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CounterPunch
November
1, 2002
Memo to: Christians
Re:
Activism and the Israel/Palestine conflict.
by MICHAEL NEUMANN
Forgive me, an atheist student of Christianity,
for intruding in your affairs. But what am I saying? You guys
just forgive everything, don't you? That's what I want
to talk to you about.
The case for Christian activism is well
known. When Jesus says, 'resist not evil', He does not mean that
you should ignore the evil men to do other men:
Ye have heard that it hath been said,
An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto
you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee
on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man
will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have
thy cloak also. And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile,
go with him twain. Give to him that asketh thee, and from him
that would borrow of thee turn not thou away.
To many interpreters, He seems here to
be speaking of personal life, and how to respond to personal
injuries. He is not, say the activists, counseling passivity
in the face of injustice to others. As a man He was not passive,
but drove the moneychangers from the temple. And John says to
the church of the Laodiceans:
I know thy works, that thou art neither
cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because
thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee
out of my mouth. (Revelations 3:15-3:16)
So to many, it seems unlikely that Christians
are to do nothing about evil.
The doctrine of Christian activism has
certainly been put into practice, and applied to the Israel/Palestine
conflict. There are Christian activists in Palestine, and another,
quite different kind of Christian activist cheering on Israeli
crimes.
But of course the activists don't differ
only in their choice of causes. Christian support for Israel
is so overwhelmingly dominant that the words "Christian"
and "Israel" invariably bring to mind the Christian
right. And the difference is not simply a matter of numbers or
influence. The Christian activist right is vigorous; the Christian
activist left is consistently hesitant, wimpy and paradoxically
almost passive. Its passivity takes the form of bearing witness.
One bears witness in one's conscience, not one's actions. (Romans
2:15) While this can certainly lead to overt action, it need
not do so, and Christian activists nowadays often simply talk
to one another, or take actions whose value by their own admission
is primarily symbolic. (From here on, "Christian activist"
refers to Christian leftists.) Christian activism is a shadow
of what it was in the civil rights era.
The feebleness of Christian activism
in defense of the Palestinians doesn't seem to stem from indifference.
Christian activists seem about as appalled as they ought to be
at Israel's race war. The explanation usually given for their
weakness and hesitation is that they are afraid of being, or
being considered, antisemitic. Or to put it a bit differently,
Christians are soft on Israel because they are intimidated by
the Jews, who make them feel guilty and/or antisemitic when they
criticize Israeli crimes.
This can't be quite right. It really
is elementary and obvious that opposition to Israel and Zionism
isn't antisemitic. Too many Christians know too well how to refute
the charge; it cannot be the source of their intimidation. In
fact, the reverse must be the case: if the charge of antisemitism
is enough to stifle Christian protests, it must be because Christians
are already intimidated. And it does seem to me that a
great many liberal or left-wing Christians show signs of this.
They already know that the Jews who shush them up are wrong to
charge them with antisemitism. Still they do not dare to refute
the false accusations, or else feel some moral obligation not
to question the judgements of the accusers (or both).
Other activist Christians really do seem
to doubt themselves, suspecting that when they criticize Israel,
perhaps they are indeed antisemitic. But I have met this type
of activist and feel that, deep down, they know they are nothing
of the sort. They would not doubt themselves so easily unless
they too were intimidated already. In other words, it is true
that Christians are intimidated by Jews, but not that, in most
cases, they are intimidated simply by the charge that, in criticizing
Israel, they are being antisemitic.
Suppose then that Christians are already
intimidated before being labeled antisemitic on account of their
opposition to Israel. What has intimidated them? I think it has
to do collective rather than individual guilt. It stems from
Jewish charges that a deep strain of antisemitism runs through
the Church, and manifests itself in a long and shameful history
of libel and persecution against Jews, to say nothing of indirect
complicity in horrible massacres and outrages. Protestant denominations
are caught in the fallout zone of these charges. Theirs is usually
guilt by association, though in other cases it is said that Protestants
have been directly involved in anti-Jewish crimes. As far as
I know, the charges are all correct.
But why should this intimidate Christian
activists, or make them feel guilty? Are they responsible for
the history of Christianity? I believe that on this matter, Christians
have taken a position which is, if not strictly incompatible
with Christianity, at least inappropriate to it.
The question here is how far Christians
should accept the notion of a collective responsibility, passed
down from generation to generation, whether for crimes against
Jews or for anything else. Inevitably the theological questions
are contentious. There is little doubt that collective responsibility
is fundamental to the Old Testament. The relationship between
God and humans is contractual, a covenant between Him and a collective
entity, His chosen people. The notion that Jews are collectively
obliged to obey His laws, and collectively punished for disobeying
them, is pervasive. Judaism without collective responsibility
is inconceivable.
As for Christianity, one must be careful.
Christian theologians never tire in their attempt to reconcile
the Old and New Testaments, to say nothing of the tension between
revolutionary and evolutionary approaches within the New Testament
itself. But it's pretty clear that, after the coming of Christ,
there is a shift in emphasis. What the individual feels and
does takes on central importance:
For as many as have sinned without law
shall also perish without law: and as many as have sinned in
the law shall be judged by the law;
(Romans 2:12)
and The Sermon on the Mount speaks at
least as much to individuals as to a people. Any reconciliation
between the Old and New Testaments cannot help but liberate Christians
from the very notions of collective innocence and guilt that
lie at the core of Judaism. That's why "The Catholic Faq"
carefully defangs the Old Testament conceptions:
As for the sins of the fathers being
visited upon their children down to the fourth generation, you're
misapplying a general observation about how sinful behavior
(and divine punishment) can be and often is passed down to descendants.
(http://www.newadvent.org/faq/faq005.htm)
...so that collective guilt now becomes,
in effect, transmissible individual sin, incurring repeated and
related but separate individual instances of individual guilt
and punishment. All bows to ecumenism aside, this reconciliation
is seen as an important progression, if not from the Old Testament
itself, then from the unforgiving and unyielding collective condemnations
found in Judaism to a more modern notion of responsibility.
Progressive Jews would doubtless be willing
to move some distance in the same direction. But what matters
here is that Christian guilt about the Jews inappropriately adopts,
as if out of politeness, a strict, almost parodic version of
the Jewish conception of collective responsibility. Christians
rush to accept something they would reject in the ordinary course
of moral argument, something which they would most likely deplore.
Christians would not hold Hitler's great-great-great grandchild
responsible for his acts, and I hope they would not hold Germans
even born in the Nazi era responsible for anything the Nazis
did. Irony of ironies, it is precisely by rejecting strong notions
of collective responsibility that Christians have become so firmly
resolved to exonerate Jews of responsibility for the death of
Jesus. Nor will it do to say that Christians, given their bad
record, should be especially vigilant about antisemitism, even
if they are not actually responsible for past antisemitic outrages.
'Christians', that abstract collective entity, may have a bad
record. Individual Christians do not, nor do Christian activists,
so there is absolutely nothing for them to be vigilant about.
Christian guilt about historical antisemitism
is not only foolish; it borders on reprehensible. When Christians
buy into the notion that they owe 'the Jews' something for the
sins of Christianity, they buy into more than a theologically
dubious concept of responsibility. They also buy into the notions
of collective spirit and will that permeate a dangerous strain
of 19th century nationalism, one that gave rise, not only to
unobjectionable movements, but also to Nazism and Zionism itself.
They endorse the idea that 'peoples' have some historical destiny,
complete with historical grievances. Their endorsement invests
individuals who have never suffered with a victimhood borrowed
from generations long past, usually and not coincidentally packaged
with extensive, disruptive and ambitious land claims. Christians
then come to accept, not only responsibility for crimes they
never committed, but also a premise that undermines their opposition
to the crimes of Israel: that spoilt, sadistic, heavily armed
Jewish cowards from Brooklyn are somehow victims of eons-long
persecution, and deserve to become 'settlers' in the 'homeland'
which 'their people inhabited long ago'. And by wallowing in
their own imagined guilt or fearing Jewish recriminations, Christians
are buying into the very strain of racial thinking that produced
the violent antisemitic acts of which they so absurdly stand
accused.
And it is odd. Christians are so eager
to beg and borrow shame from past crimes they did not commit,
yet they seem to have little shame for the reputation of their
own religion. Pride is a sin when it is celebrates one's own
excellence and puts the individual ahead of God. But it is no
sin to have more pride in one's faith than to let it be hijacked
by blue-rinse 'fundamentalists' who cheer the destruction of
the Palestinian people. And it certainly no sin to help an oppressed
people, not apologetically, but loudly and aggressively, and
angrily: anger at personal affronts is a sin, too, but not the
righteous anger that was no stranger even to Jesus Christ. Nor
is courage a sin. Christian activists should have the courage
to reject, not humbly but with strong outrage, the stupid, dishonest
charge of antisemitism. America is still overwhelmingly a Christian
country. Is it so hard for Christian activists make themselves
heard when it counts? They will do no service to their faith
or to those in need if America's Christians go down in history
as avid collaborators with such as Israel.
Michael Neumann
is a professor of philosophy at Trent University in Ontario,
Canada. He can be reached at: mneumann@trentu.ca
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October 26
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