Posted on 03/29/2006 4:44:39 AM PST by SJackson
Liberal Jews do find a common language with liberal Christians on a host of social issues but when it comes to Israel they often part ways.
American Evangelist Pat Robertson's pronouncement that Ariel Sharon's stroke was an act of Divine retribution for his abandonment of the Gaza settlements - though he subsequently apologized - was a frightening reminder of how extreme the views of those on the religious Right can be. Sadly, Robertson has something in common with some on the religious Right in Israel who have expressed similar sentiments.
Yet, even as the Israeli Right can draw support from the Christian Right, the converse is not true for the Israeli Left. The liberal Protestant stance on Israel, particularly with calls from some quarters for divestment, makes an alliance between liberal Jews and Presbyterians, Anglicans, Episcopalians, Lutherans - to name but a few - tenuous.
Liberal Jews do find a common language with liberal Christians on a host of social issues - abortion rights, gay and lesbian rights, separation of religion and state - but when it comes to Israel they often part ways.
Not that there is genuine disagreement about Israel's actions in the territories. Here both communities are on the same page. However, the methods that many liberal Protestants employ to pressure the Israeli government to abstain from certain actions carried out against the Palestinians strike those of us in the Israeli peace and human rights movements as disingenuous.
The challenge is: How do we Jewish liberals maintain our partnership with liberal Protestants on social/religious issues and, at the same time, reject their criticism of Israel, which often lacks any balance? Concomitantly, how do we avoid going over to the "other side," making common cause with Evangelicals on matters related to Israel, when on so many other issues we hold antithetical positions?
• WE need to engage our natural Christian partners in an honest dialogue and not dismiss them as closet anti-Semites. Additionally, we must distinguish between edicts that emanate from those Protestants who sit in some ivory-tower headquarters and the average parishioner. Rarely have I encountered general agreement among local ministers and their constituents with their respective leaders' pronouncements on divestment from Israel or frequent condemnation of Israel's behavior.
• Instead of divestment, which would most likely redound negatively on Palestinians, we need to lobby for investment in organizations and institutions within Israel and the Palestinian Authority that jointly promote peace and dialogue.
• Because the Jewish people's ancient historical ties to the Land of Israel for over two millennia seem not to bear weight on liberal Christians as they do with their right-wing co-religionists, we need to help them understand Israel's present history, correcting their notion as if the Jewish state began in 1967 with the occupation. We need to remind them that Israel was established by an act of the international community when the United Nations voted to divide Palestine into two states, one Jewish and one Arab. Israel accepted the UN ruling, but, as soon as the Jewish state was declared on May 15, 1948, six Arab countries invaded Israel in order to "drive it into the sea." After the armistice agreements signed in Rhodes in 1949, first with Egypt on February 24 and later with Jordan on April 3, it was Jordan and Egypt that occupied the West Bank and Gaza until the Six Day War.
• We need to sensitize our Protestant friends to our narrative that dates back from the time of the exiles, the Crusades, the Inquisition, Cossacks, Czars, Nazis, Arab armies, terrorists to today's virulent anti-Semitism that spews forth from virtually every corner of the Muslim world. If one wants to see inflammatory cartoons, just look at the Arab press's portrayal of Jews, which dwarfs Nazi caricatures of the Jewish people as does Hamas's charter make Hitler's Mein Kampf look moderate.
• We need to help them couch their language in such a way that Israelis can listen to their legitimate concerns.
• We need to tell them that their constant criticism of Israel, accompanied by calls for any form of divestment, only serves cynical attempts not just in the Muslim world, but also in some European capitals and on college campuses to delegitimize the existence of a Jewish state. With the election of Hamas, fueled by a dramatic increase in Islamic fundamentalism that calls for Israel's destruction, one must be careful when taking Israel to task for troublesome moral actions.
•We therefore need to point out that Israel must be judged by universal moral standards. Living as we do with constant terrorism, compared to other countries, not only in the Middle East where we are surrounded by dictatorships, religious fanatics, military despots, feudal lords, sheikhdoms and monarchies, but also to Western democracies, Israel is a model of restraint.
If similar standards of behavior applied to Israel were equally applied elsewhere, then we should expect vociferous and unrelenting condemnation of the manifold abuses in the Arab world; and most certainly of Palestinian violence in Israel and within the Palestinian Authority.
• We need to disabuse them of the view that Christian Arabs are suffering solely because of the occupation. In his book The Body and the Blood, former Middle East bureau chief of the Boston Globe Charles Sennott traces the disappearance of Christianity from Nazareth to Bethlehem to Jerusalem to Egypt to Lebanon. For most of the history in this region, Jews were not in control and it was, and primarily still is, the constant brow-beating by Muslims that has caused Christians to emigrate from the Middle East, reducing them to an insignificant minority in the place of their origins.
• We need to convince our liberal Protestant friends to emulate the Evangelicals. While we and they must discard many of the Christian Right's social and political stances, as well as reject their theological belief that Israel is a passageway to the return of the "messiah," at which time all peoples, the Jews being the first among them, will accept Jesus, we must recognize that when Scuds fell and suicide bombings were going off, it was these very Evangelicals who flocked to Israel to show their solidarity with the Jewish state. Such commitment lends both credibility and authority to their positions - an essential ingredient lacking in the liberal Christian community, putting into question its commitment to the existence of a Jewish state in its historical homeland.
Finally, we need to emphasize that such a commitment to the existence of the State of Israel is essential to guarantee a continuing dialogue between any Christian denomination and any religious and/or secular stream within the Jewish world.
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You could simply recognize that under the liberal platitudes, they don't like you one bit.
Well said.
Oh no! Cracks in the wall of liberal 'solidarity'! Quick, someone call George Bush a fascist, or hope for another American soldier's death in Iraq!
Looks like some of the liberal leaders are realizing that some Jews are waking up, and realizing that the left are not their friends. Just trying to do something before they explore the offer of friendship from the Jewish and Christian right.
It is a shame that they don't get it. The left screams nazis but says yes to the enemy by trying to sing cumba ya. The left forgot the Hollicaust or says it was not that bad. The left is selling Israel out and saying keep giving that mouse a cookie and it won't want a glass of milk. They leave the west bank to signs, today this tommorrow the rest of Israel. But what makes me mad, when they go over board over there who has to step in the USA. Isn't the middle east big enough that they have to cut up the size of Rode Island. The truth is it is nothing between Israel and the sea.
Duh. Sorry, but your "liberal protestant friends" don't give a fig whether you live, or die like a dog. Did you think that just because you agree on the right to kill babies, that they would support your fight for survival? That makes no sense. If they are happy to kill their own children, why should they break a sweat over what happens to yours? Fools.
It seems the left wants it both ways. They want to further their secular/humanist agenda while at the same time appear supportive of Israel. It seems the liberal Jew is at the proverbial fork in the road where there need to reassess their liberal political history.
Yes, the Christian Right fully supports Israel. Now it is time for the liberal Jews to return to their Judiac conservative values and adopt values like the Christian Right.
Time for liberal Jews to wake up. The left has aligned itself with radical islam and has crossed the line between "anti-zionism" and anti-semitism. Our future is on the right.
Most Jewish libs are libs first and foremost and have little to do wth Judaism-except when they write to the NYT stating" as aconcerned Jew I find Israel's actionsapalling etc..."
Jewishlibs define the termJINO, unfortuately many gentiles stereotype Jews as these clowns.
David Forman is the shmuck from "Rabbis for Human Rights" who urged his Palestinian comrades to make fake complaints against Jews for committing "olive tree massacre."
Now all his liberal CINO comrades are pissing on his head and he thinks it's just a spring rain.
It's just a little misunderstanding, that's all.
Good point! Liberal jews acknowledge their heritage when it is expedient for them. But as a former liberal, I continue to hold out hope that JINOS will wake up to their fate if they stay on the current path.
Liberal write fiction but they never have mastered truth.
"Looks like some of the liberal leaders are realizing that some Jews are waking up, and realizing that the left are not their friends. Just trying to do something before they explore the offer of friendship from the Jewish and Christian right."
I'm Jewish and I didn't get that from the article at all. What liberal Jews are doing, and what this article reflects, is continuing to do "whatever it takes" to remain part of the Left. This is hard for liberal Jews to do now because being part of the Left is coming to mean: 1) being anti-semitic and 2) openly supporting the complete destruction of Israel.
Accepting these two principles is difficult for liberal Jews---but they are slowly making progress in this area!
Hehe. I'm also Jewish, but, I see this a little bit more optimistically than you. At least in this circumstance.
"Yes, the Christian Right fully supports Israel. Now it is time for the liberal Jews to return to their Judiac conservative values and adopt values like the Christian Right."
Amen to that. However, it seems that all that's gonna happen is what's happened in the Christian protestant movement. A polarization: some Jews will move towards Orthodoxy, and others towards secularism. *sighs*
No teaching of the history and facts, no amount of logic, no pointing out of self-interest, no appeal to past alliances and victories, will erase these crimes beyond the pale to liberal Protestants.
Stuck on stupid.
Wise the f*** up!
"Hehe. I'm also Jewish, but, I see this a little bit more optimistically than you. At least in this circumstance."
Hopefully, you are right and I'm wrong. Over the past four presidential campaigns the number of Jews voting Republican has risen from 11% to 24%. This is a pretty good trend, but some Jews I talk to feel that we have "topped out". I have the feeling we have gotten a good percentage of the Orthodox, and that is about as far as it goes.
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