ie:missional teaching. glocalizing. living. serving. repenting. incarnating. loving. repeating.

Christian Post recently carried an article featuring Evangelist/Pastor John Hagee’s attempt to help solidify Israel’s control over a united Jerusalem with a financial gift of $6M to various Israeli national causes. Hagee, a well known Christian Zionist made the following comment at a speech:

Turning part or all of Jerusalem over to the Palestinians would be tantamount to turning it over to the Taliban.

Indeed.

He shared the stage with Benjamin Netanyahu, the leader of Israel’s hard-line opposition Likud Party and a former Prime Minister of the Middle Eastern nation. Christian Zionism according to Hagee is

the belief that every Jewish person has the right of return to Israel, and the right to live in peace and security within the recognized borders.

Apparently there is no concern that the Palestinians enjoy the same.

While I appreciate Hagee’s attempt to support any country’s infrastructure and education issues, I fear that this issue is much more complex than he, in his apparent attempt to hasten the return of Christ, is willing to admit. A few thoughts:

1. This issue of Palestinian homeland, almost always tied to Hamas and the Islamic Jihad predates either of them while giving place to the rise of one Yasser Arafat, . The realities surrounding this, stemming from the parceling of the land in 1948, are astounding. If I may digress…

Following World War 2, United Nations recognized that the fallout from the Holocaust could be addressed by the establishment of a “Jewish homeland.” Many Jews did not want to go back to a Europe that had either turned a blind eye to the genocide of their mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters or, like America, turned a deaf ear to their cries. The establishment of this homeland had been talked of for years preceding. From Wikipedia:

Whilst the possibility of a Jewish homeland in Palestine had been a goal of Zionist organizations since the late 19th century, it was not until 1917 and the Balfour declaration that the idea gained the official backing of a major power. The declaration stated that the British government supported the creation of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine. In 1936 the Peel Commission suggested partitioning Mandate Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state, though it was rejected as unworkable by the government and was at least partially to blame for the 1936-39 Arab revolt.

It seems lost on modern Christian Zionists, bent on helping God fulfill the promises of the Abrahamic Covenant, that there are people in Palestine who are not Muslim, certainly not Hamas, but are of all things Christians! So supporting Israel’s actions of destroying West Bank settlements so that they may have all of Jerusalem can certainly have the effect of displacing our Palestinian brothers and sisters in Christ; and this occurring at the hands of those who know not Jesus. Even a casual perusal of a book such as Blood Brothers by Elias Chacour would reveal a much different beginning to the current State of Israel than many modern Christian Zionists are willing to admit or, possibly, even face. (This book was called, by a former UPI correspondent in Israel, “An accurate, moving account worthy of careful attention.”)

Imagine being in your home on the land that has belonged to your family for generations, cultivating olives, playing in the vineyards then hearing a rumor that Palestine has been parceled up to form a new homeland for Jewish people from all over the world. So? Maybe that means the opportunity for new friends. Then imagine that a few weeks later, heavily armed soldiers show up at your door demanding that your entire family leave and giving you a short time in which to do so. You would be paid nothing for your home, your land, your crops. Upon their return you would face the possibility of violence or even death if you did not comply. Imagine taking what belongings you could load up and heading out like a band of gypsies to camps in Jordan (whose government did not want you either). In the case of Chacour’s family, the military duped an entire village into leaving for their “own protection” and then occupied their homes forbidding them return.

Historian Christopher Sykes noted that

Zionism…found itself closely bound to imperialism…[It] depended for its foundation and early growth on the success of British imperialism.

2. The aggression and violence in the newly demarcated Israel was not carried only out by Palestinians dissidents, but by some of the future leaders of the tiny ancient/new nation: Menachem Begin (whose stated goal was to “purify” the land of the Palestinian people) and Moshe Dayan for example. Concern over this behavior was raised by Harry S. Truman even before May 1948. In an August letter of the previous year, he wrote to Eleanor Roosevelt

I fear very much that the Jews are like all underdogs. When they get on top they are just as intolerant and as cruel as the people were to them when they were underneath.

About Dayan’s political philosophy it was written:

[Israel should] threaten the Arabs and constantly escalate the level of violence so as to demonstrate her superiority and create the conditions for territorial expansion.

This Zionist version of Manifest Destiny could have been phrased thusly: “God has given us the land and woe to any who stand in our way.” Almost incomprehensibly the very people who had faced genocide five years earlier now seemed poised to foist it upon the native inhabitants of Palestine. Chacour notes how unfairly the Palestinians, in the struggle to retain their own homes and lands, were characterized in the world’s press:

Palestinians, who in any other country being overtaken by a foreign force would have been called freedom fighters, were “terrorists” and “guerillas.” Hence, the widely used term, “Palestinian terrorist” was ingrained in the Western mind.

There can be little doubt that the same duplicity still exists today.

Also seemingly unknown to Hagee is just how unjust the original partitioning seems to have been. According to one source:

In 1947, the United Nations partitioned Historic Palestine, giving 55% to the Jewish population and 45% to the Palestinian population. The indigenous Palestinians rejected the division of the land on which they had lived and farmed for centuries. At the time of partition, the Jewish population owned less than 6% of Palestine.

(Check out this enlargeable map of the 1947 partition plan. It’s quite different to what is in the back of your Bible.)

3. The biblical fulfilling of the Abrahamic Covenant’s “land grant” is accurate, I believe, but is there any clear biblical teaching that it will be fulfilled in our lifetime? It seems that Christian Zionism is so linked to a “pre-mill, pre-trib” eschatology that it leaves no possibility that this current Jewish occupation of “the land” is not necessarily the permanent possession of it. I’ve never seen any scripture that precludes at least a potential situation in which the Jews could be again dispersed and regathered at some future point. (I don’t believe that to be the case, but I just can’t rule it out biblically.)

It’s also worth mulling over that one can do an interesting comparison to America’s history. The colonies declared independence from England. We were determined to have our own country. The response of England was to send the Army and Navy that they might set straight those who were rebelling against the crown. In response to this aggression, we fought the Revolutionary War. The heroes of that time are called “The Founding Fathers.” In the Palestinian-Israeli conflict comparison, we equate with the Palestinians, yet, as Chacour noted, we called their fight “terrorism.”

It is clear, to me anyway, that God worked in some pretty miraculous ways in Israel’s early modern days to allow her to remain in existence (the Six Day War, for example), but the fact remains that the modern Jewish state is a nation of people walking in spiritual darkness. Paul makes it clear that a veil remains over the eyes of those of Jesus’ physical kin who do not believe in Him (2 Corinthians 3), while the god of this world strives to keep them blinded so that the light of the gospel will not enlighten them (2 Corinthians 4). Simply because God has a future plan for Israel does not give them a free pass on each and every decision that their politicians make in this day and age. In fact, there are many times when I watch the news and wonder if their leaders have ever read the Old Testament prophets at all. Where is the justice and mercy that God sought throughout the days leading up to the deportation of both Israel and Judah? It seems that they have again become focused on the land of the promise rather than the God of the promise.

I’m concerned that John Hagee has done the same thing.

(HT: Kevin Bussey)

Additional quotes from How Israel Was Won, by Baylis Thomas and A History of the Middle East, by Peter Mansfield.