The Arab_Israeli Conflict

by Jonathan Rynhold

  31 George Antonius, The Arab Awakening (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1938), 42–43.

  32 Haj Amin al-Husseini was appointed Mufti of Jerusalem in 1921. He was the most prominent Arab figure in Palestine during the Mandatory period. During World War II he collaborated with Nazi Germany, helping to recruit Bosnian Muslims for the Waffen-SS. See Barry Rubin and Wolfgang G. Schwanitz, Nazis, Islamists, and the Making of the Modern Middle East (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014).

  33 Kaplan, The Arabists, 69–71.

  34 Michael B. Oren, Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present (New York: W. W. Norton, 2007), 423.

  35 Carl Hermann Voss and David A. Rausch, “American Christians and Israel, 1948–1988,” American Jewish Archives 40, no. 1 (1988).

  36 Gary Dorrien, “Christian Realism: Niebuhr’s Theology, Ethics, and Politics,” in Daniel Rice, ed., Reinhold Niebuhr Revisited: Engagement with an American Original (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009), 21–39.

  37 Eyal Naveh, “Unconventional ‘Christian Zionist’: The Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr and His Attitude toward the Jewish National Movement,” Studies in Zionism 11, no. 2 (1990).

  38 Quoted in Fishman, American Protestantism and a Jewish State, 69.

  39 D. B. Robertson, ed., Love and Justice: Selections from the Shorter Writings of Reinhold Niebuhr (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1957), 133–142.

  40 Voss and Rausch, “American Christians and Israel, 1948–1988,” 68.

  41 National Council of Churches of Christ USA, “Middle East Policy Statement,” November 6, 1980.

  42 Duncan L. Clarke and Eric Flohr, “Christian Churches and the Palestine Question,” Journal of Palestine Studies 21, no. 4 (1992): 67–79.

  43 For example, James Wall, “The Other Jewish Lobby,” Christian Century, July 15, 2008, 44; James Wall, “Unilateral Proposal,” Christian Century, June 13, 2006; James Wall, “The Arms Deal,” Christian Century, September 4, 2007; James Wall, “Impressions,” Christian Century, September 5, 2006; Vernon Broyles, “Occupation Is the Issue: A Reply,” Christian Century, February 8, 2005, 37–38; James Wall, “Brutal Blunder,” Christian Century, May 4, 2004; James Wall, “Friends Like These,” Christian Century, June 29, 2004, 45; James Wall, “In the Pressure Cooker,” Christian Century, November 8, 2000, 1165; James Wall, “Preemptive Apologies,” Christian Century April 12, 2000, 95; “A ‘New Apartheid,’” Christian Century, December 20–27, 2000, 1329–1330; Jonathan Frerichs, “Apartheid in Israel/Palestine: Whose Land Is It?” Christian Century, July 17–30, 2002, 31. The same bias was apparent in the reports of the Presbyterian News Service; see Will Spotts, “Pride and Prejudice: The Presbyterian Divestment Story,” September 28, 2005, http://www.c4rpme.org/bin/articles.cgi?Cat=churches&Subcat=presbyterian&ID=207 (no longer available).

  44 For example, Yehiel Poupko, “Land Grant: Israel and the Promises of God,” Christian Century, May 15, 2007, 21–25; James Hecht, “Precarious Vision: The U.S. Role in a Middle East Solution,” Christian Century, November 15, 2005, 9; Marc Gopin, “A Failure to Communicate,” Christian Century, 30 May 30, 2006, 8; Ira Youdovin, “Arguing about Israel: A Response to Donald Wagner,” Christian Century, September 20, 2003, 48–49; Arnold Jacob Wolf, “Speaking Up for Israel,” Christian Century, May 8–15, 2002, 9; Chris Herlinger, “Reckoning with Israel,” Christian Century, May 22–29, 2002, 6; “U.S. Rabbis Urge Sharing Temple Mount,” Christian Century, December 20–27, 2000, 1330; Aliza Becker, “To Israel and Back Again,” Christian Century, February 27–March 6, 2002, 6; Warren Goldstein, “Blood and Rubble,” Christian Century, August 22, 2006, 8.

  45 “Under the Influence,” Christian Century, April 18, 2006, 45; Yaakov Ariel, “On the Road to Armageddon,” Christian Century, July 26, 2005; Ronald Goetz, “Property Rights: Israel and the Land,” Christian Century, December 13, 2003, 34–37; “The Last Colonizer,” Christian Century, August 15–22, 2001; Marc Ellis, “Holy Land Narratives of Lament and Hope,” Christian Century, July 19–26, 2000, 762–764.

  46 For example, James Wall, “The Unasked Question,” Christian Century, March 25, 2008; James Wall, “Jerusalem Sprawl,” Christian Century, April 19, 2005, 45; James Wall, “Israel’s Non-Sacrifice,” Christian Century, March 22, 2005, 44; James Wall, “In the Pressure Cooker,” 1165; “A ‘New Apartheid’”; James Wall, “The Missing Map,” Christian Century, December 13, 2000, 1317; Rashid Khalidi, “Why the Peace Process Broke Down,” Christian Century, November 22–29, 2000, 1206.

  47 “After Israel Exits Gaza, Synagogues Destroyed,” Christian Century, October 4, 2005, 16.

  48 “Blockade,” Christian Century, December 30, 2008, 8; “Disciples Latest to Critique Israeli Tactics,” Christian Century, August 23, 2005, 10; “WCC: World Must Stop Holy Land Cycle of Violence,” Christian Century, July 25, 2006; “Brutal Blunder.”

  49 James Wall, “Dance of Deception,” Christian Century, August 9, 2005.

  50 James Wall, “Friends Like These,” Christian Century, June 29, 2004, 45.

  51 Erik R. Nelson and Alan F. H. Wisdom, Human Rights Advocacy in the Mainline Protestant Churches (2000–2003): A Critical Analysis (Washington DC: Institute on Religion and Democracy, 2004).

  52 Quoted in James Rudin, A Jewish Guide to Interreligious Relations (New York: American Jewish Committee, 2005), 24 (emphasis added). Many other mainline resolutions used similar language; see, for example, “Peace Depends on End to Israeli Occupation, Agency Says,” United Methodist News Service, March 18, 2002, http://umns.umc.org/02/mar/111.htm (no longer available); “Barriers Do Not Bring Freedom,” NCCCUSA Delegation to the Middle East Issues (statement), February 6, 2005, http://www.nccmiddleeast.blogspot.co.il/.

  53 Rev. Clifton Kirkpatrick, letter to President Clinton, October 14, 2000, http://www.cmep.org/Statements/s31.htm (no longer available); “US Christian Ecumenical Delegation Calls for and Commits to Prayer for a Just Peace in the Middle East,” World Council of Churches, December 12, 2000, http://www.wcc-coe.org/wcc/what/international/palestine/conflict13.html.

  54 Presbyterian Church USA, http://www.pcusa.org/worldwide/israelpalestine/israelpalestineresolution.htm (no longer available).

  55 For example, “Resolution on the Conflict in the Middle East,” National Council of Churches, November 17, 2000, http://www.ncccusa.org/news/2000GA/mideastres.html; “National Council of Churches Delivers Pastoral Letter in Jerusalem,” National Council of Churches, December 5, 2000, http://www.ncccusa.org/news/00news108.html; “Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA) Conference of Bishops Letter about Mideast Crisis,” Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, October 12, 2000, http://www.elca.org/ob/mideast2.html (no longer available); PC(USA) Assembly “Resolution on Israel and Palestine: End the Occupation Now” 2003. http://www.pcusa.org/ga215/business/commbooks/comm12.pdf (no longer available).

  56 See for example, “A Statement of the National Council of Churches USA and Church World Service on the Current Violence in the Middle East,” in “Recalling When and Where Jesus Wept, NCC, CWS Call for an End to Mid East Violence,” National Council of Churches, July 14, 2006, http://www.ncccusa.org/news/060714middleeast.html; “United Methodist General Board of Church and Society Statement on the Current Violence in Israel, Gaza and Lebanon,” Chruches for Middle East Peace, July 17, 2006, http://www.cmep.org/Statements/2006July17_UMC.htm (no longer available); John Dart, “Church Voice on War Measured, or Muffled?” Christian Century, September 5, 2006. For an in-depth analysis, see Dexter Van Zile, “Mainline Christian Churches Respond to Hamas and Hezbollah Aggression,” CAMERA, July 27, 2006, http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=7&x_issue=61&x_article=1159.

  57 Daniel Treiman, “Liberal Churches Slam Israel,” Jewish Daily Forward, July 28, 2006.

  58 http://memritv.org/Transcript.asp?P1=294 (no longer available).

  59 “U.S. Church Leaders Criticized for Meeting with Hezbollah,” Associated Press, December 3, 2005.

  60 “A Resolution on Israel and Palestine:
End the Occupation Now,” Presbyterian Church USA, http://www.pcusa.org/ga215/business/commbooks/comm12.pdf (no longer available); Presbyterian Church USA, http://www.pcusa.org/worldwide/israelpalestine/israelpalestineresolution.htm (no longer available).

  61 Eugene Korn, “Divestment from Israel, the Liberal Churches, and Jewish Responses: A Strategic Analysis,” Post-Holocaust and Anti-Semitism 52 (January 2007), http://jcpa.org/article/divestment-from-the-liberal-churches-and-jewish-responses-a-strategic-analysis/ (no longer available).

  62 Ethan Felson, “On the Road: The Jewish Community Relations Encounter with Evangelical Christians” in Alan Mittleman, Byron Johnson, and Nancy Isserman, eds., Uneasy Allies? Evangelical and Jewish Relations (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2006), 98.

  63 Clarke and Flohr, “Christian Churches and the Palestine Question.” Also among the NCC’s members are Eastern Orthodox communions, including several churches whose membership is mainly Arab.

  64 Nancy Gallagher, Quakers in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: The Dilemmas of NGO Humanitarian Activism (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2007).

  65 “Q and A: The Facts about Palestine and Israel,” Quakers with a Concern for Palestine-Israel, http://www.quakerpi.org/QAction/QA-The-Facts-about-Palestine-Israel.pdf.

  66 The other “peace church,” the Mennonites, have also been active in the West Bank since 1948. See Alain Epp Weaver and Sonia K. Weaver, Salt and Sign: Mennonite Central Committee in Palestine, 1949–1999 (Akron, PA: Mennonite Central Committee, 1999). The Mennonites are vociferously anti-Zionist – see Dexter Van Zile, “Key Mennonite Institutions against Israel,” Post-Holocaust and Anti-Semitism 83 (2009), http://jcpa.org/article/key-mennonite-institutions-against-israel/.

  67 Kenneth D. Wald et al., “Reclaiming Zion: How American Religious Groups View the Middle East” in Gabriel Sheffer, ed., U.S.-Israeli Relations at the Crossroads (London: Frank Cass, 1997), 156.

  68 Ronald R. Stockton, “The Presbyterian Divestiture Vote and the Jewish Response,” Middle East Policy, 12, no. 4 (2005).

  69 Dexter Van Zile, “Sabeel’s One-State Agenda,” Judeo-Christian Alliance Special Report, 2005, http://www.judeo-christianalliance.org/index.php?option=com_remository&Itemid=62&func=fileinfo&id=10 (no longer available); Manya A. Brachear, “Event at Seminary Draws Fire,” Chicago Tribune, October 9, 2005; Jeff Walton, “Sabeel Conference Links U.S. and Israel to ‘Genocidal Theologies,’” Juicy Ecumenism (blog), Institute on Religion and Democracy, October 19, 2009, http://juicyecumenism.com/2009/10/19/sabeel-conference-links-u-s-and-israel-to-genocidal-theologies/; Hasdai Westbrook, “The Israel Divestment Debate,” Nation, April 20, 2006, http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060508/westbrook.

  70 Naim Stifan Ateek, Justice and Only Justice: A Palestinian Theology of Liberation (New York: Orbis Books, 1989), 166; “The Jerusalem Sabeel Document: Principles for a Just Peace in Palestine-Israel,” Friends of Sabeel – North America: Voice of the Palestinian Christians, May 1, 2006, http://fosna.org/content/jerusalem-sabeel-document-principles-just-peace-palestine-israel.

  71 Mark D. Tooley, “Liberation Theology in the Middle East,” Frontpagemag.com, May 23, 2006, http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=4322; Walton, “Sabeel Conference Links U.S. and Israel to ‘Genocidal Theologies.’”

  72 Michael Paulson, “Church Delegation Offers Mideast Peace Investment Plan,” Boston Globe, July 2, 2005; James Besser, “Palestinian Nationalists Seen behind Divestment,” Jewish Week, July 22, 2005;

  John Adams, “PCUSA’s Tack on Israel Parallels Liberation Group’s,” in The Layman Online, December 22, 2004, http://www.layman.org/majorissues0984/; Leslie Scanlon, “Palestinian Stories Open PC(USA) Training Event,” The Presbyterian Outlook, February 14, 2005, http://pres-outlook.org/2005/02/palestinian-stories-open-pcusa-training-event/.

  73 Adam Gregerman, “Old Wine in New Bottles: Liberation Theology and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 41, no. 3–4 (2004): 313–340.

  74 Rosemary Radford Ruether, “The Occupation Must End,” in Rosemary Radford Ruether and Marc Ellis, eds., Beyond Occupation: American Jewish, Christian, and Palestinian Voices for Peace (Boston: Beacon Press, 1990), 196.

  75 Rosemary Radford Ruether, “False Messianism and Prophetic Consciousness,” in Otto Maduro, ed., Judaism, Christianity, and Liberation: An Agenda for Dialogue (New York: Orbis Books, 1991), 89–91.

  76 Walton, “Sabeel Conference Links U.S. and Israel to ‘Genocidal Theologies.’”

  77 Mark D. Tooley, “A Wildman against Israel,” Frontpagemag.com, August 6, 2008, http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=31919.

  78 Paul Hollander, Anti-Americanism: Critiques at Home and Abroad, 1965–1990 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 83, 115–135, 225.

  79 Sarah Posner, “Wright’s Theology not ‘New or Radical,’” Salon, May 3, 2008, http://www.salon.com/2008/05/03/black_church/.

  80 Richard Cohen, “Obama’s Farrakhan Test,” Washington Post, January 15, 2008.

  81 Robert McAfee Brown, “Christians in the West Must Confront the Middle East,” in Ruether and Ellis, eds., Beyond Occupation, 138–154.

  82 Dennis Hale, “Why the Left Abandoned Israel, Reclaiming Liberal Support for Israel” (speech delivered at Harvard University for the David Project, March 13, 2003); Richard Rubenstein, “Some Reflections on ‘The Odd Couple’: A Reply to Martin Marty,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 44, no. 1 (2009): 136–140.

  83 Stephen R. Haynes, Reluctant Witnesses: Jews and the Christian Imagination (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press 1995.), 8.

  84 Ateek, Justice and Only Justice, 164; Dexter Van Zile, “Updating the Ancient Infrastructure of Christian Contempt: Sabeel,” Jewish Political Studies Review 23, no. 1–2 (2011).

  85 Adam Gregerman, “Old Wine in New Bottles: Liberation Theology and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies, 41, no. 3–4 (2004): 313–340.

  86 “Y.M.C.A. Free Palestine Campaign” East Jerusalem YMCA, 2004, http://www.ej-ymca.org/site/Display-Sub.cfm?Subld=7 (no longer available); Jean Zaru, “Jerusalem, ‘Al-Quds,’ in the Heart of Palestinian Christians,” Cornerstone 15 (Spring 1999); Samia Costandi, “Resurrection in the Land of Resurrection,” Cornerstone 21 (Spring 2001), http://www.sabeel.org/datadir/en-events/ev39/files/Issue%2021.pdf.

  87 Naim Ateek, “The Zionist Ideology of Domination versus the Reign of God,” AGW: A Globe of Witnesses, 2001. http://www.thewitness.org/agw/ateekkeynote.html.

  88 Seth Gitell, “Liberal Church More ‘Balanced’ On Middle East,” New York Sun, June 27, 2007, http://www.nysun.com/national/liberal-church-more-balanced-on-middle-east/57212/.

  89 Interview with Ethan Felson. Richard Falk, Jeff Halper, Noam Chomsky, Uri Davis, and Joel Kovel have all spoken at Sabeel conferences; see Friends of Sabeel—North America: Voice of the Palestinian Christians, http://www.fosna.org/.

  90 Rabbis for Human Rights, “Bad Waters: An Open Letter to the Presbyterian Church (USA),” July 26, 2004, http://jat-action.org/PCUSA_RabbisHumanRights.htm (accessed July 14, 2009; emphasis added).

  91 Jerry Van Marter, “Poll: Most PC(USA) Members Unaware of GA Divestment Action,” Presbyterian News Service, February 10, 2005, http://archive.wfn.org/2005/02/msg00083 (no longer available).

  92 Zev Chafets, Match Made in Heaven: American Jews, Christian Zionists, and One Man’s Exploration of the Weird and Wonderful Judeo-Evangelical Alliance (New York: HarperCollins, 2007), 83–88. Conservative mainliners also opposed divestment, though they were not politically active on the issue, as they were more concerned with other issues such as the ordination of gay clergy. Interview with Ethan Felson, March 2011.

  93 Ronald R. Stockton, “Presbyterians, Jews, and Divestment: The Church Steps Back” (paper presented to the International Society for the Study of Reformed Communities), Princeton University, July 2006, http://www.calvin.edu/henry/ISSRC/Conferences/Papers/stockton06.pdf; Dexter Van Zile, “Mainline American Christian �
�Peacemakers’ against Israel,” Post-Holocaust and Anti-Semitism 90 (November 2009).

  94 Dexter Van Zile, “Updating the Ancient Infrastructure of Christian Contempt: Sabeel”; “The Kairos Palestine Document, Part II,” Christians for Fair Witness on the Middle East, http://christianfairwitness.com/whatarethefacts/KairosPalestinianDocument2.pdf.

  6. American Jewish attachment to Israel

  1 Frank Luntz, Israel in the Age of Eminem: A Creative Brief for Israeli Messaging (New York: Bronfman Philanthropies, 2003), 7, 14.

  2 Charles Liebman, The Ambivalent American Jew: Politics, Religion, and Family in American Jewish Life (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1973), 92.

  3 Quoted in Samuel Halperin, The Political World of American Zionism (Silver Spring, MD: Information Dynamics, 1985), 76.

  4 Naomi W. Cohen, American Jews and the Zionist Idea (New York: Ktav, 1975), 4–8, 62–71.

  5 Jonathan Sarna, American Judaism: A History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004), 254 (emphasis added).