Israel And America: Of Blood And Borders

Colonialism and
imperialism triumph over tribalism because their histories can be chronicled in

blood and borders.

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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.

Israel and America: Of Blood and Borders