Newsletter:
Vol. 5. Iss. 3
10 August 2004
A Disaster for Dialogue
Prof. Michael Prior, CM
The following essay is the last by Michael Prior, CM to have been published. It appeared in The Tablet, an international Catholic weekly newspaper, on 31 July 2004. Subsequent to its publication, The Vatican repudiated the position of the members of the Catholic-Jewish Liaison Committee, cited in the first paragraph, equating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism. Michael Prior died accidently on 21 July 2004.
After the eighteenth International Catholic-Jewish Liaison Committee met
in Buenos Aires earlier this month (July-ed.), it released a joint statement
repeating many of the constant emphases of the Jewish-Christian dialogue of
recent years. There were wider global concerns too: economic disparity and
its challenges, ecological devastation, the negative aspects of globalization,
and the urgent need for international peacemaking. One searches in vain, however,
for an interfaith comment on the ever-deteriorating conditions in the Holy
Land, and the challenge to justice and charity, or simply to justice and international
legality, caused by the situation in Israel. There was not one mention of
the Separation Wall dividing Jews and Palestinians.
Two elements above all others of the joint statement are particularly disturbing:
the view that anti-Zionism is synonymous with anti-Semitism, and the declaration
of commitment to the "struggle against terrorism". "Terrorrism"
by implication, of course, excludes the multiple forms of state-sponsored
outrages in the Middle East and elsewhere, and, even more pointedly, includes
any form of resistance to occupation or foreign domination.
Equating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism marks "a first" in Catholic
thinking, and was quickly noticed by the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz (10 July),
under the headline, "Catholic Church equates anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism".
Haaretz quoted the director of the World Jewish Congress as saying that the
statement marks "an historic moment: for the first time, the Catholic
Church recognizes in anti-Zionism an attack ... against the whole Jewish people".
The Anti-Defamation League was also quick to respond and put the joint statement
on its website.
It had seemed to me only a matter of time before the equation "anti-Zionism
equals anti-Semitism" would work its way into the religious dialogue,
as one of the many fruits of a vigorous campaign to close down any criticism
of Israel. Against the background of the almost universal condemnation of
the behavior of the State in the Occupied Territories, the World Zionist Congress
(WZC), meeting in Jerusalem in 2002, called upon its supporters everywhere
to press the equation of anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism and racism. That
was a clever tactic, since the last two are universally despised in humane
circles. In accepting the equation, Zionism - unlike any other political ideology,
such as nationalism, socialism, Communism, apartheid, or globalization - would
be above reproach, and, by extension, so would the State of Israel. A rhetorical
victory, however, would not be enough. The WZC encouraged university students
to monitor the lectures of those suspected of criticizing Israel, and report
back to their masters. Thus, a whole culture reminiscent of McCarthyism has
reentered American campuses. In the Buenos Aires statement we see how the
tactic has borne fruit in its inaugural entry into interfaith dialogue. Many
Catholics, and not a few Jews, will be dismayed, particularly those with some
knowledge of the nature of the ideology of Zionism and those who are distressed
by the unfortunate effects of its implementation.
Virtually the entire religious leadership of Jews in nineteenth-century Eastern
Europe considered Theodor Herzl, the creator of Zionism, and his creed, to
be anathema. Britain's Chief Rabbi considered his programme to be an "egregious
blunder" and an "absolutely mischievous project". In Vienna,
his own Chief Rabbi judged it to be incompatible with Judaism, a conclusion
echoed by the Chief Rabbis of France and Belgium. The German Rabbinical Council
condemned the efforts to create a Jewish national state as contrary to Holy
Writ. They were not alone.
Agudat Yisrael, formed in Germany in 1912 to present a united Orthodox front
against secularization, assimilation and Herzlian nationalism, considered
Zionism to be a pseudo-messianic, satanic conspiracy against God. Zionism
would remove from Jewish communal life the religious values which united Jews.
While pretending to protect Jewish life it abandoned the values which had
sustained it. The abandonment of what was most characteristically Jewish in
the pursuit of purely secular, nineteenth-century European notions of nationhood
was, for them, the ultimate form of assimilation. The restoration of the Jewish
people to its ancestral land was uniquely the task of the Messiah. Basing
their stand on Jewish theology, rather than on concern for the indigenous
population, such religious Jews saw the Zionist enterprise as a conscious
repudiation of the most fundamental tenets of Judaism. A number of religious
Jews - far outweighed by the numbers of secular ones who do so - add a humanitarian
dimension to their critique.
