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Daniel Berrigan’s address on the Arab-Israeli conflict, delivered to the Association of Arab University Graduates last October, was vintage Berrigan. It displayed paradigmatically his superb virtues and his glaring defects: the absolute moral stance, the calling of men and institutions to account before the divine imperatives, the insistence on concrete witness to good and active …
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Our soldiers are fighting against the inevitable — namely, freedom and sovereignty for the Palestinians in a state of their own. If we do not accommodate Palestinian nationalism in a two-state compromise arrangement — ideally, in a three-state confederation that includes Jordan — then the Palestinians will grow even more militant and uncompromising, reverting to …
Continue reading “Blessing Both Jew and Palestinian: A Religious Zionist View”
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It is evident to any visitor to the Middle East that Christianity has a peculiar relation to the lands now inhabited by the state of Israel. Christian tourists and pilgrims, practicing an enduring form of piety, enabled by international jet travel, come from all parts of the world to visit the holy places associated with …
Continue reading “From Time Immemorial? Dwellers in the Holy Land”
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This essay marks for me the end of Galut, of exile, I and the realization of my half-century dream of returning to the land of my ancestors. It is an essay, too, about new beginnings. For although I have visited Israel almost every year for the past 20 and have very little to learn about …
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Sacred Landscape: The Buried History of the Holy land Since 1948. By Meron Benvenisti. University of California Press, 417 pp. The End of the Peace process: Oslo and After. By Edward Said. Pantheon, 448 pp. The tumultuous history of Palestinian-Israeli relations has seemed to reach its nadir in recent years. The hope brought by the …
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The drive from Afula in Israel south to Jalame in the West Bank takes only minutes, but these two towns are worlds apart. Afula is a relatively affluent suburb with ATMs, tree-lined streets and pleasant neighborhoods. Jalame is a town of degrading poverty, which is evident in the pot-holed roads (when they’re paved at all), …
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Twenty years ago, in the wake of the Six-Day War, Israel took over East Jerusalem, the West Bank, the Golan Heights and the Gaza Strip. Together the occupied territories hold about 1.3 million people, mostly Palestinians, whose existence has been largely invisible to the West. The image of the Palestinian in the Western press is …
Continue reading “Invisible Palestinians: Ideology and Reality in Israel”
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A recent full-page advertisement appearing in major U.S. newspapers argues for support of the State of Israel and voices concern over “the recent direction of American foreign policy” in the Middle East. The signers of the statement “are particularly troubled by the erosion of American governmental support for Israel evident” in the U.S. decision to …
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By 2010, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert promises, Israel will have a border on the east. "Convergence" — withdrawal from the occupied territories — is the name of the game after the end of "disengagement" Parties that do not agree to "converge" will not enter the government. It sounds convincing. Who needs the agreement of the …
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The violence between Israelis and Palestinians is once again in the forefront of the news. Those who support Israel see themselves defending it against the prophesied destruction of the nation and the Jewish people. Palestinian supporters witness for a people who have been denied the basic human need for dignity and statehood. The dualism is …
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I first read Michael Wyschogrod when I was in graduate school. The experience was electrifying. As I sat in the library finishing his essay “Israel, the Church, and Election,” I remember being overcome by an almost physical sense of discovery, as though I had bumped into a hitherto invisible rock. What I had just read …
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On November 4, 1983, a member of a Muslim suicide squad attacked an Israeli compound in southern Lebanon with a truck bomb, killing more than 60 soldiers, The following day Israeli fighter planes bombed the base from which the truck might have come. That night, the television newscaster I was watching remarked that the Israelis …
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Stepping into the political turmoil of Israel after being steeped in the United States presidential campaign is akin to moving into an advanced seminar on theological ethics from a third-grade church school classroom. In the New York primary, the level of political discussion never rose above the issue of relocating the U.S. embassy from Tel …
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Book Review: Politicide: Ariel Sharon’s War Against the Palestinians. By Baruch Kimmerling. Verso, 234 pp. Israel and Palestine: Out of the Ashes. By Marc H. Ellis. Pluto Press, 198 pp. Whose Land? Whose Promise? What Christians Are Not Being Told About Israel and the Palestinians. By Gay M. Burge, Pilgrim Press, 286 pp. In …
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The recent Palestinian demonstrations in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, and Israel’s handling of them, have pushed to the forefront a series of questions most American Jews and Christians would prefer not to face. Can Jews criticize the state of Israel without being perceived as disloyal? Can Christians criticize the state of Israel …
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Yielding to increasing pressure to show the Arab and Islamic worlds (and much of Europe) that he is sensitive to the plight of the Palestinian people, President George W. Bush recently declared his commitment to implement a “road map” to an Israeli-Palestinian peace. Meanwhile, a powerful domestic countermovement capable of undermining the U.S. initiative is …
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"Water will determine the future of the Occupied Territories, and by extension, the issue of conflict or peace in the region." Thomas Naff made this remark several years ago, and water remains a key, if often unacknowledged, issue behind the strife in the Middle East. When Israel’s Likud Party vowed in May never to allow …
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The Palestinian Christian is an endangered species. When the modern state of Israel was established there were about 400,000 of us. Two years ago the number was down to 80,000. Now it’s down to 60,000. At that rate, in a few years there will be none of us left. When this happens non-Christian groups will …
Continue reading “The Palestinian Christian : Betrayed, Persecuted, Sacrificed”
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Traveling the roads of West Bank territory occupied by Israel, the visitor is struck by the dominance of the Arab culture. The cities, running from Nablus in the north, through Ramallah and East Jerusalem, and down to Hebron, are almost exclusively inhabited by Arabs, both Muslim and Christian. And yet, because of the hysteria of …
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A viable two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is dying; perhaps it is already dead. This reality should prompt new theological and political analysis among Christians and others who yearn for justice, peace and security for Palestinians and Israelis. The Negotiations Affairs Department of the PLO recently issued a policy analysis arguing that “Israel’s on-going …
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According to the consensus among American commentators, reflecting the views of the administration and Congress, a peace process that was on the verge of a breakthrough a few months ago has broken down because of the Palestinians’ intransigence. Instead of responding to a generous Israeli offer, they have turned to senseless violence, putting Israel under …
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Some of my earliest memories are of gatherings at my grandparents small apartment in Milwaukee where my relatives would crowd around the dining-room table and talk passionately about Israel. Many had been involved in labor Zionism in their youth, before they immigrated to the U.S. from Russia. They envisioned a socialist paradise in Israel: a …
Continue reading “To Israel and Back Again: Journey of an American Jew”
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In recent years, certain religious Jewish and Christian communities have proclaimed that exclusive Jewish sovereignty over the Holy Land is a theological fight and necessity, a condition for the unfolding of the messianic era. This view has been exploited by some secular Israelis, who for political reasons–linked to concerns about security or the war on …
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On the long climb to Jerusalem I notice two kinds of trucks. One kind is carrying huge battle tanks still muddy from combat in the West Bank. The other is carrying tents sent from America for Palestinians who have lost their homes in the fighting. The tanks tell rush-hour commuters, “We are at war.” I …
Continue reading “Whose Land is it? Apartheid in Israel/Palestine”
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Across from Jericho, on the Jordan side of the Jordan River, is the site where Jesus may have been baptized. It is 300 meters east of the river. During the decades of conflict between Jordan and Israel this area was a military zone, strewn with mines and closed to unauthorized personnel, but since the 1994 …
