Category: Evangelicals & Politics

My Views on the Current War Against Gaza

For some time now I have particiated in an informal discussion group consisting of a mix of Christian Zionists and non-Zionists, such as myself.

The group is largely composed of academics from around the world. We meet by Zoom calls one per month to talk across the theological chasm that separates us on the question of modern Israel and Palestine.

Christian Zionists believe that Israel remains God’s chosen nation; that occupation of the land is an essential precondition to the return of Christ; and that political loyalty to Israel is a necessary value for faithful Christians to uphold.

I, and my fellow non-Zionists, do not believe these things. Jesus is free to return at any time, and Israel has nothing to do with when or how that can happen.

As you can imagine, we have strong disagreements. But the group’s reason for being is to exercise and to model civil, loving discourse among brothers and sisters in Christ who have strong theological disagreements with each other.

As you can imagine, the outbreak of Israel’s war against Gaza has turned up the heat considerably within the group. We recently had a lengthy email exchange debating the horrific events that have erupted, beginning with the dastardly Hamas attack on October 7.

To briefly explain my own position on this war, I have reproduced below my final contribution to that debate. (For a fuller picture of why I think the way I do, please read my book, Like Birds in a Cage.)

I share this email with you, my subscribers, in order to illustrate and to explain what I believe is the proper Christian response to the events unfolding in Israel and Gaza today:

In the course of our conversation, several folks have asked the (rhetorical?) question, “What else is Israel supposed to do to root out Hamas?” The implication being that Israel’s current actions in Gaza are necessary and unavoidable – what else could Israel do?

Allow me to suggest that the question reveals a lack of imagination. At the risk of offending some, I will go further and suggest that the question reveals a deficiency of Christian discipleship. The calculations of Realpolitik are tangential, if not irrelevant, to the moral requirements of citizenship in God’s kingdom. The basic problem, I believe, is that the pro-Zionist conscience is truncated and distorted by its loyalty to a secular nation-state. Thus, the demands of loyalty to Zionist, nationalistic ideology is allowed to stifle both imagination and discipleship. This is a failure to fully inhabit our intended citizenship in God’s peaceable kingdom.

The two factions of our group are separated by seemingly irreconcilable differences, differences that we cannot, or at least, do not, talk about. These differences lead us to vastly different opinions and commitments concerning the current bloodshed, among both Israeli Jews and Palestinians.

My theological commitments lead me to believe that the history of American imperialism makes us very comfortable taking the colonizer’s side in anti-colonial conflicts. I believe that implied belief in Israeli exceptionalism and Palestinian/Hamas barbarism subtly runs throughout our conversation.

As many others have said, there is no military solution to this so-called conflict. Zionist dreams of “replacing Hamas” with something or someone else continue to ignore the root causes of this violence. The only lasting solution will be political, that is a just, humane ending of Israel’s military occupation and all that goes with it. Currently, Israel is an apartheid state. Those who are discriminated against will always resist their oppressors. It’s human nature. No amount of carpet bombing will beat the impulse for freedom and equality out of Palestinian hearts and minds.

I hope that sharing this statement with you may be of some interest and/or help to those wrestling with the moral questions raised by both Israel’s carpet-bombing of Gaza and the Hamas attack against Israel.

If you have questions or comments, please send them to me. I will respond to everything.

A Christian Look at the War in Gaza: Episode Two, Dr. Mae Cannon

The Rev. Dr. Mae Elise Cannon is the Executive Director of the organization, Churches for Middle East Peace (CMEP), an organization with which I am involved.

She is also a friend of mine. (By the way, Mae has two doctorates.)

In fact, we were both recently in Phoenix, AZ attending the same conference sponsored by the Netword of Evangelicals for the Middle East (NEME). I am a member of the NEME leadership committee.

Today, Rob and Mae discuss the political dimensions of the current war against Gaza. Mae’s work keeps her heavily involved in a great deal of lobbying and activism in Washington, D.C.

There is a lot of vital information here about what is happening right now in Israel, Palestine, and the USA. Check it out.

A Christian Look at the Conflict in Gaza, Episode One with Rob Dalrymple

My good friend, Dr. Rob Dalrymple, is hosting a series of podcasts discussing the current Israeli war against Gaza.

Rob will host a number of informative guests over the next several weeks (including yours truly) discussing different dimensions of this ongoing conflict.

Today, Rob introduces the issues himself. He is a former pastor, the author of several books, has visited Israel/Palestine numerous times, and is deeply involved in Christian activism for peace in the Holy Land.

I encourage you to  watch, listen, take notes, pray, respond and come back tomorrow for another installment.

John Mearsheimer: What Israel is Doing is Sickening.

I am convinced that extensive Israeli settlement throughout the West Bank has made the fabled two-state solution an impossibility.

New solutions must be sought. But the ethnic cleansing of Gaza cannot be one of them.

Aside from that caveat, Prof. Mearsheimer offers a good summary of the present situation in Gaza:

Bad Theology is Helping to Drive America’s Support for Israel’s Massacre in Gaza

All Christian theology has practical results in the way believers live their lives. Unsurprisingly, bad theology will have bad results.

The immoral legacy of Christian Zionism is helping to drive US congressional support for Israel’s slaughter in Gaza today.

Watch My Interview with Stephen Sizer

The Rev. Stephen Sizer is a vicar with the Church of England who has been a strong advocate for Palestinian human rights for many years.

He is also a staunch disciple of Jesus Christ who vividly examplifies what it means to love one’s enemies.

As a result of Stephen’s witness to loving his neighbors in Palestine, he has also suffered a great deal of persecution and unjust suffering at the hands of the pro-Israel lobby in England.

I was pleased as punch when he asked me to do an interview about my new book with him on his podcast. Take a look:

 

 

Ali Abunimah: “Israel is Reaping Exactly What They Have Sown”

Ali Abunimah is the co-founder of The Electronic Intifada and author of two excellent books: The Battle for Justice in Palestine, and  One Country: A Bold-Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse.  I have read them both.

In this recent interview with Al Jazeera English, Mr. Abunimah concisely describes the root causes of the current wave of violence in Israel-Palestine.

Workable solutions can only arise from honest analysis of the real problems.

 

Orly Noy: “Our Humanity is Being Put to the Test”

Orly Noy is an Israeli journalist writing from Israel. Her latest piece at +972 Magazine is titled, “Our Humanity is Being Put to the Test.”

Yes, the attack on Israel was a vile crime. Now, Israel’s response reveals the criminality (or humanity) of its own society.

Below is an excerpt:

Morality is never a privilege, a luxury, an accessory that we can don when it’s convenient or remove when less so. Morality isn’t an indulgence we can’t afford during a catastrophe.

Insisting on morality is an insistence on context, without which this horrible violence loses its meaning and gets reduced to “human animals that want to destroy us for no reason.” To insist on morality and context is not to justify a crime. On the contrary – it is to ensure our understanding of reality includes all of the factors that contribute to it, so that we can more effectively change it.

If Hamas’ crimes justify unmitigated destruction through the collective punishment of the people of Gaza, what morality can we claim to condemn Hamas, especially given the harm Israel has inflicted there over the years? 

Read the entire article here.

Is the “News” You Watch Informative or Is It Propaganda?

Signing the first Oslo Accords

This past summer marked the 30th anniversary of the Oslo Accords, the supposed peace agreements that were intended (or were they?) to end the incessant hostilities between Zionist Israel and the Palestinian people living in the Occupied Territories.

Below are two different video news reports ostensibly covering the negotiations and eventual signing of these peace accords.

The first report is from CBN, a supposedly Christian news organization. As such, I expect them to maintain a high level of honesty, even-handedness, and truthfulness.

The second report is from Mondoweiss. (I will also disclose that it is produced and narrated by a friend of mine, Umna Patel.) Mondoweiss is a secular organization claiming to tell both sides of the story when it comes to Israel-Palestine.

While watching these two videos, ask yourself: Which one tells me about the details of the Oslo Accords? Which report best informs me about this piece of Middle East history, the role played by Oslo, and its long-term effects? Which one attempts to explain the specifics of why the Accords did not bring peace?

I’ll give you a hint on what I consider a dead give-away in rating these two clips.

Notice that the CBN report starkly portrays the characters involved as good guys in white hats (Israel) and bad guys in black hats (Palestinians). Period. There is no nuance or explanation. We are only told that Palestinians are inclined to violence and that they hate Israel. (Really, is anything in life that simple?)

In the CBN report, Israel is always the innocent victim of irrational Palestinian hatred. The Palestinians, on the other hand, are always bent on destroying Israel.

Sadly, the supposed “Christian” account is pure propaganda.

It’s the secular Mondoweiss account that informs and explains the real story in a balanced fashion.

The CBN report:

The Mondoweiss report:

Chris Hedges: The Pedagogy of Power

[Headline image: Plato and Aristotle debate in the school of Athens]

Chris Hedges’ latest article at ScheerPost offers a great explanation of why we need to strengthen liberal arts education in this country, not gut it as is currently happening everywhere.

All across America, history, English, and philosophy departments are being downsized or eliminated altogether.

Conservatives want to reduce higher education to streamlined vocational training, while liberals want to sift it through the latest, reductionistic filter of identity politics. Both are equally ruinous.

Thomas Jefferson is purported to have said that democracy’s survival depends on having an educated populous. Truer words have never been spoken, as the current state of American politics attests.

Check out this excellent essay at SheerPost written by Chris Hedges about the foundational significan of education for a functioning democracy:

Here is an excerpt:

Plato

The ruling classes always work to keep the powerless from understanding how power functions. This assault has been aided by a cultural left determined to banish “dead white male” philosophers.

I am standing in a classroom in a maximum security prison. It is the first class of the semester. I am facing 20 students. They have spent years, sometimes decades, incarcerated. They come from some of the poorest cities and communities in the country. Most of them are people of color. 

During the next four months they will study political philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Hobbes, Niccolò Machiavelli,  Friedrich  Nietzsche, Karl Marx and John Locke, those often dismissed as anachronistic by the cultural left.

It is not that the criticisms leveled against these philosophers are incorrect. They were blinded by their prejudices, as we are blinded by our prejudices. They had a habit of elevating their own cultures above others. They often defended patriarchy, could be racist and in the case of Plato and Aristotle, endorsed a slave society.  

What can these philosophers say to the issues we face — global corporate domination, the climate crisis, nuclear war and a digital universe where information, often manipulated and sometimes false, travels around the globe instantly?  Are these thinkers antiquated relics? No one in medical school is reading 19th century medical texts. Psychoanalysis has moved beyond Sigmund Freud. Physicists have advanced from Isaac Newton’s law of motion to general relativity and quantum mechanics.

You can read the entire essay here.