An Exegetical Challenge
In the town where I grew up, there was a synagogue that had the distinction of having hired the first woman rabbi in the United States. I grew up with friends who spoke openly of their affection for Israel, and I absorbed from this environment a strong belief in the necessity of its existence.
As I grew older, I came to recognize a measure of justice in the Palestinian cause. But it was hard for me to separate the legitimate claims of the Palestinian people from the venality of the PLO, which I associated with acts like the slaughter of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972.
While the demographics of my hometown may have been somewhat unique, I think that my viewpoint was relatively common among Americans who grew up in the last third of the 20th century. Israel was seen as an ally in the struggle against communism and a country that shared the liberal democratic values of the West.
Much has changed since that time.
The collapse of communism and the rise of Islamic radicalism have altered the way that Western leaders assess the importance of their relationship with Israel. The growing military strength of Israel and the waning of pan-Arabism have weakened the case that Israel faces an existential threat from its immediate neighbors. While the tactics of the Palestinians have often done as much harm as good to their cause, few question that their suffering is an injustice that requires a remedy. All of this has served to weaken Israel’s historic ties with the West.
I want to suggest, though, that Israel’s dilemma is also exegetical and theological. The country’s recent history reflects an underlying tension between two traditions in the Jewish scriptures. The first tradition, rooted in Israel’s early history, emphasizes the Abrahamic and Mosaic covenants and God’s promise of the land (cf. Deu 9:5; 34:4). Israel is a people chosen from among the nations to be God’s own.
The second tradition—influenced both by the emergence of the monarchy and the later influence of Hellenism—places more emphasis on the Davidic covenant, the promise of kingship to David and his descendants. During and after the exile, this promise was increasingly viewed eschatologically, with the restoration of the Davidic monarchy tied to a future where all nations would come to worship the God of Israel (cf Isa 2:2-5). In this tradition, Israel exists not only for itself but also to be a light to the nations.
The redactors of the Jewish scriptures have skillfully woven these two traditions together and a faithful reading of these texts requires that they both be honored. Nevertheless, I don’t think it is wrong to suggest that Israel’s historic ties with the West are more bound up with the second tradition. Particularly in its early years, Israel’s nation-building efforts had identifiable connections to the post-war reconstruction of Europe. The later emergence of the Cold War reinforced the idea that Israel was part of a broader movement to defend and extend the global reach of liberal democracy.
The causes of Israel’s embrace of its more “particularist” traditions are complex. Much of it has to do with the resources that tradition provides for maintaining unity in the face of an external threat. Some of it has to do with Europe’s increasing secularism, making it harder for Israel to appear to a shared religious tradition when seeking allies there. Perhaps the greatest problem is that the “universalist” tradition, precisely because of its connections with modern liberalism, has always co-existed uneasily with the idea of an ethno-religious state.
The problem that Israel faces, though, is that the “particularlist” tradition comes with serious risks. To the extent that it isolates Israel from any project larger than its own survival, its conflict with the Palestinians and its Arab neighbors becomes just another zero-sum ethnic conflict of which the world has no shortage.
This is not to say that Americans will abandon Israel in the sense of becoming strong partisans of the Palestinian cause. They may well, though, increasingly regard it as another faraway place with intractable problems that the United States has neither the time nor the resources to solve.
There are times when I think that Israel has gone too far to come back, that its political institutions simply won’t allow it to make the internal changes it needs to make peace and survive in a form that its founders would recognize. My hope is that Israel will prove me wrong and that it will find the resources in its own tradition to chart a new path for its future.
The country’s recent history reflects an underlying tension between two traditions in the Jewish scriptures
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You could probably add a third scriptural tradition as well, that of the Maccabean era, not to mention the later historical tradition of the fighting war with Rome, which ended with Masada and the destruction of Jerusalem. They will not go gentle into the night.
I think the bad tradition of violent conquest of the Land (with the Palestinians starring as Canaanites to be exterminated) lives on among some fundamentalists. The Davidic tradition opening onto the messianic eschatology of the Prophets gives a more acceptable sense to Israel’s divine election, to be a beacon of peace and justice to the entire world. The New Testament presentation of the mission of Jesus builds on this. Sigmund Freud wanted the new Jewish homeland to be in Africa so that the Jews could escape being saddled with their past. Tom Doyle’s proposal that the Vatican be sold to Disneyland is another wish for a break with an encumbering mythic legacy. In Ireland we are now likely to elect a former IRA leader President — again saddling ourselves with an unwanted violent past. How does one get rid of these horrible entanglements of History? How achieve the purification of memory that JPII called for?
Peter, I’d like to leave this link, which I left in Margaret’s most recent blog entry just now:
http://www.tnr.com/article/world/95020/un-palestine-israel-security-council-statehood
As you see, it’s from a certified “liberal” web site. It’s worth reading, I think, to offer you a little different perspective on things.
You seem to be saying, above, if I read you correctly:
that what’s changed is the Israelis have got a better military now than they did several decades ago. So? How does that change the fact that the entire Islamic world is arrayed against them? Six million people versus a billion. And among that billion, there’s a lot more firepower than the Israeli military has. If I knew how to graph that quickly, I’d do it and link to it. It would look impressive.
Joseph and Peter, no matter how you tweak it scripturally, Israel was created to be a homeland for the Jews. It didn’t have to be in Palestine – consideration was given to putting it in Africa. The nations that did it didn’t do it to fulfill scripture, but to make some reparation and solution for the awfulness of what was done to the Jews by Germany and its allies in the war.
Thus, Israel’s legitimacy in international law, historical precedent, whatever, has nothing to do with religion. It’s certainly legitimate to discuss that, but no matter how your interpretations spin out, they don’t affect the legitimacy of the state of Israel.
I am not of course questioning the legitimacy of the state of Israel, but the mentality of people like the rightists who forcibly settled on Palestinian territory. I think Israelis are wise to insist that their State has nothing to do with religion, but given the location and the historical associations and the investment of Jewish and Christian fundamentalists, it must be very hard to keep this clear.
“How does that change the fact that the entire Islamic world is arrayed against them? Six million people versus a billion. And among that billion, there’s a lot more firepower than the Israeli military has. If I knew how to graph that quickly, I’d do it and link to it. It would look impressive.”
This is the kind of nonsense that people have come to lap up in the United States. There are not a billion angry Muslims just waiting to attack Israel at the right moment. Israel doesn’t get to do what it wants with Palestinians and their land and when the world reacts claim that it is all just antisemitism and knee-jerk Muslim hatred of Israel. Israel DOES have more firepower; it has a major nuclear arsenal. There is no combination of Muslim armies (even if these individual and independent nations ever find the will to combine, which if you have been paying attention, they won’t) that could defeat Israel. What Israel demands from the world is that the world does not treat it by the same standards it treats every other country. And the only country left that buys this even partially is the United States.
FWIW – I don’t believe Israel requires the entire Arab world to be arrayed against it to be concerned about its security. That’s ’70′s thinking. Hezbollah alone has shown that it is a major problem for Israeli security. So long as Iran and Syria are permitted to sponsor large-scale and lethal terrorism against Israel with impunity, the region will never stabilize.
What is to be done about Iran and Syria, and whose job is it to do it? If Israel doing something about it militarily is the worst possible solution, what are the better solutions?
That Turkey and Egypt now seem to be turning against Israel is another ominous sign: both changes are attributable to internal political shifts within their respective countries. The so-called Arab Spring, even were it to result in regime change in Tehran and Damascus, may not bloom in peace for Israel and Palestine.
When I was young, I thought that the state of Israel would never last, because the Jews were condemned to wander the face of the earth as punishment for their part in the death of Jesus. (“May His blood be on us and our children.”)
I have no idea where I learned that. By the way, it was pre-Vatican II.
The big question for me is still: why do we talk about “the strategic interests of the U. S. in israel”? What strategic interests? In the world of realpolitik our only strategic interest in the Middle East is Arab oil, and as long as they need to sell their oil to us, that won’t be a real problem.
So why do we support Israel even when it acts badly and against our own best interests? The only reasons I find are 1) that many American Jews have historically given generously to Democrat politicians and 2) because the states of New York and Florida are among the largest and their elections’ outcomes sometimes hinge on the vote of their Jewish constituents.
“Hezbollah alone has shown that it is a major problem for Israeli security. So long as Iran and Syria are permitted to sponsor large-scale and lethal terrorism against Israel with impunity, the region will never stabilize.”
They are not sponsoring “large-scale” terrorism and although it is lethal the ratio of Palestinian to Israeli deaths since 2000 is about 9:1. The terrorism isn’t happening in a vacuum. And it is not a threat to Israel’s survival either.
I think it’s time that we recognize that there will never be a “two-state solution”. Israel wants the West Bank; they just don’t want the people who are living there. The state of Israel is not supporting major settlement expansion with their interconnecting infrastructures just to hand it all over to another country. So perhaps we should not feel bad that the Palestinians will be unable to secure recognition as a state from the United Nations.
What’s left is that either Israel expels the Palestinians or absorbs them. I don’t think that even the United States could tolerate the ethnic cleansing of the West Bank. And that leaves only one option. Israel must become a secular state and the Palestinians must be given full citizenship within it.
The creation of a state out of two or more hostile populations is of course very difficult. But I think we have to turn here to the recent example of South Africa, which Israel is coming to resemble more and more. Before the end of apartheid, we heard the same kinds of arguments from South Africa that we are hearing from Israel right now. Major external forces (in South Africa’s case, Black Africa) were arrayed against them. There would be a blood bath if the majority were given the franchise. The white population would be expelled. The black population in any case was under the control of radicals (the ANC) and would never embrace democratic principles. South Africa was the region’s only democracy and a bulwark of western influence in a hostile part of the world, etc. etc.
None of the predictions of disaster came true.
I would argue the Israel doesn’t really have a Palestinian problem any more. It has a problem with a large indigenous population living within its borders. It’s time that Israel gave them their rights.
The hopes for a two-state solution appeal because in theory it looks like a more peaceful outcome than a one-state solution. Increasingly many Israelis and Palestinians are giving up that hope and look with forboding on the alternative.
Here is Ali Abunimah’s take in Foreign Affairs:
“The plans for truncated and circumscribed Palestinian statehood, which successive American and Israeli governments have been prepared to discuss, fall far short of minimal Palestinian demands and have no hope of being implemented (as the dramatic failure of the Obama administration’s peace effort in its first two years underscores). Even President Obama, in his speech to the Israeli lobbying group AIPAC last May, called the status quo “unsustainable.” But he offered no new answers.
“These, then, are the lines along which the battle for the future of Palestine are going to be fought, no matter how many U.S. envoys head to Ramallah and Jerusalem to try to revive negotiations in which no one believes. Meanwhile, the UN bid should be seen not as the means to give birth to the Palestinian state but as the formal funeral of the two-state solution and the peace process that was supposed to bring it about.”
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/68268/ali-abunimah/a-formal-funeral-for-the-two-state-solution?page=show
I don’t believe that a genuine one-state solution a la post-apartheid South Africa is possible in Israel/Palestine. What is emerging is a one-state solution a la apartheid South Africa, and it will only serve to further delegitimate and isolate Israel. This is a tragedy, mostly, although not entirely, of Israel’s doing. Unlike the Palestianians, it has had far more power to do otherwise. It seems unlikely that the US will do anything to prevent this tragedy and likely that we will magnify its consequences. Any hope rests with Europeans and a small segment of people within the populace in Israel and within the leadership among the Palestinians.
What is emerging is a one-state solution
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Except that we don’t have one state here. Palestine exists as a de facto separate and independent state. The entire world recognizes the de facto self-governing state of Palestine, and it has for a long time. That the i’s have not been dotted, nor the t’s crossed, on some formal “de jure” recognition does not detract from the reality.
The same absurd exegesis is what justified the Crusades with the chopping of heads of “Infidels” as a just dessert for those who dared occupy the Holy Land of God’s chosen. Of course, Jews had greater reason to have the protection of their own land. It was only at Vatican II that the Church disapproved violence against Jews. The Jews are not threatened now. Extremists Jews have taken over a long suffering and valued people.
“Except that we don’t have one state here. Palestine exists as a de facto separate and independent state. The entire world recognizes the de facto self-governing state of Palestine, and it has for a long time. That the i’s have not been dotted, nor the t’s crossed, on some formal “de jure” recognition does not detract from the reality.”
Not true, unless you want say that it is under foreign military occupation. It’s a Bantustan.
Ann, you ask “So why do we support Israel even when it acts badly and against our own best interests?”
Maybe for the reasons Obama gave in his speech ….
“Israel is surrounded by neighbors that have waged repeated wars against it. Israel’s citizens have been killed by rockets fired at their houses and suicide bombs on their buses. Israel’s children come of age knowing that throughout the region, other children are taught to hate them. Israel, a small country of less than eight million people, look out at a world where leaders of much larger nations threaten to wipe it off of the map. The Jewish people carry the burden of centuries of exile and persecution, and fresh memories of knowing that six million people were killed simply because of who they are. ”
Maybe I’m naive, but those are the reasons I support Israel.
I agree with Peter about the one-state solution, although I think that Israel is already an apartheid state and I seem to remember that a similar one-state solution in South Africa seemed impossible for many years. But both demographics and justice will not allow the apartheid state to be an ultimate solution. Israel can talk about history and fear all it wants and it can even pretend that it is entirely innocent and does not deserve any of the rancor it is getting. But the Palestinians are a people without basic civil rights and Israel is the one denying them. This cannot last.
Thanks, Crystal, but as bad as some of the Palestinians have been, the Israelis have been worse.
Ann, at the risk of ridicule, I’d say because we’re family. You don’t disown your mother or your brother if they say and do things you wish they wouldn’t.
Well, if you say so. We’ll get right on it.
“Well, if you say so. We’ll get right on it.”
Have you ever seen a map of what Israel had in mind for the “Palestinian State”?
http://unitedmethodistdivestment.com/QuNAnsUMDivest.html
(scroll about half way down).
Have you ever seen a map of what the settlements look like?
http://communities.washingtontimes.com/multimedia/image/israel-palestine-mapjpg/
So why don’t you tell us what’s really happening?
“Ann, at the risk of ridicule, I’d say because we’re family. You don’t disown your mother or your brother if they say and do things you wish they wouldn’t.”
And if your mother is a drunk, you don’t keep letting her have access to the liquor cabinet.
“Ann, at the risk of ridicule, I’d say because we’re family. You don’t disown your mother or your brother if they say and do things you wish they wouldn’t.’
David S. –
And what about the Palestinians? They’re not our brothers? I thought Jesus said that we’re all children of God.