Yesterday, I introduced you to the story of Ahed Mohammad Rida Mereb, a 16 year old resident of the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank.
Today we can listen to her describe what it was like to be abused by these Israeli soldiers.
A Blog from David Crump
Yesterday, I introduced you to the story of Ahed Mohammad Rida Mereb, a 16 year old resident of the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank.
Today we can listen to her describe what it was like to be abused by these Israeli soldiers.
David J. Rothkopf is an American professor of international relations, political scientist and journalist.
Today’s issue of Haaretz newspaper published an insightful comparison witten by Rothkopf of the essential similarity between yesterday’s attack by Israeli soldiers against the murdered Palestinian journalist’s, Shireen Abu Aqla’s, funeral procession in east Jerusalem, and the mass murder of 10 African-American’s in Buffalo, NY by a young, white supremacist.
What do both have in common? Professor Rothkopf hits a bull’s eye when he says, Ethnic Nationalism.
The mass murderer in Buffal0 is a white supremacist worried about white people being “replaced” by immigrants and other people of color. In other words, he killed for his dream of a “white’s only nation.”
The entire Israeli state apparatus is built upon the foundation of Jewish supremacy, a supremacy that the Jewish state will defend at all costs. The murder of the Palestinian journalist, Ms. Abu Aqla; the unprovoked attack against her funeral procession; the continued military occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, are all examples of Israel’s continuing efforts to preserve a “Jew’s only nation.”
Ethnic nationalism is never pretty.
My single disagreement with Rothkopf concerns his idea that Jewish ethnic nationalism is embraced only by Israel’s right-wing. However, my book, Like Birds in a Cage shows how very, very wrong this misconception is.
Below are excerpts from professor Rothkopf’s article, “What Binds America’s White Supremacists and Israel’s Brutal Assault on Palestinians” (all emphasis is mine):
An 18-year-old walks into a grocery store in Buffalo, New York and opens fire, killing ten. On the barrel of his gun is written a racist epithet so offensive that most media simply refer to it as the “n-word.”
dignified funeral.” What could their behavior possibly have to do with that of an unhinged racist who perceived those who were different from him as a mortal threat and, as a result, felt justified in turning to violence against them? . . .
And as repulsive as Carlson’s comments were, the logic that brought him to cite Israeli views toward Palestinians was akin to American white supremacists’ views toward non-Christians and non-whites is easily understood.
Gideon Levy’s recent article in the Israeli daily, Haaretz, is titled, “Is Blood of Iconic Journalist Redder than Blood of Anonymous Palestinians?”
In the wake of yesterday’s murder of Shireen Abu Akleh by the Israeli military, Mr. Levy recalls the numerous innocent Palestinians who have also been murdered recently in the West Bank.
Ms. Abu Akleh is not an outlier. Rather, her circumstances are characteristic of Israel’s ongoing colonial atrocities. The Palestinians are a subordinate, oppressed, occupied people. Israel holds all the power.
Below is Mr. Levy’s article (all emphasis is mine):
The relative horror expressed over the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh is justified and necessary. It is also belated and self-righteous. Now you’re appalled? The blood of a famous journalist, no matter how brave and experienced she was – and she was – is no redder than the blood of an anonymous high school student who was traveling home in a taxi full of women in this same Jenin a month ago when she was killed by gunfire from Israeli soldiers.
Even if the smoking Israeli bullet that killed Abu Akleh is found, and even if footage is found that shows the face of the shooter, he will be treated by Israelis as a hero who is above all suspicion. It’s tempting to write that if innocent Palestinians must be killed by Israeli soldiers, better for them to be well-known and holders of U.S. passports, like Abu Akleh. At least then the U.S. State Department will voice a little displeasure – but not too much – about the senseless killing of one of its citizens by the soldiers of one of its allies.
But the crime begins long before the shooting. The crime starts with the raiding of every town, refugee camp, village and bedroom in the West Bank every night, when necessary but mainly when not necessary. The military correspondents will always say that this was done for the sake of “arresting suspects,” without specifying which suspects and what they’re suspected of, and resistance to these incursions will always be seen as “a breach of order” – the order in which the military can do as it pleases and the Palestinians cannot do anything, certainly not show any resistance.
If you are unfamiliar with something called Christian Zionism, allow me to introduce you to it.
Christian Zionism (CZ) is a kissin’ cousin to the ideology called political Zionism which governs the modern nation-state of Israel. CZ is a similar political ideology that draws from the Bible to defend the Jewish, Zionist conquest of Palestine in 1948 as the fulfilment of Old Testament prophecy.
Psalm 122, especially verses 6-9, is commonly cited by CZ folks as setting God’s spiritual goal posts for his future work in the land of Israel. The psalmist says:
Pray for the peace of Jerusalem:
“May those who love you be secure.
May there be peace within your walls
and security within your citadels.”
For the sake of my family and friends,
I will say, “Peace be within you.”
For the sake of the house of the Lord our God,
I will seek your prosperity.
Establishing peace in the literal city of Jerusalem, as the physical capitol of territorial Israel, will be the centerpiece of God’s work of ushering in the New Heavens and the New Earth according to my CZ friends.
I just finished reading an article by a CZ scholar who quotes Psalm 122 while concluding with a plea for the end of conflict in Israel/Palestine — notably, while seeming to assume that the Jewish people will maintain their ethnic domination over resident Palestinians.
Reading this scholar’s quotation reminded me that I was recently interviewed by the good folks at ChristianZionism.org. We had a friendly conversation about the events in my life that led me to write my book, Like Birds in a Cage: Christian Zionism’s Collusion in Israel’s Oppression of the Palestinian People.
Perhaps you will be interested in my story. I also talk briefly about life in a Palestinian refugee camp.
The final question my friend asked me was to explain the meaning of Psalm 122. So I did, applying what I will call the New Testament, “apostolic” method for reading the Old Testament (as I explain in my book).
It comes out very differently than the interpretations offered by my CZ brothers and sister.
You can read my entire interview here.
I have excerpted the interview below by posting my answer to the question, “Scripture tells us to ‘pray for the peace of Jerusalem’ (Ps 122:6). What should that look like?”
I am convinced that this is the proper Christian response to the question:
Psalm 122 is a “psalm of ascent” that was sung by ancient pilgrims as they travelled to Jerusalem. Jerusalem was the center of Jewish worship because the city’s temple was God’s earthly residence. The psalmist’s calls for peace and harmony within the city and among God’s congregation of worshipers (verses 6 – 9), visualize the blessings of God’s presence reflected in harmony among God’s people. Christians today understand that our incarnate Savior, Jesus Christ, was the new temple of God’s presence here on earth (John 2:19 – 22; 4:21 – 24), who is now seated on David’s throne (verse 5) inside the heavenly temple at the right hand of God (Hebrews 1:1 – 4). An earthly temple is no longer needed. We now pray for the expansion of God’s peaceable kingdom on earth: for all of God’s people throughout the world to reflect the peace of Jesus Christ as they worship together and work together to extend God’s peace to the world around them. The New Testament vision of “the peace of Jerusalem” extends far beyond the provincialism, territorialism, and ethnic nationalism embraced by Christian Zionists.
The recent flurry of seemingly random shootings committed by Palestinian men in Israel has spurred a new wave of demands that Palestinian leaders “condemn these acts of terrorism” against innocent Israeli civilians.
Naturally, every Christian should certainly condemn these acts of violence and grieve with the victims’ families.
However, as I mention in my book, Like Birds in a Cage, such attacks are extremely rare. Their rarity is especially noteworthy when we recall that millions of Palestinians are subjected to Israel’s state-sponsored terrorism on a daily basis throughout Gaza and the West Bank.
For those of us who follow this story, it is not unusual to read weekly accounts about Israeli soldiers demolishing Palestinian homes and property, cutting down family olive groves, or attacking, beating, arresting, and shooting Palestinian civilians, including children, women, and old men.
What amazes me about Palestinians in Israel/Palestine is how docile they remain in the face of Israel’s unrelieved terrorist campaign against them.
Below are excerpts from two recent pieces in Haaretz newspaper written by the Israeli journalists Amira Hass and Gideon Levy. Click on the titles to read the entire articles.
Hass and Levy speak for the small minority of Israeli Jews who faithfully cultivate a humanitarian conscience, seeing Palestinians as fellow human beings equal to themselves.
First, Hass’ article, “For the Palestinians in the West Bank, It’s an Exception, Not a ‘Terror Wave” (all emphasis in mine):
While the Palestinian public understands the attackers’ motives, the vast majority does not choose this path, which does not advance their cause, and has reservations about targeting civilians. But condemnation? Let Israelis first condemn the violence they exercise against Palestinians.
The three acts of murder-suicide perpetrated by four Palestinians — from both sides of the Green Line — in less than two weeks only highlight the absence of a leading political Palestinian body, employing a single, clear and unifying strategy. The attacks reflect internal divisions and the painful awareness of Palestinian weakness and inability to act in the face of Israel’s might. On the other hand, the fact that so few choose this route, despite its availability, indicates a broader political understanding that such attacks do not further the Palestinian cause.
Every Palestinian, on both sides of the Green Line, has many reasons to wish that Israelis feel pain, because it’s they and not only their government that are responsible for the Palestinians’ predicament. It’s likely that this was the desire of the four suicide-murderers — regardless of their background, family circumstances or individual character. Israelis immediately know, since there is an entire apparatus disseminating such information, which attacker had been arrested previously, after which attack candy were handed out and next to which assailant’s house young people celebrated (with total disrespect for the family’s pain). But Israelis, on the whole, are not interested in the extent to which Israel, and they themselves, as its citizens, constantly and for many decades have been harming Palestinians, as individuals and as a people.
This huge gap between specific knowledge and willful lack of knowledge is sufficient to explain why the Palestinian public in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip is indifferent to the recent attacks by individuals, whether committed by Israeli citizens or West Bank residents, and is not obeying Israeli demands to condemn the murders. What is noteworthy is not that the attackers have escaped the Shin Bet’s attention, but that despite their understanding for the assailants’ motives, the vast majority of Palestinians do not choose to take this route.
Thousands of Palestinians without a work permit openly enter Israel every day through the multiple gaps in the separation fence. This has been going on for years, with the full knowledge of the army and police. As everyone knows, there are ample weapons and ammunition among the Palestinians in Israel and the West Bank. These two facts could have engendered many more revenge attacks by individuals that could not be discovered in advance, both by Palestinian citizens of Israel and by West Bank residents. Even if copycats crop up in the coming weeks, like the screwdriver attack on Thursday, for Palestinians, the number of these attacks pales in comparison to the extent of the injustice Israel inflicts on them, and its systematic nature.
“Raad” means thunder in Arabic. On Thursday evening he sat on a bench on Tel Aviv’s Dizengoff Street for 20 minutes before he stood up and began shooting at people around his age who were enjoying happy hour at Ilka Bar. In the picture that was posted later he looks handsome; in a different picture, in which he clutches two rifles, he appears enraged and frightening. Hazem killed Tomer Morad, a mechanical engineering student; Eytam Magini, a computer science, psychology and neuroscience student; and Barak Lufan, a former Olympic athlete and the head coach of Israel’s national kayak team. All of them, like him, were young men.
It was a mirror image that could have been from a movie. Young people from the same country, sitting across from each other: the so-called stranger on the public bench, tense and agitated, facing locals in a bar on Thursday evening. In the days preceding the terrible night friends of the guys in the bar, soldiers and Border Policemen, killed five young people in his refugee camp, and now he sets out to kill them indiscriminately.
The people facing him are the characters he would like to be, with the life he would like to live, the freedom and the opportunities he too would like to have. He wants to make his existence known and say: If I don’t have that life, those rights, you who sit in the bar facing me will also never have them. That’s the whole story. On top of it one can build piles of intelligence and weapons, punishment and deterrence, theories about bloodthirstiness and moral judgment, about murder and killing, war plans, operations and fences. In the end, that’s the story. This and no other. Nothing can beat it.
The massacre of Palestinian villagers at Tantura in 1948 was one of many similar horrific, criminal acts committed by the Israeli military during the founding of modern Israel.
The Israeli historian Ilan Pappe has documented an additional thirty-one confirmed massacres of unarmed Palestinian civilians, including women and children, with the possibility of another six needing further investigation.
This video from the Middle East Eye focuses on the Tantura massacre. Pappe describes the Israeli killing spree in some detail in his book, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, pages 133-137. As many as 230 villagers were executed at Tantura, lined up and shot in the back of the head.
Professor Gary Burge was a New Testament professor at Wheaton College
for many years. He is also a good friend of mine and is now a dean at Calvin Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, MI.
Gary has written three excellent books about the errors of Christian Zionism and the real-world fallout that it helps to create.
Thus, I was quite happy when Gary agreed to write the forward to my new book, Like Birds in a Cage: Christian Zionism’s Collusion in Israel’s Oppression of the Palestinian People (Wipf and Stock, 2021).
I recently discovered that a website called ChristianZionism.org, which Gary helped to organize, is promoting my book by reprinting Gary’s very kind forward.
If you haven’t yet purchased your own copy of the book, I encourage you to read Gary’s forward here.
Perhaps you are aware that the Israeli government recently accused six Palestinian humanitarian organizations in Israel of providing money-laundering services for terrorist organizations.
Naturally, the official announcement offered no substantiating evidence but promised to produce it later.
Well, now we have it.
As the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports, the “evidence” presented to the US Congress has nothing to do with the six organizations in question but a seventh, entirely different group all together!
Below is an excerpt from the article entitled “In Congress, Israel Justifies Palestinian NGO Terror Tag with Evidence on Unrelated Group“:
The Shin Bet representative tasked with briefing U.S. Congress on Israel’s designation of six Palestinian civil society NGOs as terrorist groups presented evidence on an unrelated organization.
The document had previously been presented to European diplomats in May in an attempt to convince them to stop funding the organizations. Sources who were shown it at the time said it did not convince them. According to sources, additional evidence was presented to the U.S. State Department and other officials with higher security clearances.
The document discusses a total of seven organizations: Six are the civil society organizations that Defense Minister Benny Gantz designated as terrorist organizations last week. The seventh, the Health Workers Committee, was designated as an unauthorized organization affiliated with the PFLP in January 2020.
The Health Workers Committee is at the center of a trial in an Israeli military court that will begin in a few days. Israel is charging four of their employees with membership in the PFLP and inflating receipts to divert donor money for the organization’s benefit.
Read the entire article here.
Worse yet, Philip Weiss at Mondoweiss uncovers Israel’s real tactics and
motivation behind its attacks against these six NGOs in particular.
First, spurious “confessions” were obtained through torture.
Second, all six organizations have cases pending before the International Criminal Court accusing Israel of crimes against humanity.
Israel acted against the groups because they have been giving information to the International Criminal Court– whose prosecutor began a criminal investigation of Israel this year under a complaint filed by Palestine five years ago.
But surely, this must be a coincidence…
I am happy to announce that my new book, Like Birds in a Cage: Christian Zionism’s Collusion in Israel’s Oppression of the Palestinian People (Cascade, 2021), is now available.
So place your orders now (please!) and share what you learn with your family and friends. Just click this link.
Rather than talk about my own book, allow me to share a few of the recommendations the book has received from other scholars in this field:
A keenly reasoned, comprehensive, full-frontal critique of Christian Zionism. Equally at ease interpreting St. Paul, critiquing ideologies of privilege, deconstructing Israel’s discriminatory legal regime, and narrating scenes of unarmed, tear-gassed villagers, David Crump mounts a formidable case against the troubling logic, and deadly deployment, of ethnocracy and territorial exceptionalism. This prophetic call to walk not where Jesus walked, but as Jesus walked, is more urgent now than ever.
Bruce N. Fisk, Ph.D., Senior Research Fellow, Network of Evangelicals for the Middle East
This new volume by David Crump may be the most comprehensive critique of Christian Zionism by an evangelical author to date. As a former ‘insider,’ his unique perspective has delivered a tour de force by combining scholarly biblical exegesis of key texts the incisive theological analysis. His solid grasp of the relevant political and historical context of the Israeli-Palestinian struggle adds context and texture to this wonderfully written book. I hope this volume will be widely read and reviewed across the evangelical spectrum by pastors, biblical scholars, students, and perhaps most urgently, evangelical politicians.
Don Wagner, author of Anxious for Armageddon
Like Birds in a Cage is destined to become a standard text on Christian Zionism in the USA. With devastating precision, Dave Crump exposes the cancerous nature of this deviant theology. For Evangelicalism to survive with any credibility, it must repudiate the justification of apartheid and ethnic cleansing in Palestine. Crump’s book provides not only the diagnosis but also the cure.
Steven Sizer, Founder and Director, Peacemaker Trust
This book is quite unique in the way that it combines a sound grasp of the history of Zionism, careful interpretation of the Bible, and first hand, recent experience of everyday life for Palestinians living under occupation on the West Bank . . . My hope and prayer is that this book will help American Christians of all kinds to wake up to the very significant ways in which Christian Zionism has contributed — and continues to contribute — to this tragic conflict. They might then be more able to challenge their government’s policies.
Colin Chapman, author of Whose Promised Land?
The US provides Israel with $10.5 million per day in military aid.
Yep, Israeli military might is primarily the product of US arms sales and foreign aid. We hand over approximately $3.5 billion to Israel every year. That’s more assistance than we give to any other country in the world, including the entire continent of Africa.
On Monday the Senate will vote on whether we should give Israel an additional $1 billion for its Iron Dome project. (Yep, that’s another billion on top of the $3.8 billion they already received in 2020!)
Israel’s so-called Iron Dome is a “defensive” anti-missile system developed with US funding and expertise. The record is conflicted over how effective it really is, but it figures prominently into Israel’s public messaging about its need to defend itself against rockets shot into Israel from Gaza.
How often do we hear this message: Israel has a right to defend itself!
But there are many problems with this picture.
First, let Israel spend its own money “defending” itself. Why not? The US has spent $300 million each day over the past 20 years on our foolish, destructive ventures in Afghanistan. More war mongering overseas is the last thing I want my tax dollars going to.
Let the Israelis pay for their weapons systems by themselves. They can afford it.
Second, yes, you read me correctly. I did write war mongering. The Iron Dome may be called a “defensive” weapons system. But a good many western visitors to Gaza have come away describing it as the largest open air prison in the world. In fact, others like the Jewish historian Norman Finkelstein have even compared it to a concentration camp.
I fully agree with folks like Dr. Finkelstein, in which case the Israeli military must be seen as the largest collection of concentration camp guards in the world.
So, here is my question: Do concentration camp guards have the right to defend themselves against prisoners who resist their abuse?
Think about it.
Would the guards at Auschwitz have had the right to shoot and kill the emaciated, dehumanized, Jewish prisoners starving to death around them had those prisoners revolted against their imprisonment?
The answer is, No.
Today we celebrate the stubborn, Jewish prisoners who revolted against their
German guards in the Warsaw ghetto. They are seen as heroes.
So, what makes Jewish concentration camp guards today any different from those German concentration camp guards in the past?
Nothing, my friends. Absolutely nothing.
Why, then, are American politicians asking US tax payers to finance the superior weaponry used by Israeli guards against the dehumanized and embattled people imprisoned within the Gaza concentration camp?
According to International Law, the Palestinians in Gaza have every right to resist their inhumane subjugation and strike back, even when that resistance includes rocket fire.
The truth of the matter is that the people of Gaza should have the US construct a Palestinian Iron Dome to intercept the innumerable rockets, bombs, missiles, and fighter jets that Israel launches against them on a regular basis.
Naturally, there is much more to be said about this situation. But I have already given reason enough for you and me both to call our senators in D.C. (either today or Monday morning) and insist that they NOT APPROVE another $1 billion for Israeli weapons systems.
Please click here and respond. The Palestinian prisoners will thank you.
Thanks.