Sunday, July 5, 2008

From Jerusalem and Bethlehem

A Nation without History:

America, today the most powerful nation on earth and yet with little archeological evidence by which it could lay claim to a Divine Right of Kings, may well have found its past and its future in the layers of granite-like stone and sandstone in Israel and in the ruins of Rome.

Without a long and slowly-evolving national history, America grabs its identity where it may.

The Divine Right of Kings, a middle-ages theory, holds to a belief that certain kings ruled because they were chosen by God to do so and that those kings were accountable to no person other than God.  America, unrestrained by archeological evidence to revise its own history, often has taken refuge in divine rule as transcendent over governments, their laws and all apostate religions.  It has at times considered it to be both its right and its obligation to politically and militarily assist God in that transcendence.

There is, therefore, a sort-of supernatural heritage from America's "founding fathers" seeking freedom from the iron hand of the King of England, to the Plymouth Colony's brief experiment in creating a real-life Kingdom of God in the new world, to St. Augustine's City of God, where both the government and the church remain separate and distinct but under divine authority and rule, to the violent history of the Promised Land of Israel.

It is natural, as well, that Americans would trace their wild and recent success to the ultimate progression of God's divine authority - a form of "man come of age."  America emerges in modern history as the Christian Promised Land.  The restoration of Israel becomes the final chapter in the global rule of God, under the assist of the most powerful nation on earth. 

The Bible as History Written Beforehand:

It is no mystery, then, why Evangelical Christianity, marching through human history as the forward guard of divine rule, would find hope and refuge in a chaotic Middle East.  As tourists walking through the pages of the Bible, American Evangelicals become motivated more by a mission of divine dominion than by a life of humble service.  Political involvement becomes the means by which America and the world are prepared for the final chapter in redemptive history.

The same Bible from which Evangelicals extract their future as history written beforehand has, however, been twisted and perverted and abused to create competing worldviews even among Western Christians.  The American Evangelical lays its truth claims to a long and bloody history of theocratic empires moving forward God's redemptive plan.  In order to play a pivotal role in that divine plan, every generation of believers must consider itself to be the most enlightened and the most faithful - Christian legends in their own time (or mind, whichever the case may be). 

Promised Land Redux: 

Israel, a labyrinth of ancient catacombs and modern architecture - layer upon layer of history - lends itself perfectly as the philosophical and historical locus of both divine wrath and restoration.

You can read Israel like a novel simply by walking through its streets and tunnels with its human cargo jostling shoulder-to-shoulder - neither friend nor foe.  It is an enigma, however - an entity without physical borders inhabited by a people accustomed to upheaval and displacement.  It can go where it chooses - do what it will, unrestrained by international law, its eye on the transcendent divine prerogative subjectively and chaotically defined by race, religion and politics. 

Like its benefactor, America, it thrives on the edge of Apocalypticism.

Who can possibly challenge the divine Word?  "God said it; I believe it; that settles it!" 

This mythological kingdom we know today as the identity of race with land finds itself as the world's fourth largest nuclear power, with an estimated 500 warheads, and the third largest arms manufacturer in the world.  Yet, with no borders and with its lone ally being the US, none of this military power can be used other than for saber rattling.  To use its vast power against a neighbor is to consign itself once again to extinction.  Bullying Palestinians, therefore, becomes the national pastime, yielding a terrorism that rationalizes the bullying.

In both instances, the oppressed becomes the oppressor.

History of the Creation of Modern Israel:

Creation of a homeland for Jewish Diaspora began in earnest through the 1917 Balfour Declaration at the urging of Zionist statesman, Chaim Weizmann, and as acknowledgement of Jewish support for Great Britain against the Turkish Ottoman Empire during WW 1.  The League of Nations ratified the Declaration following WW 1 and in 1922 appointed Britain to rule in Palestine.[1]

Encouraged by official international sanction and propelled by escalating anti-Semitism in Western Europe, uneasy coexistence between Jews and Palestinians began to crumble into guerrilla warfare in the mid-to-late 1930's.  Increased immigration of Jews from Europe fueled fears of Jewish nationalism within the Arab population, leading to political instability.  In 1939, Britain moved to restrict immigration. 

As the horrors of the Holocaust became public knowledge in the West following WW2, US support for a homeland for the Jews became a national and religious obsession.  Coupled with this obsession, however, was fear of a Soviet/Arab alliance that would severely restrict the shipment of oil to the States. 

Through joint diplomatic efforts, Britain and the US recommended in 1946 that the United Nations forge a single-state entity for the region.  This was not well received by the British public, long-tired of Jewish terrorism in Palestine, nor was it acceptable to Jews and Arabs in the region.  Tossed back to the UN for resolution of the problem, the UN recommended relieving Britain of its mandate over Palestine and partitioning the region into two states. 

President Truman secured State Department approval of the plan, whereupon the General Assembly adopted it as UN Resolution 181 on November 29, 1947.  The partition created three zones - a Jewish state, an Arab state and an international zone around Jerusalem.[2]

On May 15, 1948, the United States government officially recognized Israel as a state.  War against Israel was declared the very next day by the Arab states in the region.

The Green Line:

The 1949 Armistice between Israel and its neighbors (Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria) separated Israel from those Arab states and established an unofficial border for the new nation-state.  Areas considered to be outside Israeli administration were Gaza, the West Bank of the Jordan River, the Golan Heights and the Sinai Peninsula.  The area within the Green Line constituted 78.5% of what had been Palestine prior to 1947.

The genius of the Armistice was the division of Jerusalem into two sections - Israeli and Arab, thus assuring its international political flavor.  The Jordanian enclave of East Jerusalem was connected to the West Bank by a narrow passage.

The Six-Day War, 1967:

Israel's victory in the Six-Day War began a policy of occupation by settlement.  Quickly annexing East Jerusalem, Israel granted East Jerusalem Arabs permanent residency, albeit under severe restrictions common to its citizens.  Nearly 700,000 Palestinians were exiled or voluntarily moved from East Jerusalem to Jordan, while Jews in Jordan, Europe and the US flowed into the newly-acquired territories. 

Jewish settlements became the subterfuge whereby Arab Palestine was placed under occupation, communities separated by encircling open spaces.  As the settlements sprang up, Israel assumed a military role as protector of its people, its people having emigrated from such diverse places as Brooklyn, NY and the former Soviet Union.  Hundreds of thousands of settlers required hundreds of thousands of IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) troops at hundreds of security checkpoints.

The Second Intifada (Arab uprising) of 2000, triggered by Ariel Sharon and a large contingent of troops mounting a symbolic seizure of the Temple Mount on which sits the Al Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, was the final straw.  A concrete wall, now wending its way through selective prime West Bank and East Jerusalem territories, assumes Israeli control over agriculture, power generation and water - a 27ft. concrete wall meandering for over 500 miles. 

This wall, higher and longer than the Berlin Wall, is referred to in the US as "the fence."  It enjoys the approval and complicity of the United States government, having been ratified in 2004 by a near-unanimous Resolution vote of the House and Senate, affirming for Israel its blatant violation of international law. 

For every 100 building permits issued by Israel to West Bank Palestinians, tens of thousands are issued to Jewish Settlers, and thousands of Palestinian houses are bulldozed to make room for those settlements.

"A Land without People for a People without Land":

God, as it turns out, is the author of this organized, yet subtle form of terrorism.  Having promised to Abraham land stretching from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River; from the Euphrates River in Iraq on into Egypt, that promise cannot be fulfilled without the financial and military backing of the United States. 

Israel has that backing through its lobby and through the powerful, well-funded and political savvy Christian Right.  The lobby financially isolates the politician or academician who dares question Israel's human rights violations and secures for Israel some $5.5B a year in undesignated, unrestricted foreign aid.

The Christian Right, with its growing influence among conservative Americans, enjoys a stranglehold on the Republican Party now in power.  Likely to lose much of that power in the 2008 elections, the GOP clearly will move right until it can win back its Christian constituency and restore its national influence.  It is likely to soon return to its familiar agenda of an emerging theocratic state. 

At various levels of support, nearly 100M American Evangelicals for whom salvation is more a code than a lifestyle participate in this dangerous and faithless sport.  Such nagging concepts as the Sermon on the Mount and love of both neighbor and enemy slip beneath the surface of easy grace.

Zionist Jews and Christian Zionists join hands in their unyielding and unquestioned support for expansionist Israel, one preparing for the coming Messiah and the other for the returning Messiah.  God becomes the real estate agent.

The slogan adopted by Israeli leaders of the past and present relegates the millions of Arabs living for centuries in Palestine to non-human status - "A land without a people..."  If you refuse to see them, they simply are not there. 

The Diaspora, on the other hand, emerging from the residual guilt of the Holocaust and the poverty of Eastern Europe, becomes a viable "...people without land."  What comes to mind is the very familiar Native American experience in North America and the struggle of invisible descendents of African slaves.

Colonialism and imperialism triumph over tribalism because their histories can be chronicled in blood and borders.  What cannot be seen nor recorded, however, is the human heart rising from slavery to community to forgiveness. 

It has for now fallen on the expansionist West to write the history of conquest and accompanying wealth.  Tools of war, however, ultimately become as obsolete as the ethic that designs them, builds them and employs them for other than last resort.

Finally, a Christian church that loses its patience with the hand of the sovereign God it professes to worship, no longer serves but usurps humanity.

[1] The Recognition of the State of Israel, http://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/israel/large/index.php

[2] Ibid.