| Divestment in Israel: a complex issue |
| Written by Ann Lewis |
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Regarding the Israeli divestment issue, I urge the following reflection: In 1894, Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish officer in the French army, was unjustly accused of treason, mainly because of the prevailing anti-Semitic atmosphere. The assimilated Jew, journalist Theodor Herzl, witnessed mobs shouting “Death to the Jews” in France, the birthplace of “Liberty, Fraternity, Equality,” and determined that the Jew would never be safe, and that there was only one solution: the mass immigration of Jews to a land that they could call their own. Thus, the Dreyfus Case became one of the determinants in the genesis of political Zionism. Herzl concluded that anti-Semitism was a stable and immutable factor in human society, which assimilation did not solve. Thus he advocated for a Jewish state where Jews could be safe.
The ensuing development of the formation of Israel and the resulting relationship with the Palestinians is extremely complex. I would not pretend to know enough to comment on it, except to ask this of my fellow Presbyterians: to what extent were we also historically and are we still responsible for the need for Israel? We can say technically, it was the French, or it was the times. But what was and is the effect of the ongoing contrast of law versus gospel, of the concept of works versus faith, (works being ascribed to Judaism and faith to Christianity), of the subtle seeds planted by Luther’s “ the Jews and their lies,” and the recurring suggestion that Jesus treated outsiders radically different from the way the (other) religion taught they were to be treated, by healing on the Sabbath and breaking purity laws. And in the Lenten season, what about the St. John’s Passion, consistently performed without contextual program notes with its easy suggestion that it is the Jews who issued the plea “Crucify Him!”
Do these realities continue to make Jews feel that they can never be safe? A local Jewish rabbi states that Israel is about survival to the Jew. Can we understand the passion for this? And more importantly, do we have an ongoing role in perpetuating it?
Does it behoove us to not only think about divestment of funds but of divestment of polemic in our Scriptures, which has such dangerous ongoing negative impact, and backlash, in our situation today? Ann Lewis is a ruling elder, having served as clerk of session, confirmation teacher and a longtime student of Christian origins in a lay capacity. |
Comments
That Jews only have themselve to blame for their misfortune and any issues they may face, as the political and religious entity known as Israel now faces, either from Iran or their Palestinian proxies is again their own fault. "Blame the Jews", is not new, only the actors and agencies change, 19th century France, the PCUSA is 2012.
Divestment, economic sactions against Israel, call it what one wills, the end results are the same. Wishing the Jews would just go away, and not bother us, or quit oppressing a people whom we see playing into the cult of victimization narratives the left loves to embrace.
Israel as a nation-state will be around for a long time, with ot without the permission of liberal arts PhD's on so many seminary faculties. PCUSA? I would not take bets on that proposition. Even after the PCUSA sells the $205.65 of Cat stock in its investment books.
We CAN understand the passion that drove the Zionist movement in the early and mid-20th century. Indeed it is easy to see many that Americans in the same situation would react the same way. Among the things that make the situation so complicated is the fact that any large group of Americans forced to endure the plight of Palestinians would also respond in the same variety of ways as Palestinians have over the past decades.
It is understandable that Jewish people having endured the treatment they had in Europe, their home for many, many centuries, should see virtue in a new home elsewhere. It is easy to understand how anyone in those circumstances could neglect to acknowledge that other people lived there and had lived there for many centuries. It is equally understandable that those who lived there should see the influx of so many who seemed to them to be Europeans from the lands of the colonial powers as a highly unwelcome turn of events. But less excusable is the role of the major powers who encouraged and enabled this to happen. So yes, absolutely, it is important to think about our role in bringing about such a difficult and complicated situation.
Among the things we should realize is that the current situation is one of unequal power, thanks in large part to things we have done. The unreflective support for the Israeli government, the irrational confusion of the Israeli state with either an ancient Biblical Israel or some confused apocalyptic vision of the middle east, all make it difficult to move forward. Given our history and common culture, seeing ourselves in the place of the Israelis is not so hard. Putting ourselves in the place of the Palestinians takes a bit more effort, but it is something that we must do.
The Dreyfus case may speak in some ways about the situation in our day, but I doubt that it does in the way Ms. Lewis imagines. The relation between Jews and Arabs is complicated, but it is a fiction to describe it primarily as an ancient hatred. There are certainly old tensions, but any realistic analysis sees the current conflict much more in terms of the developments of the 20th century. The anti-Semitism in the West demonstrated by the Dreyfus case is the type of hatred so often springing from the unknown “other” reviled merely for being different. Although not entirely gone today, Jews and Christians no longer see each other in anything approaching that level of “otherness,” especially in the US. No two situations in two eras are ever really exactly the same, but we should give some thought to the ways in which the reviled “other” of our own day is so often our Muslim neighbor.
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