The Arab_Israeli Conflict

by Jonathan Rynhold

  The residual effects of traditional anti-Jewish theology are clearly present in liberation theology as applied to the Arab-Israeli conflict, notably in the work of Ateek and Sabeel.84 Such works tends to view “the oppressor” in the light of the Gospels, not as Rome but as Jewish Pharisaism. They recast standard Christian anti-Jewish motifs and combine them with anti-Jewish themes absorbed from Western New Testament scholarship in the 1970s. While liberation theologists do not specifically endorse replacement theology, in the spirit of this theology they diminish the particular role of the historic people of Israel, sometimes even denying this role completely, for example with regard to the Exodus. This provides a foundation from which to delegitimize Jewish historical claims to self-determination in Israel. In addition, they tend to glorify Jewish exile. They either overlook the intense suffering of the Jewish people in the exile or advocate exile for the Jews, because without sovereignty, the Jews demonstrate the virtues of nonviolence and powerlessness. However, the so-called virtues of Diaspora powerlessness are applied only to the Jewish people. No liberation theologists ever suggest that non-Jews should disavow their legitimate aspirations for sovereignty and self-determination. Only the Jews are asked to live in vulnerability and impotence. Thus, all liberation theologians strongly support Palestinian self-determination, while self-determination is never presented as being equally applicable to the Jewish people. Thus continues the Christian practice of singling out the Jews as categorically different from other peoples.85

  Liberation theology also demonizes Israel using classical anti-Jewish images, notably the idea of the Jews as Christ killers. A statement from the World Alliance of YMCA on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from the perspective of liberation theology repeatedly used this image; as have many Sabeel publications.86 Indeed, Ateek has even presented the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a metaphysical struggle in which Israel symbolizes “the spiritual forces of evil.”87

  The Decline of Pro-Israel Elements

  Two intertwined factors, related in part to generational change, led to the decline of pro-Israel sentiment in the mainline. First, there was the decline of Niebuhr’s Christian Realism and its replacement by liberation theology and the social gospel as the dominant theologies in the mainline. The worldview of Christian Realism is far more understanding of the use of force by states to defend their legitimate interests than the social gospel or liberation theology. It is also far more skeptical of the ability of well-meaning people to bring about conflict resolution. This type of outlook is bound to be more sympathetic to Israel’s strategic dilemmas.

  Second, the resonance of the Holocaust as a factor mandating sympathy and support for the State of Israel declined considerably. The generation for whom World War II and the Holocaust were the defining experiences was gradually replaced by the generation for whom Vietnam was the defining experience. In the 1970s and 1980s the centrality of the Holocaust restrained virulent anti-Israel sentiment. For example, prior to World War II, Brown had been a pacifist, but he chose to renounce this position and become a navy chaplain because of Hitler’s war against the Jews. He was later appointed to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council, as well as writing a book about Elie Wiesel. For Brown, Christian complicity in the Holocaust and centuries of Christian persecution of Jews made a big moral claim on Christians.

  Finally, these factors were reinforced by the decline in Israeli and American Jewish engagement with the mainline. With the success of the civil rights agenda in the 1960s, the mainline alliance with the American Jewish community waned. In the 1990s Israeli foreign policy focused on peacemaking, reducing the resources dedicated to public diplomacy. Equally, however, the increase in American Jewish engagement with the mainline was a factor in restraining the anti-Israeli campaign in the mainline, in the wake of the Presbyterian divestment resolution of 2004.

  Stemming the Divestment Tide?

  Although the 2004 Presbyterian divestment resolution led to a spate of efforts to get other denominations to follow suit, in the end they all rejected divestment. Moreover, at their 2006 General Assembly, the Presbyterians took a step away from divestment. The 2006 resolution did not formally reverse the 2004 resolution, but instead of talking about divestment, it spoke about identifying positive investment opportunities to help build peace in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza. Instead of calling for the complete dismantling of the security barrier, as it did in 2004, the 2006 resolution called only for those parts of the barrier that were in the West Bank to be moved to areas on or within the Green Line. Significantly, the resolution added: “The General Assembly does not believe that the Presbyterian Church (USA) should tell a sovereign nation whether it can protect its border or handle matters of national defense.” The resolution passed 483 to 28, with 1 abstention. Another resolution was also passed, which declared suicide bombings a “crime against humanity.” The net result was to make the probability of divestment extremely remote. In 2007, the UCC’s General Synod approved a resolution acknowledging its previously one-sided resolutions by declaring that it had “yet to fully address other forces contributing to the ongoing violence, oppression and suffering in the region” and calling for the establishment of “a Task Force to engage in ongoing and balanced study of the causes, history and context of the conflict.”88

  What then, led to the stemming of the divestment tide? First, there were changes in the situation on the ground that lessened the wider resonance of some of the core messages of the BDS campaign. Thus, the assumption that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was primarily a function of the occupation became less tenable when, following Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2005, Hamas won the Palestinian elections in January 2006 and later took control of Gaza by force. The Islamist Hamas charter quotes from the anti-Semitic forgery, “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” It is ideologically opposed to Israel’s existence and committed to terrorism. Meanwhile in the summer of 2006 Hezbollah, which shares the ideology of Hamas and which is closely allied with Iran, attacked Israel, triggering a war from Lebanon, six years after Israel had unilaterally withdrawn from southern Lebanon. These changes in context were not enough to block divestment on their own; rather, they served to blunt the wider credibility and legitimacy of the divestment campaign.

  Second, the American Jewish community mobilized and engaged. While the reaction of some Jewish groups alienated the mainline; intensive engagement with centrist Jewish groups like the American Jewish Committee, which had a long history of working with the mainline on issues such as civil rights, had more of an impact. Especially significant was the very strong disproval of dovish liberal Jewish groups whose voices could not easily be dismissed. One of the ways that mainline anti-Israel activists have traditionally sought to broaden their legitimacy has been to highlight their cooperation with Jewish anti-Zionists.89 Anti-Zionism has been an extremely marginal position within the American Jewish community since at least 1948. But by bringing a few such Jews onboard, mainline anti-Israel activists sought to blur the distinction between this handful of Jews and the much wider constituency of dovish liberal Jews, who, while critical of certain Israeli policies, are fiercely pro-Israel. However, this blurring strategy was exposed over divestment, which alienated the overwhelming bulk of dovish liberal Jewish groups. For example, Rabbis for Human Rights wrote a strong condemnatory letter in response to the divestment resolution, which stated:

  Like you we hate the Occupation, condemn it and work for its speedy end in a peace accord … Yet you direct not one word of criticism to the Palestinian Authority … It is not just that your resolution ignores the homicidal ideologies that have so sadly taken hold among some of our Palestinian neighbors. Nor is the problem just that it averts its eyes from the attempts to destroy our country that transcend the Occupation and precede it by decades. Its deepest flaw … is the allegation that the Occupation is somehow “at the root of evil acts committed.” This is a restatement of the paradigmatic allegation that Jewish sins are somehow esp
ecially significant … The result is a descent into discriminatory behavior against Jews and their State.90

  Third, for all the Jewish activity, the thrust of the reversal came from within the Church. Until the 1980s there had been active mainline pro-Israel organizations, but these had been allowed to wither in the 1990s as the peace process seemed to suggest they were redundant. But following the divestment resolution, they reemerged in organizations such as End Divestment Now and Presbyterians Concerned for Jewish-Christian Relations, and ecumenical organizations like the National Christian Leadership Conference for Israel and Christians for Fair Witness on the Middle East. Many of those who were actively opposed to divestment were heavily involved in interfaith dialogue with the Jewish community. Their approach to the conflict was quite dovish, similar to the center-left of the American Jewish community. They were able to mobilize opposition to divestment by virtue of the fact that the 2004 resolution was out of sync with the position of the majority of Presbyterians, a fact which severely damaged the legitimacy of the resolution.91 The mobilization of this generalized opposition was viewed by Jewish organizations involved in the campaign to reverse the 2004 decision as decisive.92 At the same time, with the pro-Israel camp now mobilized, the Presbyterian leadership feared that the argument over the Middle East within the denomination would widen the growing split between conservatives and liberals within the denomination to crisis point; they therefore sought to defuse the situation.93 Despite this, the BDS campaign in the mainline church continues, and in 2014 the Presbyterians voted narrowly to reinstitute a limited policy of divestment. More generally, the thrust of the struggle is over the Kairos Palestine document, written by Palestinian Christians, which calls on Christians throughout the world to target Israel with BDS. The document itself promotes the usual one-sided anti-Israel narrative that is hostile to the idea of Jewish self-determination.94

  Conclusion

  In the first decade of the new millennium the mainline discourse towards Israel was hostile, culminating in the campaign to divest from Israel. The thrust of the mainline approach has been one-sided, blaming predominantly Israel both for the lack of a peace settlement and for the ongoing violence. Threats to Israel are largely ignored, discounted, or dismissed. Similarly downplayed is the larger picture of indigenous political and religious extremism, unrelated to Israel, which drags down the Middle East. The mainline has, in effect, singled out Israel for particular opprobrium. Israel has not been treated as a normal country, rather it has been judged according to a separate standard. This discourse is informed by a variety of influences, including liberation theology intermingled with new versions of old anti-Jewish themes – replacement theology and the witness mentality. Historical and contemporary mainline ties to the Palestinians and Arab nationalism also played a significant role. These are the ideas behind the divestment campaign, which has been spearheaded by a relatively small but well-organized group of activists.

  No doubt the anti-Israel activists’ call for peace, along with some of their more reasonable criticisms of Israeli policy, resonates among the wider circle of liberal mainline clergy. Without this it would be extremely difficult for the activists to impose their agenda on the mainline at large. On the other hand, the clergy do not identify en masse with the vehemently one-sided approach of divestment advocates. For most mainline clergy, Israel and the conflict are not a major concern. Moreover, mainline anti-Israeli activists are completely out of sync with the mainline public, which has remained more sympathetic to Israel than to the Palestinians, albeit to a lesser extent than evangelicals. Nonetheless, for much of the time it has been the interested minority rather than the largely passive majority that has shaped the discourse and the politics of the mainline toward Israel.

  Some may question whether any of this matters politically. Who cares about a minority of anti-Israel Church activists? American public opinion is consistently and overwhelmingly pro-Israel, and the amount of evangelicals that can be mobilized for Israel at the grassroots level dwarfs the number of committed mainline opponents of Israel. No divestment has actually taken place and even if it did, the direct and immediate economic impact on Israel would be marginal. Yet the mainline divestment campaign does matter. The importance of divestment is not primarily economic but rather political, in that it increases the resonance of the idea of Israel as a pariah state. Divestment advocates are promoting an analogy with apartheid South Africa; mainline denominations did divest from South Africa. In this way, they hope to broaden support for their position by associating Israel with something that is very widely recognized as not only illegitimate but a defining symbol of politically constructed evil.

  The fact that the activists themselves are a relatively small group does not mean that their political influence is commensurate with their numbers. On the question of the Middle East, this minority has the upper hand in very large and prestigious mainline institutions with millions of members. The fact that they can speak in the names of these institutions dramatically multiplies their political standing, influence, and leverage. Nor is divestment simply a domestic American issue. The mainline has strong connections with churches worldwide, and the divestment campaign is part of a broader global campaign of boycotts, divestment, and sanctions. So in Britain, for example, there was a strong campaign within the Anglican Church to promote divestment. Also in Britain, a relatively small group of anti-Israel activists have managed to push through boycott resolutions in trade unions with hundreds of thousands of members, the overwhelming majority of whom are entirely indifferent to Israel and the Palestinians. Taken together in a global sense, such a campaign could eventually have economic as well as political significance if it were to take off, because Israel’s economy is highly globalized and thus very dependent on international economic interactions that could be stymied by boycotts, divestment, and sanctions.

  Yet despite all this, there is no reason to assume that divestment will achieve its objectives within the mainline. Israel has friends in the mainline, and there are many who oppose the divestment agenda for reasons largely unconnected to the Middle East. Once Israel’s supporters mobilized, once the issue was brought out into the wider political discourse that is sympathetic to Israel, once Israel itself took steps like the Disengagement, which enhanced its credentials with liberals while Hamas gained power in Gaza, it was possible to stem the divestment tide.

  Finally, in a sense, the mainline discourse is a kind of mirror image to the evangelical discourse. Both single out Israel as a country to be treated differently. Evangelicals do so consciously, and it manifests itself in support; while mainline anti-Israel activists would no doubt vehemently deny that they are consciously or unconsciously engaged in negative discrimination, that is what it often amounts to. Both flirt with the idea of a one-state “solution,” one out of commitment to Jewish ascendancy without apparent regard for democracy and Palestinian rights, the other out of apparent naiveté regarding the consequences for the safety and well-being of Israeli Jews under Palestinian ascendancy combined with a disregard for a Jewish right to self-determination. Similarly, both sides engage in political acts that damage the prospects of a stable and peaceful two-state solution by providing political backing for groups and positions that threaten such a solution. Christian Zionists do so through their ties with Israel’s Far Right and by supporting settlements; the mainline do so by endorsing the so-called right of return for Palestinian refugees and their descendants to Israel within its pre-1967 boundaries, and by backing the BDS campaign aimed at demonizing and delegitimizing Israel per se. Both sides make a positive contribution to the parties through their humanitarian work and charity, but a fair proportion of their activity hinders rather than helps the cause of peace and stability in the Middle East.

  Part III Jews

  6 American Jewish Attachment to Israel: Mind the Gap

  We Are One.

  —campaign slogan of the United Jewish Appeal, 1967

  There exists a distance and
detachment between young American Jews and their Israeli cousins that … has not existed until now.

  —Frank Luntz, Israel in the Age of Eminem (2003)1

  Introduction

  For many years a deep attachment to Israel united American Jewry. After 1967, Israel achieved a heroic status and many Jews thought that not supporting Israel was “a great, if not the greatest ‘crime’ that could be committed by a Jew.”2 To this day American Jews’ attachment to Israel remains deeper than the widespread sympathy for Israel expressed by the general public. However, since the late 1980s, an increasing number of voices have argued that American Jews have become more distant from Israel.

  This chapter argues that while American Jews no longer view Israel through rose-tinted glasses, a large majority continue to feel attached to the Jewish state. Yet, there is a clear attachment gap that mirrors the wider polarization within the community between those with a more intense sense of belonging to the Jewish people and greater Jewish communal involvement, and those with a weaker sense of belonging and a lesser degree of involvement. The Orthodox are most strongly represented at the pole of strong attachment, while the intermarried and the unaffiliated are dominant at the other pole. In the middle are Jews from the Reform and Conservative movements.

  Below, the chapter begins by surveying the development of American Jewish attitudes to Zionism and Israel from the late nineteenth century until the present day. It then examines the contemporary process of polarization within the community, including the decline in the sense of peoplehood, before surveying the gap in attachment to Israel among different segments of the community. Finally, the distancing debate is assessed and its political implications analyzed.