled with highly sophisticated intelligence, does the job. They realistically recognize that the checkpoint system is so demoralizing to the population that it creates new terrorists. But they believe it helps eliminate an even larger number. And they and the Israeli public recognize that a series of suicide bombings inside Israel, which almost certainly would trace their origins to Nablus, would totally unravel the modest accomplishments of the peace process thus far.
What, then, can be done to reduce the disastrous effect of checkpoints on Palestinian lives, freedom of movement and commerce? The introduction of technological improvements like biometric identity checks is beginning to speed checkpoint passage and ease the humanitarian burden imposed by Israel's restrictions. The deployment of Palestinian police in Nablus and, soon, Jenin, can improve the security atmosphere, though the IDF is convinced they will fight crime but not terrorism. And the IDF should consider replacing particularly intrusive checkpoints like Hawara south of Nablus, which blocks the all-important route 60 to Ramallah, with teams erecting mobile checkpoints at will, as a number of security experts have recently proposed.
But the biggest impediment to removing or streamlining the checkpoints and roadblocks has nothing to do with the IDF. The settlements are far and away the primary factor keeping all those checkpoints and roadblocks in existence and hindering the Palestinian and international effort to develop a viable West Bank economy and polity. According to senior IDF officers, some 50 percent of all terrorism in the West Bank is directed against the settler presence beyond the security barrier. Further, the weakest element in the entire West Bank security network is settler commuter traffic passing through security barrier passages to and from jobs inside Israel proper. There is no way the IDF can seriously check the thousands of Israeli-licensed cars making this trip daily; any driver of such a car, whether Israeli Arab or Jew, can transport illegal workers into Israel almost at will. Among these workers there is eventually and inevitably a terrorist or two.
In other words, removal of the settlements beyond the security fence and completion of that fence (which has been delayed precisely because of settlements) would make the IDF's security task dramatically easier and render many of the checkpoints and roadblocks superfluous. Until that happens, Barak and the IDF establishment will fight tooth and nail to maintain the present West Bank security network in place.
It all boils down to the settlements. Here, rather than fulfilling its international obligations to cease settlement construction and dismantle outposts or unauthorized settlements, the Olmert government is caught in the familiar pattern of maintaining the very coalition stability that is ostensibly required in order to move ahead with the peace process by fueling the settlement dynamic that obstructs and sabotages a two-state solution.
There can be no better demonstration of the futility of the current peace process than the Olmert government's failure to begin seriously rolling back the settlement movement. Given Olmert's clear understanding that the settlers' excesses constitute a genuine danger to Israel's future as a Jewish and democratic state, this is in many ways even more troubling than Palestinian leadership and security failings and the absence of a genuine American commitment to this process.
Sunday, April 6, 2008
Letter by Religious to Sec. Rice
National Interreligious Leadership Initiative for Peace in the Middle East
E-Mail: usicpme@aol.com
Web site: www.nili-mideastpeace.org
March 20, 2008
The Honorable Dr. Condoleezza Rice Secretary of State
U.S. Department of State 2201 C Street, N.W. Washington, DC 20520
Dear Dr. Rice, We write to commend your active support for current diplomatic efforts led by Egypt to turn what was for several days an informal, temporary and fragile cessation of hostilities between Palestinian forces in Gaza and the Israeli Defense Force into a formal, permanent and comprehensive ceasefire covering Israel, Gaza and the West Bank.
Violence over the last several months, including continuous Palestinian rocket attacks from Gaza against civilian areas in southern Israel, Israeli military attacks and closures in Gaza and the West Bank, and the attack on Yeshiva students in Jerusalem, have killed and wounded many persons, added to the suffering and fears of both peoples, and seriously jeopardized chances for the Administration’s initiative to help Israelis and Palestinians achieve a negotiated peace agreement by the end of this year.
We believe an effective, comprehensive ceasefire is an essential first step among several that both sides must take to renew people’s hopes that peace is possible. Achieving this will help restore positive momentum in peace negotiations between Prime Minister Olmert and President Abbas. The split in governance between Gaza and the West Bank is incompatible with a durable peace agreement.
A comprehensive ceasefire would also provide a context in which the United States could support efforts, possibly led by Egypt and Saudi Arabia, to help form a new unified Palestinian government capable of representing the West Bank and Gaza, and committed to rejecting violence and negotiating a two-state solution with Israel.
We pledge our support for active, fair and firm U.S. leadership for Arab-Israeli-Palestinian peace. As may be appropriate and timely, we would welcome an opportunity to meet with you and the President to express visibly our support for a two-state solution to the conflict. Respectfully, (List of Religious Leaders endorsing the letter follows.)
Religious Leaders Endorsing March 20, 2008 Letter to Secretary of State Rice
Christian Religious Leaders:
His Eminence, Theodore Cardinal McCarrick, Archbishop Emeritus, Archdiocese of Washington*
His Eminence Francis Cardinal George, OMI, Archbishop of Chicago
and President, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops*
Archbishop Vicken Aykasian, Diocesen Legate and Exec. Dir., Ecumenical Office,
Armenian Orthodox Church and President, National Council of Churches of Christ USA*
Bishop Mark Hanson, Presiding Bishop, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America*
Most Rev. Dr. Katharine Jefferts Schori, Presiding Bishop, Episcopal Church*
Bishop Ann B. Sherer, United Methodist Church*
The Reverend Clifton Kirkpatrick, Stated Clerk of the General Assembly, Presbyterian Church (USA)*
John H. Thomas, General Minister & President, United Church of Christ*
The Rev. Dr. Sharon Watkins, General Minister & President, Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ)*
The Rev. Michael E. Livingston, Executive Director, International Council of Community Churches*
The Rev. Leighton Ford, President, Leighton Ford Ministries*
David Neff, Editor and Vice-President, Christianity Today*
Jewish Religious Leaders:
Rabbi Peter Knobel, President, Central Conference of American Rabbis*
Rabbi Paul Menitoff, Executive Vice President Emeritus, Central Conference of America Rabbis*
Rabbi David Saperstein, Director, Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism*
Rabbi Elliot Dorff, Rector, American Jewish University (formerly University of Judaism)*
Dr. Carl Sheingold, Executive Vice President, Jewish Reconstructionist Federation*
Rabbi Toba Spitzer, President, Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association*
Rabbi Brant Rosen, Immediate Past President, Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association*
Rabbi Amy Small, Past President, Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association*
Rabbi Alvin M. Sugarman, Vice President, A Different Future*
Muslim Religious Leaders:
Dr. Sayyid Muhammad Syeed, National Director, Islamic Society of North America*
Imam Mohammed ibn Hagmagid, Vice President, Islamic Society of North America*
Naim Baig, Secretary General, Islamic Circle of North America*
Dawud Assad, President, Council of Mosques, USA*
Eide Alawan, Director, Office of Interfaith Outreach, Islamic Center of America*
Imam Yahya Hendi, Chaplain, Georgetown University*
Iftekhar A. Hai, Founding Director, United Muslims of America*
E-Mail: usicpme@aol.com
Web site: www.nili-mideastpeace.org
March 20, 2008
The Honorable Dr. Condoleezza Rice Secretary of State
U.S. Department of State 2201 C Street, N.W. Washington, DC 20520
Dear Dr. Rice, We write to commend your active support for current diplomatic efforts led by Egypt to turn what was for several days an informal, temporary and fragile cessation of hostilities between Palestinian forces in Gaza and the Israeli Defense Force into a formal, permanent and comprehensive ceasefire covering Israel, Gaza and the West Bank.
Violence over the last several months, including continuous Palestinian rocket attacks from Gaza against civilian areas in southern Israel, Israeli military attacks and closures in Gaza and the West Bank, and the attack on Yeshiva students in Jerusalem, have killed and wounded many persons, added to the suffering and fears of both peoples, and seriously jeopardized chances for the Administration’s initiative to help Israelis and Palestinians achieve a negotiated peace agreement by the end of this year.
We believe an effective, comprehensive ceasefire is an essential first step among several that both sides must take to renew people’s hopes that peace is possible. Achieving this will help restore positive momentum in peace negotiations between Prime Minister Olmert and President Abbas. The split in governance between Gaza and the West Bank is incompatible with a durable peace agreement.
A comprehensive ceasefire would also provide a context in which the United States could support efforts, possibly led by Egypt and Saudi Arabia, to help form a new unified Palestinian government capable of representing the West Bank and Gaza, and committed to rejecting violence and negotiating a two-state solution with Israel.
We pledge our support for active, fair and firm U.S. leadership for Arab-Israeli-Palestinian peace. As may be appropriate and timely, we would welcome an opportunity to meet with you and the President to express visibly our support for a two-state solution to the conflict. Respectfully, (List of Religious Leaders endorsing the letter follows.)
Religious Leaders Endorsing March 20, 2008 Letter to Secretary of State Rice
Christian Religious Leaders:
His Eminence, Theodore Cardinal McCarrick, Archbishop Emeritus, Archdiocese of Washington*
His Eminence Francis Cardinal George, OMI, Archbishop of Chicago
and President, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops*
Archbishop Vicken Aykasian, Diocesen Legate and Exec. Dir., Ecumenical Office,
Armenian Orthodox Church and President, National Council of Churches of Christ USA*
Bishop Mark Hanson, Presiding Bishop, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America*
Most Rev. Dr. Katharine Jefferts Schori, Presiding Bishop, Episcopal Church*
Bishop Ann B. Sherer, United Methodist Church*
The Reverend Clifton Kirkpatrick, Stated Clerk of the General Assembly, Presbyterian Church (USA)*
John H. Thomas, General Minister & President, United Church of Christ*
The Rev. Dr. Sharon Watkins, General Minister & President, Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ)*
The Rev. Michael E. Livingston, Executive Director, International Council of Community Churches*
The Rev. Leighton Ford, President, Leighton Ford Ministries*
David Neff, Editor and Vice-President, Christianity Today*
Jewish Religious Leaders:
Rabbi Peter Knobel, President, Central Conference of American Rabbis*
Rabbi Paul Menitoff, Executive Vice President Emeritus, Central Conference of America Rabbis*
Rabbi David Saperstein, Director, Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism*
Rabbi Elliot Dorff, Rector, American Jewish University (formerly University of Judaism)*
Dr. Carl Sheingold, Executive Vice President, Jewish Reconstructionist Federation*
Rabbi Toba Spitzer, President, Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association*
Rabbi Brant Rosen, Immediate Past President, Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association*
Rabbi Amy Small, Past President, Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association*
Rabbi Alvin M. Sugarman, Vice President, A Different Future*
Muslim Religious Leaders:
Dr. Sayyid Muhammad Syeed, National Director, Islamic Society of North America*
Imam Mohammed ibn Hagmagid, Vice President, Islamic Society of North America*
Naim Baig, Secretary General, Islamic Circle of North America*
Dawud Assad, President, Council of Mosques, USA*
Eide Alawan, Director, Office of Interfaith Outreach, Islamic Center of America*
Imam Yahya Hendi, Chaplain, Georgetown University*
Iftekhar A. Hai, Founding Director, United Muslims of America*
Saturday, April 5, 2008
Christian Approaches to the State of Israel
Christian Approaches to the State of Israel
Marvin R. Wilson
In, Our Father Abraham: Jewish Roots of the Christian Faith,
Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, 1989
A Summary by John R. Kleinheksel Sr.
Dr. Wilson suggests the two main approaches and then offers his “third way”.
1) Replacement Theory
This is the view that the Church of Jesus has “replaced” Israel. The Church’s “New” Covenant has superseded the “Old” Covenant of Judaism. Thus the Jewish people and state have no theological legitimacy.
In its extreme form, the best that world Jewry can now hope for is to be part of the new people of God, the Church—but without nationality, land, or statehood (p. 264).
2) Restoration Theory
This view affirms Jewish restoration to the land as the fulfillment of biblical prophecy that the land is hers by divine right. This view is held by “premillennialists” (who take the 1000 years mentioned in Rev. 20, literally), who tend to give modern Israel unquestioning support (plus speculation on detailed prophecies soon to be fulfilled).
Before giving his “third way”, Marvin Wilson critiques these views.
As to “replacement theory”: The New Testament seems to affirm a future for ethnic Israel: the nature of that future, however, deserves further comment. In Romans 9-11, Paul climaxes his theological discourse by addressing the theme of Jew and Gentile in the future plan of God. The main thrust of Paul’s argument is that the destiny of Jew and Gentile is so intimately connected that the later does not find God except through the former (as in the metaphor of the olive tree). In Romans 11, Paul is emphatic that despite Israel’s unbelief, God has not rejected his people (v. 1). Israel still belongs to God and is called a “holy” people (v. 16) and “loved on account of the patriarchs” (v. 28). Israel’s historically unique preservation lends added support that it still has a vital role to play in the history of redemption (cf. v. 15). This divinely willed coexistence of God’s ancient covenant people and the Church in the present age is, to Paul, a great “mystery” (vs. 25). He is convinced, that God “does not change his mind about whom he chooses and blesses (v. 29, TEV) [ibid, p. 267].
With regard to “restoration” Christians, Dr. Wilson writes: In truth, no one has the privilege to lay claim to any land simply on the grounds of “divine right.” The corridors of time are strewn with the wreckages of individuals and societies who have been tragic victims of those who had a “biblical mandate” or some “divine voice” giving approval to their inhumane acts. . .[Inquisition, Crusades, killing of witches in Salem]. . . Therefore, we argue that no solution to the problem of the land may be imposed on any people on the grounds that “it is willed by God.” This also means that military conquest may not be used to prove a nation’s right to a given land (ibid, p. 266).
Then Dr. Wilson quotes with approval historian Dwight Wilson’s cautionary word to fellow premillennialists: “. . . .[I]f every action is pre-ordained, then there is no need to measure one’s actions by moral law, since the decision to obey or disobey the standard has already been made. Is Israel is the elect, and Jewish history is predetermined by God and foretold by prophecy, then ordinary rules of international law do not apply to God’s chosen people; and there is no absolute standard by which they can be judged. This is not implicit in the premillenarian view of prophecy, but it is what has worked out in practice in the response to Israel” (Dwight Wilson, Armageddon Now! p. 143), [quoted by Marvin Wilson, ibid, p. 266].
Marvin Wilson continues his critique: Upon close examination of Scripture, many of the details about Israel’s future must remain obscure and uncertain for several reasons.
1) The hermeneutic [ways of interpreting scripture] employed by the New Testament writers indicates that many OT prophecies were fulfilled in ways totally unexpected by both the OT authors themselves and the Jewish people of Jesus’ day.
2) The language of prophecy has a certain indefiniteness about it. Prophecy is written in poetry rather than prose and so partakes of a certain measure of ambiguity with it numerous figures of speech.
3) Some Christians frequently use unsound biblical exegesis to arrive at the supposed prophetic details about Israel’s future. These questionable interpretations often derive from an eisegetical approach (reading into the t4xt) characterized either by sensationalism or sheer speculation. This approach often results in a unwarrantable attitude of arrogant anticipation and dogmatic certainty.
4) Christians have seldom taken time to allow Jews the right to interpret their own Scriptures. Often the Church has been too anxious to tell Jewish people how to interpret their own Bible, which it received from them (ibid, p.267).
Additional cautionary comments by Marvin Wilson before he articulates his “third way”: Markus Barth seems correct in cautioning Christians not to consider the return of Jews to the land as a realization of eschatological promises in Scripture. . . .Nevertheless we would insist, in the very least, that the State of Israel is a remarkable sign of God’s continuing love, preservation, and purpose for his people (p. 268).
[On the other hand], Jews have an ongoing role in the furthering of God’s ultimate redemptive purposes. But no matter what standard or position one adopts, Christians must not be blind to Joseph Klausner’s objection that Christianity has sought to remove the national and political aspects of the prophetic hope (The Messianic Idea in Israel, p. 10). God works through the sacred and the secular. . . .[I]f God can call a pagan Persian named Cyrus ‘his anointed’ (Isa. 45:1), and another pagan king, Nebuchadnezzar, ‘my servant’ (Jer. 25:9), and accomplish his holy purposes among the nations through both, who can say what plans God may yet have in store for those who from of old have been his people? (ibid, p. 268).
"Real estate theology" is, at best, precarious theology. . . .For centuries Jews suffered discrimination and victimization at the hands of Christians whose theological convictions seemed to permit [encourage] such unjust activity. . . .Therefore, we conclude, as long as Arabs and Jews argue from nonnegotiable theological absolutes, human beings can offer little hope for peace (ibid, p. 268, 269).
3) The “Respect for Justice” Theory
This third option, which I support, lies between the other two. It recognizes that this complex issue must be resolved neither by abandoning all theological concern of whatever stripe, nor simplistically on the grounds of divine right. Rather, in this view, one’s understanding of the right of the Jewish people to a secure homeland is based primarily on the issues of justice, morality, and history.
We begin by recognizing that both Arabs and Jews seek the right to self-determination, national identity, and legitimate human rights. [Palestinian] Arabs desire a homeland, and Jews desire a secure state with recognized borders.
None of these goals will be fully realized until each group accepts the reality of the other with a spirit of mutual respect, humility and trust.
Though the Bible, as we have sought to demonstrate, bears witness to God’s unceasing relation to his covenant people and their historic homeland, we must primarily pursue the prophetic concern for justice, righteousness compassion, and peace. If Christians support the right of Israel to exist as a nation--and they should—they should do so on the basis that it is moral, just, and humane rather than simply on the grounds that ‘it fulfills prophecy.’
The creation of the State of Israel has allowed the Jew, once the ‘outsider of history,’ to re-enter history. Christian encouragement and support of Israel today for juridical and moral reasons can be interpreted only as a giant step forward in seeking to right an ugly historical wrong. Built by the hand of survivors of a holocaust that claimed six million lives, Israel always has the issue of Jewish survival as a central concern.
Modern Israel is not a theocracy. As a secular state, Israel was not, even during the time of the prophets, and is not now, the kingdom of God. Therefore, today’s Christian should not blindly condone all Israeli acts. [We should hold all nations to the same standard of morality.] Israel’s own prophets call the people to practice justice and compassion to those they consider ‘strangers’ in the land. This term often means the displaced, homeless, and powerless. Justice, however, is a two-way street. Only when bitterness, hostility, and hatred give way to a spirit of compromise, friendship, and recognition will all residents of the land know peace.
While not dismissing specific biblical texts that point to both an historical and future relation of the people of Israel to the land, this third approach responds to Zionism from a different, yet not contradictory, point of view. We have argued that this perspective focuses on history and on the burning biblical issues of justice, compassion, and moral sensitivity. All too often the church has been so intent on looking toward the future that it has failed both to deal with the present and to learn from the past.
Our task is to ‘follow justice and justice alone’ (Deut. 16:20), and then let God worry about whether this path, in any specific way, fulfills his future prophetic plan for Israel. Either way, it accomplishes that passion for justice which the prophets demanded (Amos 5:24; Mic. 6:8) [ibid, pp, 269, 270].
JRK critique: Admirable “third way”, BUT, it does not take into account the “injustice” of the Western powers imposing Jewish persons (and their state) on the native people, including treating them as the Nazis treated the Jews, confiscating their land, (“for security purposes” as the rationale), using the hostility this engenders as an excuse to intensify draconian reprisals and fence-building, thus making resolution impossible).
Marvin R. Wilson
In, Our Father Abraham: Jewish Roots of the Christian Faith,
Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, 1989
A Summary by John R. Kleinheksel Sr.
Dr. Wilson suggests the two main approaches and then offers his “third way”.
1) Replacement Theory
This is the view that the Church of Jesus has “replaced” Israel. The Church’s “New” Covenant has superseded the “Old” Covenant of Judaism. Thus the Jewish people and state have no theological legitimacy.
In its extreme form, the best that world Jewry can now hope for is to be part of the new people of God, the Church—but without nationality, land, or statehood (p. 264).
2) Restoration Theory
This view affirms Jewish restoration to the land as the fulfillment of biblical prophecy that the land is hers by divine right. This view is held by “premillennialists” (who take the 1000 years mentioned in Rev. 20, literally), who tend to give modern Israel unquestioning support (plus speculation on detailed prophecies soon to be fulfilled).
Before giving his “third way”, Marvin Wilson critiques these views.
As to “replacement theory”: The New Testament seems to affirm a future for ethnic Israel: the nature of that future, however, deserves further comment. In Romans 9-11, Paul climaxes his theological discourse by addressing the theme of Jew and Gentile in the future plan of God. The main thrust of Paul’s argument is that the destiny of Jew and Gentile is so intimately connected that the later does not find God except through the former (as in the metaphor of the olive tree). In Romans 11, Paul is emphatic that despite Israel’s unbelief, God has not rejected his people (v. 1). Israel still belongs to God and is called a “holy” people (v. 16) and “loved on account of the patriarchs” (v. 28). Israel’s historically unique preservation lends added support that it still has a vital role to play in the history of redemption (cf. v. 15). This divinely willed coexistence of God’s ancient covenant people and the Church in the present age is, to Paul, a great “mystery” (vs. 25). He is convinced, that God “does not change his mind about whom he chooses and blesses (v. 29, TEV) [ibid, p. 267].
With regard to “restoration” Christians, Dr. Wilson writes: In truth, no one has the privilege to lay claim to any land simply on the grounds of “divine right.” The corridors of time are strewn with the wreckages of individuals and societies who have been tragic victims of those who had a “biblical mandate” or some “divine voice” giving approval to their inhumane acts. . .[Inquisition, Crusades, killing of witches in Salem]. . . Therefore, we argue that no solution to the problem of the land may be imposed on any people on the grounds that “it is willed by God.” This also means that military conquest may not be used to prove a nation’s right to a given land (ibid, p. 266).
Then Dr. Wilson quotes with approval historian Dwight Wilson’s cautionary word to fellow premillennialists: “. . . .[I]f every action is pre-ordained, then there is no need to measure one’s actions by moral law, since the decision to obey or disobey the standard has already been made. Is Israel is the elect, and Jewish history is predetermined by God and foretold by prophecy, then ordinary rules of international law do not apply to God’s chosen people; and there is no absolute standard by which they can be judged. This is not implicit in the premillenarian view of prophecy, but it is what has worked out in practice in the response to Israel” (Dwight Wilson, Armageddon Now! p. 143), [quoted by Marvin Wilson, ibid, p. 266].
Marvin Wilson continues his critique: Upon close examination of Scripture, many of the details about Israel’s future must remain obscure and uncertain for several reasons.
1) The hermeneutic [ways of interpreting scripture] employed by the New Testament writers indicates that many OT prophecies were fulfilled in ways totally unexpected by both the OT authors themselves and the Jewish people of Jesus’ day.
2) The language of prophecy has a certain indefiniteness about it. Prophecy is written in poetry rather than prose and so partakes of a certain measure of ambiguity with it numerous figures of speech.
3) Some Christians frequently use unsound biblical exegesis to arrive at the supposed prophetic details about Israel’s future. These questionable interpretations often derive from an eisegetical approach (reading into the t4xt) characterized either by sensationalism or sheer speculation. This approach often results in a unwarrantable attitude of arrogant anticipation and dogmatic certainty.
4) Christians have seldom taken time to allow Jews the right to interpret their own Scriptures. Often the Church has been too anxious to tell Jewish people how to interpret their own Bible, which it received from them (ibid, p.267).
Additional cautionary comments by Marvin Wilson before he articulates his “third way”: Markus Barth seems correct in cautioning Christians not to consider the return of Jews to the land as a realization of eschatological promises in Scripture. . . .Nevertheless we would insist, in the very least, that the State of Israel is a remarkable sign of God’s continuing love, preservation, and purpose for his people (p. 268).
[On the other hand], Jews have an ongoing role in the furthering of God’s ultimate redemptive purposes. But no matter what standard or position one adopts, Christians must not be blind to Joseph Klausner’s objection that Christianity has sought to remove the national and political aspects of the prophetic hope (The Messianic Idea in Israel, p. 10). God works through the sacred and the secular. . . .[I]f God can call a pagan Persian named Cyrus ‘his anointed’ (Isa. 45:1), and another pagan king, Nebuchadnezzar, ‘my servant’ (Jer. 25:9), and accomplish his holy purposes among the nations through both, who can say what plans God may yet have in store for those who from of old have been his people? (ibid, p. 268).
"Real estate theology" is, at best, precarious theology. . . .For centuries Jews suffered discrimination and victimization at the hands of Christians whose theological convictions seemed to permit [encourage] such unjust activity. . . .Therefore, we conclude, as long as Arabs and Jews argue from nonnegotiable theological absolutes, human beings can offer little hope for peace (ibid, p. 268, 269).
3) The “Respect for Justice” Theory
This third option, which I support, lies between the other two. It recognizes that this complex issue must be resolved neither by abandoning all theological concern of whatever stripe, nor simplistically on the grounds of divine right. Rather, in this view, one’s understanding of the right of the Jewish people to a secure homeland is based primarily on the issues of justice, morality, and history.
We begin by recognizing that both Arabs and Jews seek the right to self-determination, national identity, and legitimate human rights. [Palestinian] Arabs desire a homeland, and Jews desire a secure state with recognized borders.
None of these goals will be fully realized until each group accepts the reality of the other with a spirit of mutual respect, humility and trust.
Though the Bible, as we have sought to demonstrate, bears witness to God’s unceasing relation to his covenant people and their historic homeland, we must primarily pursue the prophetic concern for justice, righteousness compassion, and peace. If Christians support the right of Israel to exist as a nation--and they should—they should do so on the basis that it is moral, just, and humane rather than simply on the grounds that ‘it fulfills prophecy.’
The creation of the State of Israel has allowed the Jew, once the ‘outsider of history,’ to re-enter history. Christian encouragement and support of Israel today for juridical and moral reasons can be interpreted only as a giant step forward in seeking to right an ugly historical wrong. Built by the hand of survivors of a holocaust that claimed six million lives, Israel always has the issue of Jewish survival as a central concern.
Modern Israel is not a theocracy. As a secular state, Israel was not, even during the time of the prophets, and is not now, the kingdom of God. Therefore, today’s Christian should not blindly condone all Israeli acts. [We should hold all nations to the same standard of morality.] Israel’s own prophets call the people to practice justice and compassion to those they consider ‘strangers’ in the land. This term often means the displaced, homeless, and powerless. Justice, however, is a two-way street. Only when bitterness, hostility, and hatred give way to a spirit of compromise, friendship, and recognition will all residents of the land know peace.
While not dismissing specific biblical texts that point to both an historical and future relation of the people of Israel to the land, this third approach responds to Zionism from a different, yet not contradictory, point of view. We have argued that this perspective focuses on history and on the burning biblical issues of justice, compassion, and moral sensitivity. All too often the church has been so intent on looking toward the future that it has failed both to deal with the present and to learn from the past.
Our task is to ‘follow justice and justice alone’ (Deut. 16:20), and then let God worry about whether this path, in any specific way, fulfills his future prophetic plan for Israel. Either way, it accomplishes that passion for justice which the prophets demanded (Amos 5:24; Mic. 6:8) [ibid, pp, 269, 270].
JRK critique: Admirable “third way”, BUT, it does not take into account the “injustice” of the Western powers imposing Jewish persons (and their state) on the native people, including treating them as the Nazis treated the Jews, confiscating their land, (“for security purposes” as the rationale), using the hostility this engenders as an excuse to intensify draconian reprisals and fence-building, thus making resolution impossible).
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