Israel at Forty

Steps Israelis can take to make their next birthday happier.

Forty years ago, Harry S. Truman dubbed himself with the biblical sobriquet “The New Cyrus” and made the United States the first nation to give official recognition to the State of Israel. This month Israel celebrates its fortieth birthday and toasts its successes. Recognizing the long history of Christian involvement with the Jewish state as well as Israel’s incredible achievements, we extend our best wishes.

Without American Christian support, Israel today would be in a much more difficult situation than it is Coalitions of evangelicals support (and to some extent determine) U.S. foreign policy with respect to Israel. Unfortunately, we have often let our interpretations of prophecy overshadow questions of justice and the goal of peace.

Underdog No Longer

Americans love an underdog. There has been much sympathy for a precarious Jewish state surrounded by hostile nations. Yet Israel—with its swift military victories and pre-emptive strikes—is no longer at a clear disadvantage in the Middle East. And of course, the increased turmoil in the occupied territories of Gaza and the West Bank raises serious questions in many minds. However, several points must be kept in mind.

First, there is no such single entity as “the Palestinians.” Just as Jewish opinion is sharply divided over what to do with the occupied territories, Palestinian goals vary widely. Many moderate Palestinians within Israel have long worked to improve civil rights and decrease racial discrimination. But the current conflict in the occupied territories is the product of fervent nationalism on the part of the Palestinians who are organizing the demonstrations. They are no longer protesting simply to gain rights, but to gain sympathy for a restored Palestinian state.

The problem with nationalism is that it breeds fervor, and not necessarily the spirit of negotiation and compromise. And uncompromising fervor begets violence. The Israelis know this, for their own nation was born in the midst of such nationalistic violence. On April 9, 1948, just weeks before the United Nations declaration that made Israeli statehood possible, members of Zionism’s unofficial militia killed more than two hundred Arab men, women, and children at Deir Yassin, near Jerusalem.

Nationalistic survival has often meant armed struggle. But as the increasingly violent struggle for a Palestinian state proceeds, Americans and Israelis must not forget the civil rights work of more moderate Palestinians. These moderates have imbibed the values of constitutionalism and due process—not important values in much of the Middle East—and their leadership must be acknowledged over the more militant nationalistic voices.

Justice For All

Second, Christians must support policies that further justice and equity. An administrator of the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem, which focuses Christian support for Israel, made a curious statement. Asked what solution he would look for to the problems of displaced Palestinians, the administrator called it “a tragic situation [with] conflicting individual and civil rights” and stated that “those particular rights are mutually exclusive.” The spokesman said that approaches that seek equity only “perpetuate tragedy.” He claimed his organization’s goal was “to have the moral courage to choose one of those … sets of rights and act on them.”

This view, based on a popular understanding of Israel and Bible prophecy, raises disturbing questions for Christians: Will we support a political goal based on a historically late interpretation of prophecy? (The most popular view that links a restored Jewish state to end-time events originated in the nineteenth century with a member of an anti-Church of England sect.) Or will we pursue goals based on biblical concerns for justice? Clearly, biblical goals of justice are far more solidly established than any particular interpretation of prophecy.

Besides a just settlement for displaced Palestinians, the Israeli justice system should be a matter for Christian Israel-watchers to pray about. In an interview with a Palestinian lawyer, we learned of a shocking Israeli government report released last fall. Over 90 percent of the convictions in Israeli military courts are based not on testimony but on sworn confessions. The clear implication? Torture. Indeed, after the release of the Landau Report, Israel’s internal-security police admitted using torture, but excused their practice on national-security grounds. Military courts often take from civil courts any case they call a security matter. In such a case, a person can be held incommunicado for 16 days before being allowed to see his lawyer.

A country that values both the prophetic tradition and constitutional government—as Israel does—should make justice a high priority.

Compromising For Peace

Third, compromise and partition are classic ingredients of keeping peace in the Holy Land. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is a microcosm of this approach. The disunity of the Christian church is evident. A few square feet here belong to the Armenian Orthodox; another patch of stone belongs to the Roman Catholics; over there the Greek Orthodox have an altar. And a Muslim family administers the whole place to prevent interchurch squabbles.

Marcel Dubois, chairman of the philosophy department at Hebrew University, who serves on the Vatican commission on relations with the Jews, calls this “an antisacrament,” and “at the same time a sign of contradiction and a focus of unity.”

But, says Dubois, “We must not despair.” The subdivision of holy sites, indeed of the whole of Palestine—and the careful maintenance of those divisions—has been the historic solution to the difficulties of sharing a minuscule piece of real estate valued by the world’s monotheistic peoples. Israel, her Arab neighbors, and her displaced Palestinians must pursue negotiation, compromise, partition, and careful maintenance of historic boundaries, if peace is to be maintained.

New Goals For Israel

In spite of all the criticism, there is much to be lauded. In the past 40 years, Israel has achieved the unbelievable. Irrigation and hard work have made agriculture a profitable enterprise where before there was only sand and rock. The residents of the Old City who used to have streets running with sewage in the rainy season now have clean streets and safe drinking water. The Israelis have created tourist resorts, excavated ancient sites, and created a world-class university.

Much has been accomplished. But moral and spiritual accomplishments will be as important to Israel’s future as agriculture and national security goals.

Like most modern states, Israel was born of violent revolution. But Israel continues to find its security in pre-emptive strikes, secretive military courts, and racial oppression—all in the name of national security. These are not the actions of a truly secure state.

We urge Israel to negotiate a settlement with displaced Palestinians and to take seriously the need for some form of Palestinian self-rule. The silly divisions of the Church of’the Holy Sepulchre provoke a smile—but they preserve the peace.

By David Neff.

All The President’S Friends

About the time a flamboyant Bette Midler was singing “You Got to Have Friends,” the Nixon inner circle of Erlichman, Haldeman, Mitchell, and Dean was orchestrating the Watergate break-in—and giving new meaning to the old phrase: “With friends like these …”

A few years later, Jimmy Carter learned that his chief of staff, Hamilton Jordan, was using cocaine; and that his budget director, Bert Lance, had a clouded financial past.

And now Ronald Reagan finds himself wondering what to do with a beleagured Edwin Meese—the latest embarrassment for an administration that has been plagued by embarrassments (such as former Secretary of the Interior James Watt, former Secretary of Labor Ray Donovan, and former political adviser Lyn Nofziger, to name a few).

Whatever the attorney general’s involvement in the Wedtech scam, this latest gaffe not only raises the usual questions about executive staffing and presidential control, but it begs even deeper questions about voter responsibility for these embarrassing situations that increasingly seem to be more the rule than the exception.

The various conflict-of-interest laws that were an outgrowth of Watergate, and the resulting media concern to be watchdogs of men and women in power, have put Cabinet and Supreme Court nominees and appointments under increasing, albeit sometimes frustrating, scrutiny. On the positive side, this incessant media nitpicking has rediscovered the basic weakness of basing high-level selections solely on ideological purity—an innate political weakness that is consistently exacerbated by the electorate, Left and Right, who picket and write on behalf of ideologues, yet know little about whether or not these same ideologues have the common sense and the moral integrity needed to carry out an administration assignment.

An electorate that plays into this weakness (unwittingly or otherwise) shares in the embarrassment when that weakness is exposed. In the case of the attorney general, for example, his efforts against the pornography industry won wide support from conservative Christians and are surely to be applauded.

But now Meese’s questionable business ethics cannot but cast a pall over those very efforts, not to mention the rest of his conservative agenda, and over all those who support that agenda (including many evangelicals).

There are perhaps two lessons to learn from all of this: First, that administration appointees and staff may indeed be, to our way of thinking, ideologically pure, but that does not, in and of itself, mean we should throw our wholehearted support behind their nomination or continuation in office; and second, that the man we choose to be our next President should possess the wherewithal to understand point one, and select—or dismiss—accordingly.

By Harold B. Smith.

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