Rhetoric Standing in the Way of Peace

Ultimately, walls imprison only their builders by restricting the spirit and vision of a people to the territory they possess.

As I read Dexter Van Zile's diatribe (Boston Globe Op-Ed, Oct. 25) against Boston's Old South Church for hosting a conference on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, I was reminded of an earlier time – 1692, to be exact – when the Old South Church played a pivotal role in another human rights crisis.

A warrant was issued in Boston on April 30, 1692, for the arrest of one Philip English.  His wife, Mary, had been taken into custody on that day, facing indictments of practicing witchcraft. 

Philip and Mary, on the eve of their scheduled return to Salem for trial, escaped to New York.  Aiding the escape was my ancestor, Rev. Joshua Moody, assistant pastor of First Church Boston, Gov. Phips of Massachusets, Governor Fletcher of New York and Rev. Samuel Willard, pastor of the Old South Church. 

At stake was the fading Puritan dream of a Christian theocracy unmasked in the savage brutality of church and state. 

Likewise, Van Zile's obsession with Israel's theocracy leaves unaddressed the savage brutality on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem.  The 40-yr. Occupation makes a mockery of Judaism by contradicting Zionism's noble aspiration never again to be dominated nor to dominate others.  

The war of words on both sides of the conflict rages on.  Naim Ateek, founder of SABEEL Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center in Jerusalem and a tireless advocate for peace in a land that must be shared, nevertheless has a record of rhetorical excess that fails to honor the suffering experienced by Israel.  Van Zile pours salt on Palestinian wounds by dismissing their loss and pain.

Van Zile is noted for his support of Israel's "security fence," a concrete curtain built to protect Israel from suicide bombers but now employed as an illegal land grab.  Higher and longer than the Berlin Wall, the concrete curtain divides, imprisons and demoralizes.  It is a human rights atrocity of monumental proportions.

That Van Zile can limit the horizons of worldwide Judaism to a concrete "security fence" is a reflection on his own anti-Semitic streak and an insult to the Jewish people.  Consider it akin to dreams in the past of creating a separate nation-state for American blacks.

The fact is that Israel has long since emerged from victim status and needs to be held accountable to international codes of conduct. 

Israel's economy is three times that of Egypt, Palestine, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon combined and forty times larger than that of the Palestinians.  It is solidly allied with the world's greatest super power, the US.  It is the third largest arms manufacturing country in the world, after Russia and the US.  It is the world's fourth largest nuclear power with some five hundred warheads.[1] 

Politically, Israel's lobby is one of the most effective and feared in Washington.

Theologically, the bloated, media-hungry Christian Right in America, with its elevation of Left Behind end-times fiction over Jesus' Sermon on the Mount has become the darling Zionist movement of today. 

Historical revisionists like Van Zile play into Christian Zionist hysteria by accusing of anti-Semitism any who would dare question the uncritical ratification of all actions by the nation-state of Israel

Israel, like its American mentor, has become a nation of walls – psychological walls erected by portraying Palestinians as ignorant, rag-topped terrorists with explosives strapped to their waists and physical walls erected to imprison the human spirit. 

Ultimately, walls imprison only their builders by restricting the spirit and vision of a people to the territory they possess. 

The Old South Church is once again at the forefront of a human rights crisis.  That which divided our emerging nation, the debate over separation of church and state, has re-surfaced.  Today's witch trials are conducted by editorial boards, such as that of the Boston Globe, who would participate in the condemnation of those daring to define Israel as a people rather than a walled nation and  hold it to a standard of conduct.

The Rev. Nancy Taylor, Senior Pastor of the Old South Church, had it right when she said in defense of the church's action, "The narratives of these two peoples remain in uneasy proximity and neither can nor should be eclipsed in favor of the other."

It is time for the adults to take charge.

[1] Halper, Obstacles to Peace (Jerusalem: PalMap, 2005, 3^rd Edition), p. 9.