Liberal Christians fight a proxy war against the Zionist Entity; other people die

One of the most noteworthy features of the contemporary landscape of religious opinion is the hostility toward Israel among liberal Christians — not only among the mainline Protestant denominations, but also among many Catholics as well (e.g., the editors of the Jesuit magazine, America). Liberal Christians have demanded that their denominations withdraw church investments from companies that do business in or with Israel (the Caterpillar tractor company, for example). Such demands are now a regular feature at church conventions, which also adopt resolutions demanding that Israel withdraw from the occupied territories (the plural form suggests that the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 still has not registered) and that the Israeli government dismantle the so-called security wall. Israel is accused of being an apartheid state (a favorite charge of former South African Anglican Bishop Desmond Tutu), and it is said that Israeli Jews suffer from a holocaust complex; that Zionism is a form of racism; and that the Israeli treatment of Palestinians is like the Nazi treatment of the Jews. Lutherans, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Methodists, Episcopalians, and Unitarians have all adopted various resolutions condemning Israel, but not the Arabs. And although some churches have been persuaded to either modify or even repeal such measures, other, equally hostile proposals seem always to be in the wings, waiting to be pushed forward.

But of all the claims that liberal Christians make about Israel or about the Jews, perhaps the most dangerous and destructive claim is that the very existence of Israel is an offense. It is a very short step from this claim to the open consideration of the possibility of Israel’s not existing at sometime in the near future. And it is of course this particular possibility that inspires so many fervent hopes in so many Arab breasts. And where hope blooms, can action be far behind?

The dream of a world without Israel is the fuel that drives the Arab war against the Jews in the Middle East. This dream is older than the security barrier, the checkpoints, the house demolitions, the settlements, and the occupation. It is older even than the birth of the state of Israel, and has been around for as long as Jews have talked seriously about Jewish nationhood in the Middle East. It therefore makes no difference where Israeli borders are, or whether Palestinians have a capital in Jerusalem, or whether there is or is not a security barrier. It is the very existence of Israel as a nation that is so offensive to Arab and Muslim radicals; and it is their absolute unwillingness to accept a Jewish state, of any size or shape, that has continued to inspire the rejectionists. It is said that the Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. This is why the Arabs said no to a Palestinian state in 1948, and why they have said no ever since, most recently when the government of Ehud Barak offered the possibility of an Arab Palestine on over 90% of the West Bank and 100% of Gaza, with a capital in East Jerusalem and financial compensation for the refugees from 1948. In the face of that offer, Yasser Arafat walked out of the Camp David talks in 2000, and gave the order to commence the Second Intifada. Two years later, after hundreds of Israeli dead and thousands more wounded, Israel began construction of the security barrier. By the time the security barrier had been substantially completed, over 1100 Israelis had been killed and over 8000 wounded. And life for Palestinian Arabs became, necessarily, more restricted and more unpleasant.

It would therefore seem obvious that anyone interested in peace between Israel and the Arabs would be eager to disabuse Arabs of the notion that Israel might someday cease to exist. It would not even be necessary for liberal Christians to like this idea. They could merely use their influence to promote the idea that Palestinian Arabs, for their own good, should abandon the idea of destroying Israel and push their leaders to seek some kind of comprehensive settlement.

Yet liberal Christians have chosen to do just the opposite. In one denomination after another, we hear slightly different versions of the same story. The very existence of Israel is offensive; Palestinian refugees have the right to return to their homes, but Jewish refugees from Arab states have no rights even to compensation for lost property; Jews must move out of the West Bank; and Israel must return its borders to where they were before 1967, even though those borders were and are utterly indefensible. No matter that the 1967 border was really just a truce line, and not an internationally recognized border at all.

And so the Arabs have every reason to hope that their fondest dreams might, with a little help from their liberal Christian friends, come true someday. No wonder, then, that public opinion on the West Bank and in Gaza is so firmly committed to victory rather than peace. Over sixty percent of Arabs polled over the past decade have said that they would like to see the war against Israel continued, no matter what kind of settlement is agreed to regarding Gaza and the West Bank.

And so the war continues. Terrorists continue to test their skills against the security barrier, and even Arabs living on the Israeli side of the barrier can become effective killers. In the most recent such case, Hosam Dwayyat, a Palestinian Arab with an Israeli identity card, giving him free access to any place in the country, drove a tractor (a Caterpillar tractor, no less!) into a crowd of civilians, killing three and wounding a dozen before being shot dead by an Israeli officer. If he was a typical Palestinian, Mr. Dwayyat had been raised to believe that every bad thing in his life had been the fault of the Jews; that Israel would one day be destroyed; that Arab and Muslim honor required no less; that martyrdom was holy. He could have learned much of this on his Palestinian television station, which is paid for by contributions from the international community, and which beams a steady stream of hatred and incitement to children and adults alike.

And from the sidelines, safe as always from the mayhem and the carnage, the liberal Christians in America and Europe cluck their disapproval, denounce the cycle of violence, and then go right back to the business of encouraging the worst dreams of the most intransigent Arabs. Is it possible that some Christians have actually come to share the dream of a world without Israel?

Once upon a time, that was almost impossible to believe; but it is getting harder and harder to believe anything else.

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