Nicholas Kristof (NY Times) op-ed. Oct. 5, 2011

October 5, 2011


Is Israel Its Own Worst Enemy?
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF (NY Times, Oct. 5, 2011)


For decades, Palestinian leaders sometimes seemed to be their own people’s worst enemies.

Palestinian radicals antagonized the West, and, when militant leaders turned to hijackings and rockets, they undermined the Palestinian cause around the world. They empowered Israeli settlers and hard-liners, while eviscerating Israeli doves.

These days, the world has been turned upside down. Now it is Israel that is endangered most by its leaders and maximalist stance. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is isolating his country, and, to be blunt, his hard line on settlements seems like a national suicide policy.

Nothing is more corrosive than Israel’s growth of settlements because they erode hope of a peace agreement in the future. Mr. Netanyahu’s latest misstep came after the Obama administration humiliated itself by making a full-court diplomatic press to block Palestinian statehood at the United Nations. At a time when President Obama had a few other things on his plate — averting a global economic meltdown, for example — the United States frittered good will by threatening to veto the Palestinian statehood that everybody claims to favor.

With that diplomatic fight at the United Nations under way, Israel last week announced plans for 1,100 new housing units in a part of Jerusalem outside its pre-1967 borders. Instead of showing appreciation to President Obama, Mr. Netanyahu thumbed him in the eye.

O.K., I foresee a torrent of angry responses. I realize that many insist that Jerusalem must all belong to Israel in any peace deal anyway, so new settlements there don’t count. But, if that’s your position, then you can kiss any peace deal goodbye. Every negotiator knows the framework of a peace agreement — 1967 borders with land swaps, Jerusalem as the capital of both Israeli and Palestinian states, only a token right of return — and insistence on a completely Israeli Jerusalem simply means no peace agreement ever.

Former President Bill Clinton said squarely in September that Mr. Netanyahu is to blame for the failure of the Middle East peace process. A background factor, Mr. Clinton noted correctly, is the demographic and political change within Israeli society, which has made the country more conservative when it comes to border and land issues.

Granted, Mr. Netanyahu is far from the only obstacle to peace. The Palestinians are divided, with Hamas controlling Gaza. And Hamas not only represses its own people but also managed to devastate the peace movement in Israel. That’s the saddest thing about the Middle East: hard-liners like Hamas empower hard-liners like Mr. Netanyahu.

We’re facing a dangerous period in the Middle East. Most Palestinians seem to feel as though the Oslo peace process has fizzled, and Israelis seem to agree, with two-thirds saying in a recent poll published in the newspaper Yediot Aharonot that there is no chance of peace with Palestinians — ever.

The Palestinians’ best hope would be a major grass-roots movement of nonviolent peaceful resistance aimed at illegal West Bank settlements, led by women and inspired by the work of Mahatma Gandhi and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. A growing number of Palestinians are taking up variants of that model, although they sometimes ruin it by defining nonviolence to include stone-throwing and by giving the leading role to hotheaded young men.

The Israel Defense Forces can deal with suicide bombers and rockets fired by Hezbollah. I’m not sure that they can defeat Palestinian women blocking roads to illegal settlements and willing to endure tear gas and clubbing — with videos promptly posted on YouTube.

Mr. Netanyahu has also undermined Israeli security by burning bridges with Israel’s most important friend in the region, Turkey. Now there is also the risk of clashes in the Mediterranean between Israeli and Turkish naval vessels. That’s one reason Defense Secretary Leon Panetta scolded the Israeli government a few days ago for isolating itself diplomatically.

So where do we go from here? If a peace deal is not forthcoming soon, and if Israel continues its occupation, then Israel should give the vote in Israeli elections to all Palestinians in the areas it controls. If Jews in the West Bank can vote, then Palestinians there should be able to as well.

That’s what democracy means: people have the right to vote on the government that controls their lives. Some of my Israeli friends will think I’m unfair and harsh, applying double standards by focusing on Israeli shortcomings while paying less attention to those of other countries in the region. Fair enough: I plead guilty. I apply higher standards to a close American ally like Israel that is a huge recipient of American aid.

Friends don’t let friends drive drunk — or drive a diplomatic course that leaves their nation veering away from any hope of peace. Today, Israel’s leaders sometimes seem to be that country’s worst enemies, and it’s an act of friendship to point that out.

Jews in Conflict over "Israel"

Dear Friend,
Dana Goldstein, a NYC Jew, in conflict with her parents' generation over the State of Israel.
It's like an earthquake is going on. And where the earth settles is still not clear. But it sounds like everyone will have to adjust to the new landscape, as difficult as that will be.
Palestinian existence on the "land" persists, despite long efforts to ignor, displace and resist their grievances.
Stay tuned, and be in touch with Dana and her generation. More is undoubtedly coming. "God" loves all people. As one of my friends put it this morning at our fortnightly gathering: "If God is not God of all, God is not God at all". (Thank you Gene!). JRK

Thursday, Sep. 29, 2011
Why Fewer Young American Jews Share Their Parents' View of Israel
By Dana Goldstein

"I'm trembling," my mother says, when I tell her I'm working on an article about how younger and older American Jews are reacting differently to the Palestinians' bid for statehood at the United Nations. I understand the frustrations of the Palestinians dealing with ongoing settlements construction and sympathize with their decision to approach the U.N., but my mom supports President Obama's promise to wield the U.S. veto, sharing his view that a two-state solution can be achieved only through negotiations with Israel.

"This is so emotional," she says as we cautiously discuss our difference of opinion. "It makes me feel absolutely terrible when you stridently voice criticisms of Israel." (See photos inside the West Bank settlements.)

A lump of guilt and sadness rises in my throat. I've written harshly of Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 2006 and its assault on Gaza in 2009, and on civil rights issues in Israel. But speaking my mind on these topics — a very Jewish thing to do — has never been easy. During my childhood in the New York suburbs, support for Israel was as fundamental a family tradition as voting Democratic or lighting the Shabbos candles on Friday night.

My mom has a masters degree in Jewish history and is the program director of a large synagogue. Her youthful Israel experiences, volunteering on a kibbutz and meeting descendants of my great-grandmother's siblings, were part of my own mythology. Raised within the Conservative movement, I learned at Hebrew school that Israel was the "land of milk and honey" where Holocaust survivors had irrigated the deserts and made flowers bloom.

What I didn't hear much about was the lives of Palestinians. It was only after I went to college, met Muslim friends, and enrolled in a Middle Eastern history and politics course that I was challenged to reconcile my liberal, humanist worldview with the fact that the Jewish state of which I was so proud was occupying the land of 4.4 million stateless Palestinians, many of them refugees displaced by Israel's creation. (See TIME's photoessay on growing up Arab in Israel.)

Like many young American Jews, during my senior year of college I took the free trip to Israel offered by the Taglit-Birthright program. The bliss I felt floating in the Dead Sea, sampling succulent fruits grown by Jewish farmers, and roaming the medieval city of Safed, historic center of Kabbalah mysticism, was tempered by other experiences: Watching the construction of the imposing "security fence," which not only tamped down on terrorist attacks, but also separated Palestinian villagers from their lands and water supplies. I spent hours in hushed conversation with a young Israeli soldier who was horrified by what he said was the routinely rough and contemptuous treatment of Palestinian civilians at Israeli military checkpoints.

That trip deepened my conviction that as an American Jew, I could no longer in good conscience offer Israel unquestioning support. I'm not alone. Polling of young American Jews shows that with the exception of the Orthodox, many of us feel less attached to Israel than do our Baby Boomer parents, who came of age during the era of the 1967 and 1973 wars, when Israel was less of an aggressor and more a victim. A 2007 poll by Steven Cohen of Hebrew Union College and Ari Kelman of UC Davis found that although the majority of American Jews of all ages continue to identify as "Pro-Israel," those under 35 are less likely to identify as "Zionist." Over 40 percent of American Jews under 35 believe that "Israel occupies land belonging to someone else," and over 30 percent report sometimes feeling "ashamed" of Israel's actions.

Read about America's first female black rabbi.

Hanna King, an 18-year old sophomore at Swarthmore College, epitomizes the generational shift. Raised in Seattle as a Conservative Jew, last November King was part of a group of activists who heckled Netanyahu with slogans against the occupation at a New Orleans meeting of the Jewish Federations General Assembly.

"Netanyahu repeatedly claims himself as a representative of all Jews," King says. "The protest was an outlet for me to make a clear statement, and make it clear that those injustices don't occur in my name. It served as a vehicle for reclaiming my own Judaism." (Read more about the debate on a Palestinian state.)

A more moderate critique is expressed by J Street, the political action committee launched in 2008 as a "pro-Israel, pro-Peace" counterweight to the influence in Washington of the more hawkish American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Simone Zimmerman heads J-Street's campus affiliate at the University of California-Berkeley. A graduate of Jewish private schools, she lived in Tel Aviv as an exchange student during high school, but never heard the word occupation spoken in relation to Israel until she got to college.

During Zimmerman's freshman year, Berkeley became embroiled in a contentious debate over whether the university should divest from corporations that do business with the Israeli army. Although Zimmerman opposed divestment, she was profoundly affected by the stories she heard from Palestinian-American activists on campus.

"They were sharing their families' experiences of life under occupation and life during the war in Gaza," she remembers. "So much of what they were talking about related to things that I had always been taught to defend, like human rights and social justice, and the value of each individual's life." (Read the top 10 religion stories of 2010.)

Even young rabbis are, as a cohort, more likely to be critical of Israel than are older rabbis. Last week, Cohen, the Hebrew Union College researcher, released a survey of rabbinical students at New York's Jewish Theological Seminary, the premier institution for training Conservative rabbis. Though current students are just as likely as their elders to have studied and lived in Israel and to believe Israel is "very important" to their Judaism, about 70 percent of the young, prospective rabbis report feeling "disturbed" by Israel's treatment of Arab Israelis and Palestinians, compared to only about half of those ordained between 1980 and 1994.

Ben Resnick, 27, is one of the rabbinical students who took the survey. In July, he published an op-ed pointing out the ideological inconsistencies between Zionism, which upholds the principle of Israel as a Jewish state, and American liberal democracy, which emphasizes individual rights regardless of race, ethnicity, or religion. "The tragedy," Resnick says, is that the two worldviews may be "irreconcilable."

Still, after living in Jerusalem for 10 months and then returning to New York, Resnick continues to consider himself a Zionist. He quotes the Torah in support of his view that American Jews should press Israel to end settlement expansion and help facilitate a Palestinian state: "Love without rebuke," he says, "is not love."

Dana Goldstein is a fellow at the New America Foundation and the Nation Institute.

A New Start for Rosh Hashanah!

Dear Friend,

I admire Bradley Burston. (Below is his op-ed in Haaretz) Especially in the honesty that opens up the crack in our facade of self-righteousness. It is in all and each of us. Some dare not go there. Self-assessment is hard. I would rather be invincible and correct, all the time, rather than "give in" to others, especially those whose intent is to do me irrevocable harm.

I have long felt that the average Israeli is scared to death of giving the Palestinian narrative even "one inch", lest the whole occupation edifice come crashing down.

So there is this constant buildup of walls, and military and entrenchment in "our way", our country, our narrative.

To look at the other narrative, openly, non-defensively, and walk in the "other's shoes". O my. That takes courage. There may have to be changes. And that would be God-aweful. Yes, in awe of "God", the King over all nations, tribes and peoples. Yours truly, JRK


Palestine, the UN, and lies at Rosh Hashanah

This year, in Jerusalem, show us what a New Year actually looks like. Avinu Malkeinu, hoshiyeinu. Rescue us from ourselves.

On the High Holidays when I was small, Jews wore clothes they were not comfortable in, in order to ask themselves questions they were not comfortable with.

Some things don't change.

On the High Holidays when I was small, the old people, when they weren't discussing the Old Country, would talk about the Holy Land, and peace, and how they would never see either, not in their lifetimes.

The rabbi, meanwhile, would talk about God's Book of Life, in which we all appeared, each of us with what we had done over the past year, and done wrong, and failed to do. On Rosh Hashanah, God would open the book for review, and at the end of the day of judgment, Yom Kippur, our verdict for the new year would be handed down, and the book, until the next fall, slammed shut.

Mindful of the Book of Life, I used to wonder what became of what we had left undone. This year, the Friday before Rosh Hashanah, I found out. Thanks to the United Nations.Thanks to the debate on Palestine:

Anything left undone becomes a lie.

Who'd have guessed that what's true in daily life is also true of the UN? Who'd have guessed that what was left undone when I was small, would still be undone these many, many years later?

When I was small and could take no more of the High Holidays, and when there was no baseball on the radio, I would open a book. One of them began with an observation by Pablo Picasso. "Art," he said, "is a lie which makes us realize the truth."

The same, I now realize, could be said of the United Nations. And because it is left undone, it can be said of Palestine as well. And because Palestine has been left undone, the same could be said of Israel. Left undone. Like all of us.

We pray to the same God - all of us, we and the Palestinians who are our cousins and neighbors, we pray to the lord of the second chance - but our belief is flagging. We are undone and unmoving. We cannot shake our grief and our failure and our guilt and our instinct for blame. We are undone by politics and by bad politicians. We are undone by warped religion and bad clerics. We are undone by our belief that only from our side do people see clearly and speak the whole truth.

When I was small, my favorite part of the High Holidays was singing with the old people to the prayer called Avinu Malkeinu, in part because there seemed some unique truth in it. "For Your own sake, Lord, if not for ours," the old people sang, "forgive us, let us off this hook, rescue us from ourselves."

Avinu Malkeinu, Our Father, Our King, they sang, these people whose own parents were long dead, these people who had never placed faith in the nobles who had once ruled over them, these people whose own voices were already fading. Avinu Malkeinu, Shma Koleinu, Hus V'Rahem Aleinu. Hear our voice. Help us hear the voices of others whose stories and tragedies are different. Help them to hear ours.

Hear our true voice, the one from close to the heart inside. Avinu Malkeinu, have pity for what we do and are and try and fail at, and what we give ourselves too much credit for. Give us permission to start again. Give us, this day, a break.

Avinu Malkeinu, haneinu v'aneinu, ki ein lanu ma'asim. Avinu Malkeinu. Cut us a deal we can live with. Avinu Malkeinu, help us find, at long last, an answer we can use, a way out of this, even though we have nothing to show for all our trying. Because we have nothing to show for all our trying..

God who does not make mistakes, God whom we bitterly and consistently disappoint, God whose land always falls short of the arrangement we feel would somehow dress the wounds in our souls - dress the wounds in our souls.God who created human differences and human disagreement and human compromise, help us write a new document for every one of us. A Book of Life.

Show us Your face in the faces of the people we find it easier to look away from and call enemy. Show them Your face in ours. For the same reason. Show us what we least want to see: That we look the same.

Avinu Malkeinu, Aseh Imanu Tz'dakah V'Hesed, V'Hoshieinu We talk big, but we are, all of us, small and fallible and wounded. Be kind. Teach us finally to grow tired of our own lies. Teach us to finish what we start. This year, in Jerusalem, show us what a New Year actually looks like. Avinu Malkeinu, hoshiyeinu. Rescue us from ourselves.

The Quarttete on The Next Steps

Friend,

The US, Russia, the EU and the UN are scrambling to find ways of getting Israelis and Palestinians to sit down and hash things out in the light of the conflicting narratives set forth at the General Assembly (UNGA) on Friday.

Here is their statement for the record. Don't put too much faith into it. It's a theological and ethical matter and politicians don't do very well with love for God and others.

JRK

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------





Following is the text of a statement issued after the meeting of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, and EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy of the European Union Catherine Ashton in New York on September 23, 2011.

The Quartet takes note of the application submitted by President Abbas on 23rd September 2011 which is now before the Security Council.

The Quartet reaffirmed its statement of 20th May 2011, including its strong support for the vision of Israeli-Palestinian peace outlined by United States President Barack Obama.

The Quartet recalled its previous statements, and affirmed its determination to actively and vigorously seek a comprehensive resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict, on the basis of UN Security Council Resolutions 242, 338, 1397, 1515, 1850, the Madrid principles including land for peace, the Roadmap, and the agreements previously reached between the parties.

The Quartet reiterated its commitment to a just, lasting and comprehensive peace in the Middle East and to seek a comprehensive resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict, and reaffirms the importance of the Arab Peace Initiative.

The Quartet reiterated its urgent appeal to the parties to overcome the current obstacles and resume direct bilateral Israeli-Palestinian negotiations without delay or preconditions. But it accepts that meeting, in itself, will not reestablish the trust necessary for such a negotiation to succeed. It therefore proposes the following steps:

1. Within a month there will be a preparatory meeting between the parties to agree an agenda and method of proceeding in the negotiation.

2. At that meeting there will be a commitment by both sides that the objective of any negotiation is to reach an agreement within a timeframe agreed to by the parties but not longer than the end of 2012. The Quartet expects the parties to come forward with comprehensive proposals within three months on territory and security, and to have made substantial progress within six months. To that end, the Quartet will convene an international conference in Moscow, in consultation with the parties, at the appropriate time.

3. There will be a Donors Conference at which the international community will give full and sustained support to the Palestinian Authority state-building actions developed by Prime Minister Fayyad under the leadership of President Abbas.

4. The Quartet recognizes the achievements of the Palestinian Authority in preparing institutions for statehood as evidenced in reports to the Ad Hoc Liaison Committee, and stresses the need to preserve and build on them. In this regard, the members of the Quartet will consult to identify additional steps they can actively support towards Palestinian statehood individually and together, to secure in accordance with existing procedures significantly greater independence and sovereignty for the Palestinian Authority over its affairs.

5. The Quartet calls upon the parties to refrain from provocative actions if negotiations are to be effective. The Quartet reiterated the obligations of both parties under the Roadmap.

6. The Quartet committed to remain actively involved and to encourage and review progress. The Quartet agreed to meet regularly and to task the envoys and the Quartet Representative to intensify their cooperation, including by meeting prior to the parties’ preparatory meeting, and to formulate recommendations for Quartet action.

PRN: 2011/1585



John

jandskleinheksel@gmail.com

www.friendsofpalestiniansandisraelis.blogspot.com

A Message for Christian Zionists

An Open Letter to America’s Christian Zionists


From David P. Gushee and Glen H. Stassen
September 19, 2011

Dear Christian Brothers and Sisters,

Greetings in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. We write to you about an urgent matter of common concern.

In a week or so, unless their plans change dramatically, Palestinian leaders will make a unilateral declaration of a State of Palestine based on the pre-1967 borders and will turn to the United Nations for a vote to recognize their new state.

The present Netanyahu government of Israel is, of course, totally opposed to this course of action on the part of the Palestinians. The United States government (predictably) shares this opposition. Both nations tell the Palestinians that the proper path to a state is through negotiations leading to an agreement that can settle all outstanding territorial and political issues. Palestinian leaders respond that they continue to support negotiations but that they can no longer pin all of their hopes on them.

This is because progress on that elusive peace agreement has been nonexistent for years. Of course, both sides blame each other for that lack of progress. But meanwhile, on a visit to the Occupied Territories this summer along with 50 students from Fuller Seminary who were studying just peacemaking (see http://justpeacemaking.blogspot.com/p/just-peacemaking.html), we were shown repeatedly how Israeli settlements (actually, planned cities and towns on occupied Palestinian land) are eating away at the territory that would belong to any viable Palestinian state. The Palestinians are convinced that the Netanyahu government in Israel is pursuing a strategy of delaying negotiations while creating facts on the ground that will make a Palestinian state impossible. A visitor to the increasingly encircled and truncated Palestinian territories can see these facts on the ground with his own eyes if he is willing to look. The Palestinian leadership believes that they had better declare statehood now before the territory for such a state completely disappears. It could be a high stakes showdown at the UN, with uncertain consequences in the aftermath.

Officially, Israel long ago entered into negotiations with Palestinian leaders toward a two-state solution. Unofficially, it appears that the current government in Israel is renouncing this path. Ideological rather than pragmatic factors are clearly contributing to this unofficial but visible renunciation. The most important ideological factor is the belief that Israel deserves the entirety of the land and that Palestinians have no legitimate claim on any part of it.

As you know, this belief is one form of what goes by the name “Zionism.” When it is religiously motivated, it is an especially powerful belief, because Israel’s “title” to every square inch of the land is believed to be granted by God in the Bible. We were told in Israel that the number of religious Jewish Zionists in Israel is today growing appreciably, and that many are to be found in the settlements on Palestinian land (which they do not accept is Palestinian land). It is hard to see how they will ever voluntarily leave their homes, even if Israel signs a peace agreement. In short: Israel has created the conditions for a civil war if they try to dismantle settlements, and for a Palestinian revolt or a wider Middle East war if they never end their occupation.

This letter, though, is not about religious Jewish Zionism and its destructive effects on Israeli policy. It is about the Christian version of the same belief. This Christian version of Zionism matters deeply, not just because theology intrinsically matters, but because it is overwhelmingly clear that American evangelical-fundamentalist Christian Zionism affects US policy toward Israel and the Palestinians in distressing ways. It is one reason why the United States stands almost alone in the world community in supporting Israeli policies which our international friends generally find intolerable if not immoral and illegal.

Not to put too fine a point on it, we wish to claim here that the prevailing version of American Christian Zionism—that is, your belief system—underwrites theft of Palestinian land and oppression of Palestinian people, helps create the conditions for an explosion of violence, and pushes US policy in a destructive direction that violates our nation’s commitment to universal human rights. In all of these, American Christian Zionism as it currently stands is sinful and produces sin. We write as evangelical Christians committed lifelong to Israel's security, and we are seriously worried about your support for policies that violate biblical warnings about injustice and may lead to the outcome you most fear—serious harm to or even destruction of Israel.

We write as evangelicals to you, our fellow evangelicals. On the shared basis of biblical authority, we ask you to reconsider your interpretation of Scripture, for the sake of God, humanity, the United States, and, yes, Israel itself, the Land and People we both love.

I A Question of (Whose) Holy Land

We acknowledge that your evangelical-fundamentalist American Christian Zionism (henceforth simply “Christian Zionism”) is a product of a Christian community that loves and reads the Bible. This is on its face a good thing--for there appear to be fewer and fewer American Christians whose love of the Bible and whose devotion to reading it can be taken for granted. We commend your love for the scriptures.

Both now and in the past, whenever Christian Zionism emerges its essential origin is simply Christian reading of the Hebrew Bible, or what Christians call the Old Testament. Our love of the Bible takes Christians into the pages of the Old Testament; there we cannot help but discover the centrality of a Promised Land for the Jewish people. The trajectory of the canonical Old Testament moves inexorably toward and away from the Promised Land—the patriarchal narratives in which a people and land are promised despite humble origins; enslavement in Egypt; the miraculous Exodus and grim wilderness wanderings under Moses; the conquest of the Promised Land; the establishment, split, and eventual conquest of Israel as a political entity; the Babylonian exile and dispersion of the Jewish people; and a partial return to the land, at which point the OT historical narrative ends.

Our Christian love for and identification with “the Holy Land” can and often does deepen through reading of the New Testament as well. The four Gospels, in particular, detail the journeys of Jesus through (Roman-subjugated) Israel, and many millions of Christians have cut their spiritual teeth on those stories. We have come to know and love Nazareth and Bethlehem, Capernaum and Cana and of course Jerusalem, because those are the places that Jesus walked. Having just visited Israel this summer, we can attest to the continuing power of these places to connect spiritually with Christians in surprisingly profound ways. Both of us found ourselves deeply affected, for example, by standing on the shore of the Sea of Galilee where tradition holds that Jesus reinstated Peter after his denials. The intense spiritual impact of “walking where Jesus walked” continues to draw millions of Christians to Holy Land tours. Even in our jaded age, there is still power in spiritual pilgrimage to Holy Land—the Holy Land.

As devoted Christians, we share this love of the sacred lands of the biblical tradition with all who hold such love. We think that love of the Holy Land is far better than indifference to it. And both of us, as students of the long and terrible history of Christian anti-Semitism, which culminated in the horrors of the Holocaust, far prefer a strong sense of Christian kinship with the Jewish people and their historic homeland than the centuries-long Christian pattern of theological disdain and even hatred that so long predominated. The question then becomes not whether to love “Israel”—understood as the People and the Land—but how best to do so. We think this is a question that you will understand and want to answer properly, as we do.

We suggest to you that contemporary Christian Zionism is well-intentioned but needs correction at some very important points. This requires some careful biblical and theological work—from within the basic framework of evangelical Christianity. This means that the relevant scriptural texts need to be studied in detail, and that Christian theology needs to do its proper work with those texts.

For example, we suggest that Christian Zionists who move from a generalized love of Israel to a specific claim that the contemporary state of Israel has divine title to the entire Holy Land, need to take more seriously the complexity of what the Bible actually says about God’s promises to Abraham.

Genesis 15:18 reads: “On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, ‘To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates.” The next verse goes on to name the various peoples to whom the land belonged at the time.

The territory denoted by the space between these two rivers includes modern-day Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, half of Iraq, half of Egypt, parts of Turkey and Saudi Arabia, the modern state of Israel, as well as the occupied Palestinian territories.

A literal reading of the text that assumes that the descendants of Abram are only the Jewish people faces a problem here. Either God is not very good at keeping his promises, or God’s plan is for contemporary Israel ultimately to conquer all of these other countries and occupy their land. That would result in an Israel ruled by its 90% majority Arabs, or an Israel attempting to subjugate that 90% by force.

But the promise looks very different if we take seriously all of the offspring of Abraham. Genesis 15:4-5 has God taking Abram outside and telling him that his descendants will be as numerous as the stars of the heavens. Genesis 17:4, probably the pivotal text, has God saying to Abraham: “This is my covenant with you: You shall be the ancestor of a multitude of nations.” Many nations, a multitude of nations; many offspring, many kings—read Genesis 17 again and see the plural nouns here.

Close readers of Scripture will know that in fact Abraham did become the father of many nations. With Sarah he became the father of Isaac and the ancestor of all in his line, via Jacob and Esau. With Hagar he became the father of Ishmael and all in his line. And with the long-forgotten Keturah (Gen. 25:1) he became the father of Zimran, Jokshan, Medan, Midian, Ishbak, and Shuah. The Old Testament clearly positions Abraham as the father/ancestor of not only the Jewish people but of a vast number of other peoples, all scattered through the territories promised in Genesis 15. Abraham becomes the father of dozens of peoples, exactly as the Bible says! It is certainly true that the Old Testament primarily tells the story of the line of Isaac and therefore of what became the Jewish people, but that cannot cancel the significance of the promises to Abraham and the many peoples credited to him in Genesis.

The New Testament makes an important move here as well. In Romans 4, Paul says that by faith non-Jews become Abraham’s descendants too: “The purpose was to make him the ancestor of all who believe” (Rom 4:11). Europeans and Asians, Africans and Latin Americans, any who believe in Jesus enter the line of Abraham. This is why it is correct to say that (at least) Jews, Christians, and Muslims are all descendants of Abraham, all part of the Abrahamic family tree, some by birth, some by lineage, some by faith.

Perhaps you will respond by saying that God promises the land of Canaan specifically to the Jewish people. You might cite here Genesis 17:8: “I will give to you, and to your offspring after you, the land where you are now an alien, all the land of Canaan, for a perpetual holding.” This interpretation would require restricting the “offspring” in question to Abraham’s offspring through Sarah via Isaac and then on to Jacob and excluding Esau. But the promise to possess the land includes the offspring of Isaac, and the offspring of Isaac includes Esau, with his five Edomite sons and their offspring, as Genesis 36 states, and that includes multitudes of Canaanites, not only Jews. It would also require the assumption that we know what Gen. 17 means territorially with the term “Canaan” and that it corresponds with the Zionist’s version of the proper boundaries of the modern state of Israel.

One other point from later in the Old Testament seems important to mention here. Even when the narrative moves forward into the book of Joshua, and the twelve tribes of Israel “conquer” the “Promised Land,” it is striking that the scriptures themselves acknowledge the ongoing presence of non-Hebrews in the land. Texts like this recur: “But the people of Judah could not drive out the Jebusites, the inhabitants of Jerusalem; so the Jebusites live with the people of Judah in Jerusalem to this day” (Josh 15:63; compare Josh 13:13, 16:10, 17:12-13, 19:47).

Christians, even those who know their Bibles well, tend to think of the book of Joshua as containing the (bloody) fulfillment of the promise of the whole Land to Israel—the entire land is conquered by war, and then divided up among the tribes. A close reading shows that the Hebrew tribes shared the land for centuries with other groups, and that even when tribes were assigned certain portions of land, they didn’t necessarily control every square inch of it. The point is obvious later when it comes to the challenge posed by the Philistines. It is not an overstatement to say that the Israelite/Hebrew/Jewish people never had exclusive possession of the Holy Land, regardless of whatever divine promises they or we believe that they received.

II Those Who Do Justice Keep Their Land

Let us now assume that God indeed promised the offspring of Abraham and Sarah via Isaac and Jacob a portion of the land between the Nile and the Euphrates. Let us even assume that this promise was intended by God to extend even to our own day and beyond. And let us further assume that in the dark shadow of the Holocaust it was an act of divine grace for a substantial portion of the surviving remnant of the Jewish people to have a modern-day homeland in the contemporary state of Israel. These are substantial assumptions that could be challenged for many reasons, but we are prepared to accept them, along with you.

But we do so while keeping in front of us another strand of relevant biblical teaching. The prophets, writing much later in Israel’s history, long after Israel had established substantial political kingdoms, warned repeatedly that God’s covenant with Israel has a dimension of conditionality to it. Whether preaching in the northern kingdom of Israel prior to the Assyrian conquest, or the southern kingdom of Judah prior to the Babylonian conquest and exile, Israel’s prophets repeatedly warned that God’s covenant promise of the land was conditional on her moral performance. In particular, the prophets warned that, in keeping with the stipulations of the Law, Israel would be judged by her treatment of the aliens in the land, of the poor, the widows, and the orphans.

The 7th/6th century BC prophet Jeremiah sounded such themes consistently. We see it in Jeremiah 6:6-8: “This city must be punished; it is filled with oppression…Violence and destruction resound in her…Take warning, O Jerusalem, or I will turn away from you and make your land desolate so no one can live in it.” Jeremiah 7 is a hugely important passage, in which the prophet warns the complacent worshippers at the seemingly impregnable Temple that it and they would be ruined if they did not “amend your ways and your doings, and let me dwell with you in this place” (Jer 7:3). Jeremiah warned: “Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely…then come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, “We are safe!”—only to go on doing all these abominations?” (7:9-10). And the climax: “I will cast you out of my sight, just as I cast out all your kinfolk, all the offspring of Ephraim” (7:15).

Old Testament scholars have long recognized that a powerful, important, and dynamic tension exists in the OT between themes of a conditional and unconditional covenant between God and Israel. God has chosen Israel and made binding promises to her; and yet God has warned Israel that her persistent violation of her part of that covenant could trigger God’s judgment, including in war and in exile. And anyone who reads the Old Testament knows that war and exile came to Israel, that it was prophesied in advance as divine judgment, and described in retrospect in the same way.

At a theological level, we are claiming that even if one accepts a) a divine promise of land to the Jewish people as recorded in scripture, b) a belief that this promise extends even to this day, and c) the modern state of Israel as, in part, God’s gracious fulfillment of this promise, one must also say d) the Bible, in the prophetic writings, also teaches that persistent injustice on the part of Israel has evoked, and still can bring, God’s judgment, which can extend even to war and exile. Israel’s remaining in the land depends on Israel’s now doing justice to Palestinians and making peace with its Arab neighbors that surround Israel. Indeed, Jesus, as prophet and Savior, also prophesied that Jerusalem would be destroyed because they did not know the practices that make for peace (Lk 19:41-44). And Jerusalem was destroyed, 40 years later. Do you not fear that it could happen again? Does not your love of Israel make you want to do all you can to prevent that from happening? And yet your actions actually make it more likely to happen!

III The Holy Land on the Precipice

Any visitor to this tortured Holy Land who avoids a sanitized Christian tour and actually visits with Palestinians, actually stands in the shadow of the Separation Wall, actually sees what military occupation looks and feels like, cannot but tremble at these biblical words of warning.

We are not Old Testament prophets, nor do we pretend to see the future. But we have seen enough to claim that the occupation practices of the modern state of Israel are a direct violation of the most basic biblical moral principles. It is immoral to steal anything, including people’s land, homes, and vineyards. It is immoral to dehumanize people, as occurs daily at Israeli checkpoints. It is immoral to choke people’s freedom and deprive them of their dignity. And it is foolish, a violation of every lesson of history, to think that through sheer intimidation and superior military power a people can be subjugated indefinitely without rising up in resistance or attracting more powerful allies who will do so on their behalf. God gave humanity a recognition of justice and a nearly endless capacity to resist injustice. It is wired into our nature, and the Palestinian people and the neighboring countries have it just like everyone else does.

We genuinely fear that someday someone or some nation inflamed with resentment at the seemingly eternal Israeli subjugation of the Palestinian people will “make your land desolate so no one can live in it” (Jer 6:8). That sounds like a nuclear bomb. Have you heard of Mahmoud Ahmedinijad? While in the Middle East we heard from Palestinian leaders a current commitment to pursue their cause nonviolently. We applaud that commitment. We see it as an extraordinary one under the circumstances. We fear that it cannot last forever, for no people will allow itself to be ground into the dust indefinitely. What are you doing to end their suffering and bring justice to them?

We will leave it to God to sort out with the Jewish people of the modern state of Israel the very complex terms of his covenant with them. But we cannot remain silent about the vast array of American Christians who support the most repressive and unjust Israeli policies in the name of Holy Land and a Holy God. We charge that you bear grave responsibility for aiding and abetting obvious sin, and if Israel once again sees war, we suggest that you will bear part of the responsibility. Christians are called to be peacemakers (Mt 5:9), but by offering uncritical support of current Israeli policies you are actively inflaming the Middle East toward war—in the name of God. This is appalling; it is intolerable; it must stop!

We plead with you, our brothers and sisters, to find a better way, a more biblical way, to love Israel. Love Israel enough to oppose rather than support actions that violate God’s clearly revealed moral will. And while you are at it, it might be good to work on loving the Palestinians, some of whom are also our Christian sisters and brothers. When you visit Israel, we urge you to visit with Palestinian Christians and ask them what they want us, their fellow Christians, to support. For they surely need our love. And we are surely commanded to love them, too.

In the name of Christ,

David P. Gushee, Distinguished University Professor of Christian Ethics, Mercer University
Glen H. Stassen, Smedes Professor of Christian Ethics, Fuller Theological Seminary

Drs. Gushee and Stassen are co-authors of "Kingdom Ethics" (InterVarsity Press) and are members of the board of directors of the New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good.

Yes to Palestine

Dear Friend,

You are reading many pros and cons to the (apparent) bid of the PA leadership to recognition by the UN.

I've read many as well. I think we must support it. And the Obama team should as well. We are being two-faced if we don't (and the Palestinians know it, and so are forcing our hand, causing embarrassment if we go through with our (planned) veto in the UN Security Council.

The best summary of the reasons why the US should support the Palestinians in their effort is stated in the following piece in the LA Times by Reza Aslan, (Author of the really fine book, No God But God). In his book, he argues that the West is not in a civilizational conflict, but a conflict for the soul of each religion: a battle between the moderates and radical extremists).

Read it for yourselves. Send it to others. Debate it among ourselves. (I'm still sending stuff "bcc" so we can't have a discussion on this piece). Should you want to post a comment on my blog (below), you are welcome to do it, although few ever do. I archive pieces I send to you there, for referencing).

I read between 30 and 40 articles every day or so, and have cut back sending things out so as not to be a pest.

The situation in Isr/Pal is a microcosm of our ME policies, a window into how we treat other nations there (and in other parts of the world).

With the loss of a Democratic seat in the House to a Republican, President Obama is going to under even more pressure to espouse the Israeli/Likud position (which is to oppose the creation/recognition of a Palestinian state/entity.

Read Mr. Aslan's commentary and profit/prophet by it. Send comments to me and I'll try to summarize the arguments/sentiments of the FPI group (now numbering 180 persons all over the US and the world) and pass them on to "our" group. Peace, justice and love to all, JRK


Yes to Palestine

Reza Aslan
The Los Angeles Times (Opinion)
September 15, 2011 - 12:00am
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-0915-aslan-palestinian-vote...



Later this month, the Palestinian Authority intends to go before the United Nations to request recognition of an independent Palestinian state. Although there is strong backing for the bid, the United States, in the name of supporting Israel, has stated its willingness to use its Security Council veto power to keep the Palestinians from joining the U.N. as a full voting member. The U.S. has also refused to join in a more symbolic General Assembly vote that could change the Palestinians' status from a "nonvoting observer entity" to a "nonvoting observer state."

Here are five reasons why the U.S. should support the Palestinian bid and not exercise its veto at the U.N.

Negotiations have failed.

Two decades of negotiations have not brought the Palestinians a state of their own. Israelis and Palestinians blame each other for the current impasse.

But the question of who is at fault is irrelevant. What matters is that in 1993, when the Oslo accords set up a framework for a negotiated settlement for a two-state solution, there were a little more than 100,000 Israeli settlers living in the West Bank. Now that number stands at more than 300,000. According to the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem, about half a million Israelis now live "over the Green Line" in what is designated as the future Palestinian state. Every day the Palestinians wait for a negotiated state, another sliver of that state is absorbed into Israel. A few more years and practically nothing will remain.

The current Likud-led Israeli government is unlikely to ever agree to a sovereign Palestinian state.

A decade ago, Benjamin Netanyahu, vying for Likud Party leadership, made his position clear in a speech to the group's central committee: "My friends," he said in 2002, " we must present the situation in the clearest possible way: We won't lend a hand to the establishment of a Palestinian state west of the Jordan River.... We must vote as one in favor of the draft resolution against a Palestinian state."

It is true that seven years later, under intense pressure from the Obama administration, Netanyahu, as Israeli prime minister, grudgingly accepted the notion of a Palestinian state in principle. But the unprecedented conditions he called for — that it have no military, no control over its borders, no capital in East Jerusalem, no right of return for Palestinian refugees and that it recognize Israel as a "Jewish state" — seemed deliberately designed to negate the possibility of true Palestinian sovereignty.

Even if Netanyahu were to begin pushing for a Palestinian state, it is highly unlikely that his ultra-right-wing coalition would allow him to succeed. Indeed, immediately after Netanyahu's 2009 speech, powerful members of his party demanded that he retract his statement entertaining the possibility of a Palestinian state. As one of Likud's most influential Knesset members, Danny Danon, vowed: "I will attempt to cause this sentence, which was said under American pressure, never to come into being."

President Obama has utterly failed to advance the Middle East peace process.

Obama came into office vowing a more active and evenhanded approach to the Israeli-Palestinian crisis. Yet beyond a few lofty speeches about Palestinian suffering, he has offered no substantive policy shifts or specific proposals for moving negotiations forward. Obama's attempt to temporarily stop Israel from building settlements in the occupied territories backfired when he caved in to Israeli intransigence. The administration then had the nerve to veto a nonbinding U.N. resolution condemning the very settlements Obama himself had condemned. The president's barely newsworthy suggestion that negotiations for a two-state solution be based on the 1967 borders with land swaps (which, as the basis for the Oslo accords, has been the principle advanced, if not publicly announced, by every U.S. president since Jimmy Carter) was ridiculed by the Israeli prime minister, and in the Capitol building, no less. The president's kowtowing to Netanyahu and the Israeli right wing has made the U.S. look weak on the global stage. If for no other reason than to prove to the world that the U.S. is not Israel's lap dog, the president should refrain from vetoing a Palestinian state.

Contrary to popular belief, it is not political suicide to defy the will of Israel.

There is no doubt that American public opinion remains overwhelmingly pro-Israel. But polls show that the majority of Americans believe the U.S. should not favor one side over the other in the conflict. Among thoughtful leaders in the media, military and foreign affairs, there has been a consensus that our policy toward Israel is severely damaging America's interests and image around the world. According to a 2008 J Street poll, 78% of American Jews said they supported a two-state solution and 81% wanted the U.S. to pressure both sides to end the conflict.

Of course, the Republicans will try to paint Obama and the Democrats as "anti-Israel" if the president fails to veto the U.N. vote. But this has been a consistent strategy on the part of the GOP for years, and it has always failed. In any case, the same J Street poll found that only 8% of Jews cite Israel as an issue in deciding whom to vote for for president.

Palestinians are doing almost exactly what Israelis did 60 years ago.

Israel maintains that the Palestinians cannot declare statehood and seal it through the U.N. Yet the Palestinians are merely following the trail blazed by Israel six decades ago. In 1948, after the U.N. voted for the partition of Palestine, debate among the world powers about how to divide the land dragged on and violence between Jews and Arabs grew worse. The Jewish Agency simply preempted negotiations and unilaterally declared the state of Israel; the United States immediately recognized it, and the U.N. accepted Israeli sovereignty the following year.

The Palestinian Authority has come to the same conclusion that the Jews apparently came to in 1948: Negotiations will not lead to an independent state; the only way forward is unilateral action. By rejecting that strategy outright, Israel is not only being hypocritical; it is invalidating its own existence as a state.

There is one more reason to support the Palestinians' bid at the United Nations. It is the moral thing to do. During his first presidential campaign, Obama said, "Nobody is suffering more than the Palestinian people." Now, he has the opportunity to live up to his own beliefs and promises, and to provide the Palestinian people with the same sense of dignity that Harry Truman gave Israel 60 years ago.

Notice NONVIOLENCE!

Dear Friend,
Julia Bacha, a Brazilian filmmaker has documented the demonstration at the Palestinian village of Budrus.
Watch her talk that describes it and the difference it can make. JRK

Here's the link