Newsletter:
Vol. 5. Iss. 2
20 June 2004
The Churches and the Holy
Land
Prof. Michael Prior, CM
The Palestinian-Israeli conflict has increased the traditional
concern of Christians for the ‘Holy Land’. In addition to being
one of the most explosive issues in international affairs, it constitutes
for the Churches one of the great moral problems of our age. It raises not
only issues of biblical interpretation, but of the authority of some biblical
traditions. Relations between religion and ‘nationalism’, as well
as between the relevant religions also surface.
Political Zionism has been a disaster for the Christians of the Holy Land.
In 1948, 50,000 were among the 750,000 Palestinians expelled from (what became)
the State of Israel. Since then, the remaining Christians have lived either
as unequal citizens in Israel, or under Israeli occupation of varying degrees
of oppression. They struggle on, hoping that even out of the dreadful circumstances
of today there may, possibly, be a better future. Yet their plight has not
yet been seriously addressed by the Church in a manner that respects basic
justice, not to speak of the imperatives of Christian morality.
Christians outside also interest themselves in the ‘Holy Land’.
They fall into a number of categories. The most vociferous are those in the
fundamentalist Evangelical Zionist wing. Although not nearly as numerous as
mainstream Christians, they are much more ideologically committed, politically
focused and influential, and in the US have the ear of President George W.
Bush and his policy-makers. For them, what happened in 1948 and since is part
of God’s intention that the Children of Israel be gathered ‘to
Jerusalem’. Indeed, it will speed up the Second Coming of Christ. Rather
than concentrate on Jesus’ exhortations during his First Coming, e.g.,
to feed the hungry, heal the lame, give sight to the blind, clothe the naked,
free the prisoners, etc.—such people are happier waiting for the Second
Coming, with its Armageddon massacre. Meanwhile, they support the government
of Israel that specialises in making the poor poorer, in making those with
perfect sight blind, in making the walking lame, etc.
That Palestine was already occupied by Arabs, who would have to be driven
out to fulfil the ‘ethnic-cleansing’ intentions of Political Zionism,
is of little moral concern for many such people. Why? Because of how they
interpret the prophetic and apocalyptic biblical texts. Their interpretation
is not only naïve but is fundamentally immoral. A god such as theirs
is the Great Ethnic-Cleanser, a militaristic and xenophobic genocidist, who
is not sufficiently moral even to conform to the requirements of the Fourth
Geneva Convention, or of any of the Human Rights Protocols which attempt to
set limits to barbarism. The grotesque views of such people, embracing an
essentially ethnic-cleansing enterprise as a fulfilment of biblical prophecy,
and clothing Political Zionism in the garment of piety, would not warrant
serious attention were it not for the influence they have on the domestic
and foreign policies of the USA. They are also, of course, easy targets for
the liberal establishment in the Church, the Universities and the media, whose
own performance has been scarcely better.
The performance of the mainstream Churches has not been a model of ethical
engagement. It is one of the anomalies of recent history that, while Christians
have supported oppressed peoples virtually everywhere else, there has been
relatively little protest against the historic injustice perpetrated on the
indigenous population of Palestine. Many Christians, of course, are sympathetic
to the ideal of a state for Jews as compensation for the litany of European
persecutions of Jews. That it is others who have to pay the price is all the
better. Moreover, even when faced with compelling evidence about the damage
done to the Palestinians these people remain rather detached, preferring prudence
to criticism. They cannot bring themselves to face the dark side of Political
Zionism. In any case, taking a stand for Palestinian rights will not advance
one’s reputation, or help one’s promotion prospects in the Church,
the Universities and the media.
Many Christians, of course, approach the question from a human rights perspective.
They acknowledge the fundamental injustice done in 1948, and the atrocities
since. Such people, typically, are not in positions of power. The most the
leaders of the Churches, by and large, appear able to bring themselves to
is to subscribe to the ‘fallacy of balance’. Their consciences,
it appears, are virtually paralysed by guilt, mostly about what was done to
Jews in Europe in the past, for which they themselves are hardly responsible.
They leave unchallenged a Zionist reading of Jewish history and of recent
events in Palestine.
I am not aware of any Church leader—dean, bishop, archbishop, cardinal,
patriarch, minister, presbyter, et al.—who has dared in a public forum
to offer a moral critique of the ideology of Political Zionism commensurate
with that of, e.g., apartheid, an ideology of far less deleterious consequences.
Though we know that the damage done to the Palestinians was at the heart of
the Zionist enterprise from the beginning, the Church leadership reflects
little appetite to pursue the relevant issues of justice and respect for historical
truth. The situation, of course, is even worse in the universities.
