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~OTHER VOICES ...

By Eliahu Salpeter
Is Israel actually the most effective means for
ensuring the Jewish people’s continued existence?
The State We’re in Today

Never before have so many American Jews voiced concern over the course Israel’s leaders are navigating for the Jewish state. In the background looms the question whether Israel is actually the most effective means for ensuring the Jewish people’s continued existence. In the eyes of the few Jews who survived the Holocaust, the answer was obvious even before Israel became an independent state: Immigration to Palestine was considered essential not only for Zionist reasons but also for the protection of Jews from any future racist threat.

Although I have been an Israeli journalist for more than 50 years, I cannot explain why this confidence has been so badly undermined in recent years, nor can I determine whether such a development was inevitable. How has the state of Chaim Weizmann and David Ben-Gurion withered to the point that it has become the state of Ehud Olmert and Avigdor Lieberman?

“After a disaster that has befallen no other people on earth, the world gave us an opportunity… Israel circa 2006 is what we have done with that opportunity.”

It is too easy to say, “We are all guilty.” That is the sort of answer you hear from those who do not feel any guilt whatsoever. With more than half of the Jewish people today living in Israel, not only is the Jewish state’s future in great jeopardy, so is the entire Jewish people’s very survival. The fact that there is no explanation for this process is nearly as important as the very existence of the process, because, in the rational world, the comprehension of the reasons for a phenomenon is the first step toward an attempt to change the situation. After a disaster that has befallen no other people on earth, the nations of the world gave us an opportunity that few, if any, nations in history have ever been granted: the chance to reestablish a state that was destroyed two millennia ago. Israel circa 2006 is what we have done with that opportunity.

The Jewish people’s existence is more important than that of the Jewish state. If Israel cannot ensure the Jewish people’s survival—sometimes it seems to even impair that survival —a giant question-mark hovers over the very justification of its existence. Although it faces an Islamic nuclear threat and its government failed in a confrontation with only a few thousand Hezbollah fighters, Israel continues to place responsibility for its security in the hands of that same failed leadership and has thus lost any sense of responsibility for its citizens’ survival. Furthermore, by adding a new minister responsible for strategic threats to the triumvirate that led this country during the second war in Lebanon, Israel is causing people to wonder whether it has lost its will to live.

“Israel’s ability to guarantee the Jewish individual’s physical existence is the fundamental condition for everything related to the Jewish mission.”

The Jewish people is not a race, as the Nazis and their forerunners claimed. Quite the contrary, except for the American people, there is no other nation on earth that is so genetically mixed as the Jews. Judaism is defined by a common religion, a common history, immense creative energy in the sciences and arts, a capacity for contributing to the cultures of other nations, and, first and foremost, the skills of millions of Jews who regard themselves as members of this nation. If there is such a thing as a national mission, the desire to contribute to other nations is the Jewish mission. However, without the existence of Jewish individuals, there is no Jewish people and there is no Jewish mission.

The sole condition for the execution of the Jewish mission is not the existence of the Jewish people as a political or sociological concept, but rather the life and security of Jewish individuals in Israel and their ability to interact with their co-religionists in the world—scholars, philosophers, and artists. Israel’s ability to guarantee the Jewish indi vidual’s physical existence is the fundamental condition for everything related to the Jewish mission.

Thus, Israel’s Jews must, first and foremost, determine their country’s capacity for ensuring their physical survival. Regarding the Holocaust, Jews can cry out “Never again!”; however, a second Holocaust cannot be ruled out. Moreover, a close potential danger is far more serious than a distant potential one. An Iranian nuclear bomb is far more lethal than a few thousand neo-Nazis in eastern Germany or a small number of Islamic radicals in France and England, because the countries where they reside are becoming just as aware of the threat they pose as the Jewish neighbors of these neo-Nazis and Islamic radicals.

The above facts might make one ask, What are the signs that will force Jews to weigh where Jewish survival and the Jewish people’s future are more threatened—America, Europe, or Israel? When will we see Jews deciding, on the basis of this consideration, whether to immigrate to—or emigrate from—Israel? Is Israel on a collision course or is it still possible to navigate a new route?
—Ha’aretz

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Israeli Arabs a Problem, Require Separation
“I want to provide an Israel that is a Jewish, Zionist country.
It’s about what kind of country we want to see in the future.”

Israeli Cabinet minister Avigdor Lieberman said in a UK newspaper interview published recently that Israel’s Arab minority was a “problem” which required “separation” from the Jewish state. “We established Israel as a Jewish country,” the Sunday Telegraph quoted Lieberman as saying. “I want to provide an Israel that is a Jewish, Zionist country. It’s about what kind of country we want to see in the future. Either it will be an [ethnically mixed] country like any other, or it will continue as a Jewish country.”

Lieberman’s interview stirred instant responses from furious politicians, some calling for the immediate dismissal of Lieberman from the government in light of what was called “racist comments.”
Lieberman has often made remarks condemned as racist toward Israel’s Arab minority, which numbers some one and a quarter million people. In June, he was widely quoted as saying that Arab MKs who held contacts with Hamas should be executed.

“Minorities are the biggest problem in the world,” he told the Sunday Telegraph. Asked by the newspaper if citizens of Arab descent should be forced out through territorial redistribution, he said: “I think separation between two nations is the best solution. Cyprus is the best model. Before 1974, the Greeks and Turks lived together and there were frictions and bloodshed and terror.

“After 1974, they constituted all Turks on one part of the island, all Greeks on the other part of the island and there is stability and security.” Told that in Cyprus thousands were forcibly driven from their homes, he replied: “Yes, but the final result was better.”
—excerpted from Ha’aretz

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A peace-and-justice worker with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jerusalem recently wrote this letter to her constituents.

By Rev. Julie Rowe
Who is on the Lord’s Side?

A Pennsylvanian minister, Rev. Eric Schaefer of Trinity Lutheran Church, preached last month about his first visit here. He was surprised by the reality of the Palestinian Christians, he said, the reality of their life under curfew, their homes that had been destroyed, land that had been confiscated. He said it was a rude awakening to realize that his assumption that God was on the side of the Jewish people and Israel was not an innocuous belief, but one that had very real consequences for the Palestinians and created serious issues of justice and ethics. He referenced the song by Bob Dylan, with God on Our Side, a slightly irreverent critique of all of the wars America has fought assuming that “God was on Our Side,” and wondered aloud which side of this conflict God would be on.

And what would God’s side be? Jesus gives us some ideas. God’s side is standing for and with the poor and powerless. God’s side is standing for peace in the face of violence and war, “turning the other cheek.” God’s side is realizing that God through Jesus Christ is calling us to be peacemakers even in the face of opposing forces all claiming God’s direction.

“The only problem is that unquestioning support of one side means, by definition, that there are ramifications for another side.”

This song kept going through my mind last month when we had a cacophony of religious feasts all playing out at the same time, perhaps each religion believing that God is on ‘their’ side. The Muslim Holy Month of Ramadan began the same day as the Jewish New Year, Rosh HaShanah, then Yom Kippur/Day of Atonement a few weeks later followed by the weeklong Jewish holiday of Succot. During that week, Christian Zionists come from all over the world to support Israel at the International Christian Embassy’s Feast of Tabernacles.

The only problem is that unquestioning support of one side means, by definition, that there are ramifications for another side. In order for the Jewish people and the foreign Christians to have access to their holy sites, the Israeli government felt it necessary to close down the Palestinian streets to all, and access to the Muslim Al Aqsa Mosque for many men. Even though international law calls for all to have access to their holy sites and to Jerusalem, the reality is that many Muslim men are kept from praying in Jerusalem.

“Again recently, the US vetoed a Security Council resolution
condemning the Israeli shelling in Gaza that killed 20 people.
As usual, they were the only veto.”

During the week of the Feast of Tabernacles, Jerusalem swarms with Christian Zionists whose beliefs vary from naïve, simple unquestioning support of Israel to an avid belief that Israel must have control of all of the Holy Land and rebuild the Temple before Jesus will come again. The more extreme ones believe that anything you do to achieve a just settlement of land distribution between Palestinians and Israelis —such as a two-state solution as recommended in the Road Map—is therefore against God’s will and must be contested. So even working for peace is against God’s will.

This belief that God is on Israel’s side is well-entrenched and widespread. Despite the contention that the US is an honest broker for peace, the facts tell a quite different story. Again recently, the US vetoed a Security Council resolution condemning the Israeli shelling in Gaza that killed 20 people. As usual, they were the only veto.

“This is not a political battle at all.
It is a contest over whether or not the word of God is true.”

Rev. Robert Smith spoke at a recent hearing about Christian Zionism and reminded the audience of some of these examples: In December 2001, for instance, Senator James Inhofe said on the Senate floor, “We are Israel’s best friend in the world because of the character we have as a nation… This is not a political battle at all. It is a contest over whether or not the word of God is true.”

In May 2002, Dick Armey of Texas said on national television, “I’m content to have Israel grab the entire West Bank… I happen to believe that the Palestinians should leave… I am content to have Israel occupy that land which it now occupies, and to have those people who have been aggressors against Israel retired to some other arena.”

We live in a time where we can no longer justify our foreign policies by claiming God is on our side, or that whatever we do is right because we are the good guys. Religion—and what people are doing in God’s name—is becoming much too dangerous for that. We have to define what is right based on the actions themselves rather than who does them. People here, for example, look at the fact that 400 Palestinians have been killed since June, many of them civilians, women, and children—20 people in one house, as they were sleeping in their beds in Gaza. They call that terror, and they don’t understand why the rest of the world doesn’t.
—Adapted, and used with permission.

By Ron Kampeas
“Reducing everything to a religious dimension confuses the issue.”
Palestinian Laments Christian Plight

Dr. Bernard Sabella’s message as a Palestinian Christian is this: his people are leaving the Holy Land. But so are Muslims and Jews, and it is all part of the same problem. Sabella, a Christian in the Palestinian Authority Parliament, and a sociologist who specializes in his community at Bethlehem University, toured Washington last month in an effort to tamp down the aftereffects of an especially nasty Washington fracas this summer over who was making Holy Land Christians suffer more, Jews or Muslims?

The problem is the question, Sabella said last week. “Reducing everything to a religious dimension confuses the issue. The problem is a failure of political will by both Palestinians and Israelis to come to an accommodation,” he said. “It is leading Palestinian Christians and Muslims, and young Jewish Israelis who are promising professionals, to leave the country.”

Questions about why Christians in the Holy Land have dwindled in a century from about 10 percent of the population to barely two percent have dogged the ancient community. There are about 120,000 Christians in Israel and another 50,000 in the Palestinian areas. Their fate captures the imagination of Christians worldwide.

“Palestinian Christians are increasingly finding themselves caught in the middle of a bipolar situation between Islamic and Jewish extremism.”

Columnist Robert Novak, a Jewish convert to Roman Catholicism who is a persistent critic of Israel, launched the latest broadside in May when he revealed that US Rep. Henry Hyde (R) had written to President Bush outlining the plight of Christians. Hyde wanted Bush to take up the issue with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

Novak quoted Hyde as saying Israel’s policies, particularly the West Bank security barrier and settlement expansion, “are irreversibly damaging the dwindling Christian community.”

A month later, Hyde delivered a more nuanced statement to his committee’s human rights subcommittee, saying, “Palestinian Christians are increasingly finding themselves caught in the middle of a bipolar situation between Islamic and Jewish extremism.” But by then the battle already had been joined by two of Israel’s staunchest supporters in Congress, Reps. Joseph Crowley and Michael McCaul In mid-June, the lawmakers asked colleagues to sign a resolution blaming “the systematic destruction of the oldest Christian community in the world” on the Palestinian Authority.

“If you have a job, if you have security,
you won’t leave the country.”

A Roman Catholic who lives in a village within the Jerusalem municipal border, Sabella said the dramatic attacks and counterattacks of the political debate concealed the crisis’ impact on working people. “If you have a job, if you have security, you won’t leave the country,” he said.

He notes that Palestinian Christian diaspora communities are better established, making departure more tempting for them than for Muslims. Christians are better educated, likelier to get work abroad and less likely to have large families. He said that instability in the region derives from Israel’s presence in the West Bank and noted the disruption occasioned by the security barrier, which he says is frustrating commerce and travel between the Bethlehem area, a Christian center, and the rest of the West Bank.

Sabella does not blame Israel alone for the crisis and said he resents political pressure to do so. “I’m told, as a Palestinian Legislative Council member, ‘You have to stress all the time that it is Israeli policies.’” Instead he blames both sides for not getting their political houses in order and negotiating a two-state solution to the crisis.

Sabella is wary of the Hamas government’s Islamization of what he believes should be a secular Palestinian society, and he acknowledges “sensitivities” between Muslims and Christians, without enumerating them.

“Polls show that the attacks on churches
were unpopular among Muslims.”

Among these are the aftereffects of the recent intifada, when Muslim fighters holed up in and defaced Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity, one of Christendom’s most sacred shrines, and Muslims berated Christians for not volunteering their lives for the conflict. “We tend to be not frank in our relationship,” he said of Christian-Muslim relations. “We tend to go around the important issues.”

Sabella insists such attacks are not systematic—polls show that the attacks on churches were unpopular among Muslims—and he begs for his community not to be ripped away from the broader Palestinian polity. “We are part and parcel of our Palestinian society,” he said.

It’s clear, however, that Sabella also feels a particular responsibility to Christians; he confesses to checking daily on the status of 2,500 Christians in the Gaza Strip as that region descends into chaos.
Right now the situation of the Gazan Christians is stable, he said, but added: “If it becomes worse, my expectation is that people will leave.”
—excerpted from Jewish Telegraphic Agency

 

By Dow Marmur
Rabbi Emeritus, Holy Blossom Temple,
Toronto, Canada
In the Style of the Prophets

Paraphrasing a thrice-repeated sentence in the Book of Judges, David Grossman, the distinguished Israeli novelist, speaking at the rally commemorating the anniversary of the assassinated former Israeli prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, lamented that “this time there is no king in Israel.” He was referring to the lack of political leadership in the Jewish state.

“I am totally secular,” Grossman said, “and yet in my eyes the establishment and the very existence of the State of Israel is a miracle of sorts that happened to us as a nation—a political, national, human miracle.”

There are, of course, also religious ways to reflect on the miracle. My own speculation suggests that God took a calculated risk. Realizing that, because of the intensified persecution and extermination of the Jews brought about by modernity, God decided to suspend the verdict, so often articulated in our traditional sources, that we have been exiled because of our sins. God would grant us conditional parole and allow us to return to our land in the hope that this time we would prove ourselves worthy of the gift.

But Grossman believes that we are in danger of squandering that gift, because “people leading Israel today are unable to connect Israelis to their identity.” Rabin, on the other hand, “decided to act, because he discerned very wisely that Israeli society would not be able to sustain itself endlessly in a state of an unresolved conflict,” and he “realized long before many others that life in a climate of violence, occupation, terror, anxiety, and hopelessness extracts a price Israel cannot afford.”

“…as the ancient texts have it, it was because of our sins
that we were driven out from our land.”

In the style of the Prophets, Grossman urges us to look at ourselves before identifying the sins of our enemies. He blames the current Israeli leadership for being indifferent to the failure of the peace process, for the “harsh blow to democracy” by taking [extreme right-wing] Avigdor Lieberman into the cabinet, for neglecting the poor, the foreign workers and minorities. I read these charges as sins that may bring us once again into exile. For, as the ancient texts have it, it was because of our sins that we were driven out from our land.”

Anticipating the criticism, which came fast and furious, that his was a rant of a grieving father upon the loss of a son (in Israel’s last war), Grossman said: “The calamity that struck my family and myself with the falling of our son, Uri, does not grant me any additional rights in the public discourse, but I believe that the experience of facing death and the loss brings with it sobriety and lucidity.”

Though it’s more comforting to dismiss Grossman’s charges by listening to his critics, we owe it to ourselves, instead, to learn from the truths of his sobriety, lucidity, and pain.

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