A Blog from David Crump
Jonathan Kuttab is a Palestinian Christian from East Jerusalem. He is a human rights lawyer who has practiced law in the USA, Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
Jonathan is also the author of several books, including Beyond the Two State Solution, which I highly recommend.
Today Rob talks with Jonathan about the war against Gaza, the death of the two-state solution, as well as his Christian commitment to non-violent living in the kingdom of God.
Dr. Gary Burge was recently interviewed on the podcast Theology in the Raw.
My friend Gary provides an extensive argument for answering NO to this question. No, Christians do not have a theological obligation to support Israel’s right to the land.
If you have any questions about these matters, then please give Gary an hour of you time. You will be glad you did:
Do Christians Have a Theological Obligation to Support the Modern State of Israel? Dr. Gary Burge
British journalist Jonathan Cook addresses the elephant in the room whenever we talk about the Hamas attack of Oct. 7:
How did Hamas guerillas, carrying light armaments, manage to demolish and burn down sizeable concrete buildings in numerous kibbutzim throughout southern Israel?
Numerous Israeli eyewitnesses point their fingers at the Israeli military.
Yep, Israel makes a practice of killing their own. Below is an excerpt of Cook’s article:
Did the Israeli military fire into the Hamas-controlled civilian homes in the same fashion as it had fired into its own military bases, and with the same disregard for the safety of Israelis inside? Was the goal in each case to prevent at all costs Hamas taking hostages whose release would require a very high price from Israel?
Kibbutz Be’eri has been a favoured destination for BBC reporters keen to illustrate Hamas’ barbarity. It is where Lucy Williamson headed again this week. And yet none of her reporting highlighted comments made to the Israeli Haaretz newspaper by Tuval Escapa, the kibbutz’s security coordinator. He said [link is in Hebrew] Israeli military commanders had ordered the “shelling [of] houses on their occupants in order to eliminate the terrorists along with the hostages.”
That echoed the testimony of Yasmin Porat, who sought shelter in Be’eri from the nearby Nova music festival. She told Israeli Radio that once Israeli special forces arrived: “They eliminated everyone, including the hostages because there was very, very heavy crossfire.”
Are the images of charred bodies presented by Williamson, accompanied by a warning of their graphic, upsetting nature, incontrovertible proof that Hamas behaved like monsters, bent on the most twisted kind of vengeance? Or might those blackened remains be evidence that Israeli civilians and Hamas fighters burned alongside each other, after they were engulfed in flames caused by Israeli shelling of the houses?
Israel will not agree to an independent investigation so a definitive answer will never be forthcoming. But that does not absolve the media of their professional and moral duty to be cautious.
You can read the entire article here.
Over 1,500 Israeli anti-apartheid activists have signed a petition accusing Israel’s political and military leadership of committing war crimes in Gaza.
Jessica Corbett’s article appears in Common Dreams. Below is an excerpt:
Israelis Against Apartheid, a group representing more than 1,500 citizens, this week urged the International Criminal Court’s prosecutor “to take accelerated action against the escalating Israeli war crimes and genocide of the Palestinian people” in Gaza.
“For the safety and future in the region, all elements of international law must be enforced and war crimes should be investigated,” declares the letter to the ICC’s Karim A. A. Khan, noting his ongoing Palestine investigation and recent remarks on the war.
The letter, dated Thursday, explains that “as Israeli anti-colonial activists, we have joined our voices to the voices of Palestinians for decades warning on the dangerous course of action pursued by the Israeli state and repeatedly called for international intervention.”
“Persistent impunity has created the conditions for the consolidation of the Israeli apartheid regime, which is intent on committing ethnic cleansing and genocide of the Indigenous Palestinian population,” the letter continues. “The acute deterioration in basic conditions of life that we are now witnessing could have been avoided if Israel had not been continuously granted impunity for its ongoing crimes.”
You can read the entire article here.
Ms. Ahmed, of Human Rights Watch, provides essential context and shocking details that should illuminate our view of the current war against Gaza.
Daniel Levy worked as a peace negotiator for Israel in the days when such negotiations were taking place.
Here are two short clips where Mr. Levy expresses a few hard truths about Israel/Palestine.
Ms. Iversen not only describes what she saw in the Occupied Territory, she also reads the moving descriptions of Palestinian suffering posted by others.
Palestinians are human beings too.
Journalist Nida Ibrahim describes and illustrates the escalating violence against Palestinians that is spreading throughout the West Bank, one of the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
Today in episode four Rob Dalrymple interviews Saleem Anfous. Saleem is a Palestinian Christian who lives near Bethlehem in the West Bank. He works as a tourguide and describes what it is like to live under Israeli military occupation.
Notice how Saleem is not filled with hopelessness or despair. He is realistic. But his hope is in Jesus Christ.
My previous post discussing Israel’s war against Gaza mentions the ways in which personal political commitments to nationalism and/or patriotism may deform or undercut a person’s faithfulness to the kingdom of God.
I discuss a variety of ways in which modern politics can distort or even
destroy Christian witness as modern political commitments choke out our willingness to adhere to the ethics of Jesus in my book, I Pledge Allegiance.
It just so happens that today I was also reading a good book by Rob Hewell titled Worship Beyond Nationalism: Practicing the Reign of God.
Hewell’s analysis of the subtle but deadly threats posed by nationalism, particularly Christian nationalism, to faithful witness are highly relevant to a proper understanding of Christian Zionism.
My Zionist brothers and sisters insist that their loyalty to Israel is rooted entirely in scripture.
As I mention briefly in my previous post, I am convinced that it also reflects a prior more fundamental commitment to a nationalistic ideology. Zionists are Israeli nationalists, even though they may be citizens of another country.
Israeli nationalism rides the train of American nationalism very easily.
Below I have reproduced a brief excerpt from Mr. Hewell’s book that I believe makes my point:
Nationalism ought to be seen as a sectarian heresy in conflict with tthe universality of the Christian gospel and God’s construction of a new people from all peoples and nations, and whose allegiance is to the kingdom of God. . .
Because the ultimate commitments of worldly nation-states are not the gospel itself, a nation-state’s agenda will never clearly be consonant with the agenda to which the church is called, namely missio Dei. . . A failure of the church to allow its radical nature to shine on this one count will likely lead to additional compromises.
The church in America lives in the shadow of tthe legacy of empire, triumphalism, and nationalism. . . The inclusion of this nation’s story [whether the Unites States or Israel] in the worship gatherings of Christ’s followers allows what can be interpreted as an alien narrative to influence the life of the church. The demands of nationalism will always ultimately conflict with the gospel of God in Christ, creating an identity crisis for the church. . . Such a crisis will arise because of an understanding or interpretation of Christianity determined by . . . membership in a population or community, other than the church, that becomes critical for the church’s self-understanding. . .
When the church allows nationalistic influences within its worship [or its theology!]. . . it allows the nation-state a hand in shaping the church’s identity. Once nationalism has become an element of the church’s identity, the church also becomes vulnerable to that nation’s partisan politics. . . . Under the influence of nationalism, the church’s ability to prophetically critique the state is limited if not completely abandoned. (emphasis mine)
Such nationalistic compromise is exactly what I believe has happened to my Christian Zionist friends who now refuse to criticize, much less condemn, Israel’s egregious proliferation of war crimes in its bombings of the Palestinian people in Gaza — and its ‘crack-down’ against the people of the West Bank.
The Christian’s commitment to the kingdom of God is always first and foremost for obedient disciples of Jesus Christ.