This article, written by Gabe Huck, will appear with some modifications in the July 2014 issue of Celebration, the worship resource of the National Catholic Reporter.
For decades I had no time for Palestine. I paid attention, I knew the story roughly, but I didn’t become involved. This wasn’t Vietnam or nuclear weapons or poisoning the oceans. It wasn’t U.S. racism or Cambodian genocide. And at times it even seemed that there were two sides to the story. Or, if not two sides, at least the hard question: What can we ever do now? If we who live in the U.S. can’t give it all back to the people from whom it was stolen, how can we demand that Israelis do this? What place on earth hasn’t seen its inhabitants defeated and their land rebranded?
But I was troubled. Why did people I greatly respected give this Palestinian struggle so much of their attention? Didn’t they see that, like so many other situations, the Palestinians had to start living in present reality and put all that anger to work for good? What is the point of handing down a hopeless cause from one generation to the next?
So I didn’t trouble myself with learning more of the Palestinian story. Also, I was sometimes engaged in understanding Judaism and its rituals and in Jewish/Catholic dialogue. The latter did show me that many Jews were, at great cost sometimes, engaged in opposing the making and maintaining of a specifically Jewish state. But it also showed me that Zionism often ran strong even in Jewish friends who had been and continued to be active on the right side, to my thinking, of nearly every other economic and political and moral question.
Until recent years, I was missing what is now compelling. The painful reason why we Americans have a responsibility to know the story and take active stands on the issue of Palestine is this: We have had and still have our hands, arms, money and weight on the side continuing the oppression. For whatever reason – guilt, need for a Middle Eastern friend, winning elections at home – as a nation we have distorted the history and ignored the hard demands of justice, all the time flattering ourselves as if we could be unbiased mediators and peacemakers. Manipulated or not, we have played a determining role in all that’s happened since the state of Israel was created by the UN in 1948. We’ve had only a few moments when truth seemed to butt in: e.g., Dwight Eisenhower in 1956 telling England to stop the Israeli-British-French invasion of Egyptian territory or we’d cut off their allowance. That ended it.
That was a rare moment. And to make sure it didn’t happen again, pro-Israeli forces built up, with no subtlety whatsoever, a lobby so strong that whenever they wish, they can produce two-thirds or better of our 535 elected members of Congress to vote for anything they’re told to vote for regarding Israel. And to do so on 24 hours notice.
In part this power, beyond that of any other nation in the world in influencing U.S. policy and budget and media, comes not only from Israel’s lobbies in the U.S., but from their alliance with the leadership of certain fundamentalist Christian organizations. The latter take as gospel some not-so-old but very unscriptural ideas about Jesus coming back only when the Jews are gathered again in the land around Jerusalem. When that happens, so their story goes, the longed for end of the human exile is in sight. God will then eternally punish most all of us excepting those who were waiting (included among those to be punished, of course, are all Jews who have not converted to Christianity). Jerry Falwell’s often-quoted statement sums up the Christian side of the alliance: “To stand against Israel is to stand against God. We believe that history and scripture prove that God deals with nations in relation to how they deal with Israel.”
The U.S. government’s monetary aid to Israel, which is itself one of the 30 wealthiest nations in the world, is now at $3.5 billion each year. Most of that is military aid. On a per capita basis, Israel, already richer than 80 percent of the nations, far outranks all other recipients of aid. But support is far more than monetary. The U.S. shields Israel from any efforts of the United Nations Security Council to hold Israel accountable for its occupation of Palestinian and Syrian territory, for its brutal attacks on Gaza, for the illegal wall around the West Bank, for its settlements in occupied territory, for its occasional bombing in Syria and Iraq, for its invasions of Lebanon, for its attacks on Turkish vessels on the open seas, for its nuclear weapons (estimated at 200, never admitted, never inspected), for the basic inhumanity of using the limited water supplies as a weapon against Palestinians. Our veto or threat of veto in the Security Council exempts Israel’s government from any accountability to international law. Our political and economic support of Israel is so taken for granted by Israel’s government that its leaders lately and loudly criticize the U.S. for our diplomatic efforts with Iran.
All of this becomes even stranger when we realize what our national support for the Israeli policies does to our relations with other nations in the Middle East and beyond.
All that and more is how I came to understand why I, as a U.S. citizen and a Catholic, should become informed and active on this question. We can approach this as responsible citizens and informed members of the church. The Israeli lobbies count on us to feel guilt for the holocaust and for anti-Semitism, but those realities do not justify political and economic injustice toward Palestinians by U.S.-backed Israeli governments decade after decade. For the most part, our own institutions – educational, political, ecclesial – have failed us. But historians and activists and writers and film makers have sought to find and tell the truth. In this work, Jews, and often Israeli Jews, have played and continue to play a crucial role. These seekers are like Roman Catholics who recognize that the church is never strengthened by blind allegiance. They are like those U.S. citizens who won’t be silent when the majority is being pushed toward a republic of fear.
Let me share with you a few of the resources I have found helpful and important. First, a few very readable books and one article:
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. Israeli historian Ilan Pappe has written the story of what happened in Palestine/Israel in the year 1948 when the UN voted to divide Palestine into two nations. Knowing the deeds of that year is especially important in a time when the Israeli government always seems to begin history with 1967. But any effort to study this conflict must be rooted in 1948. This story told by Pappe is now not disputed but it is, sadly, considered irrelevant. Learn it. Learn from it. Ilan Pappe has other important books. These include: The Forgotten Palestinians: A History of the Palestinians in Israel and his recent The Idea of Israel: A History of Power and Knowledge.
“The Israel Lobby” is a 2006 article by John Mearshheimer and Stephen Walt, a summary of their book, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy. This is an essential introduction to understanding the many dimensions of influence the Israel lobby has in the U.S.
Married to Another Man: Israel's Dilemma in Palestine. As a child, the author, Ghada Karmi, fled Jerusalem with her family in 1948. From a review in The Guardian: “No other account of Israel's history and its impact on the Palestinians that I know of shreds with such efficiency the hypocrisies, cruelties and inanities of what amounts to a systematic international attempt over the decades to deny the obvious and delay the inevitable.”
Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel. Author Max Blumenthal is Jewish, American, and a journalist. He spent much of the last few years talking to Israelis and this book basically reports these conversations. Much of what he hears, especially from young Israelis, is racist but no less so than the ever-greater apartheid being created by those of the older generation in positions of power.
The Battle for Justice in Palestine. Ali Abunimah brings seldom raised but vital insights to the question of where does Palestine/Israel go from here: One state? Two states? His insights range over many aspects of the situation both in the Middle East and in the U.S.: into somewhat parallel struggles in South Africa and Ireland, into U.S. racism and the work of pro-Israel groups on campus, into the boycott movement. Abunimah is founder of the website electronicintifada.net.
Documentary films have also brought much to the discussion. In 2013 two important films dealing with Palestine/Israel were nominated for best documentary in the Academy Awards: “The Gatekeepers” and “Five Broken Cameras.” The former, by an Israeli filmmaker, consists of interviews with the six Israeli officers who have led the internal security service the last three decades. They speak with a remarkable openness about the political leadership of Israel. “Five Broken Cameras” documents life and protest in one Palestinian village in the West Bank as the community struggles against the construction of Israel’s separation wall that threatens to turn their village into a prison.
Here are three other important documentaries:
- “Where Should the Birds Fly?” is a first film by a young Palestinian woman, Fida Qishta. She was living in Gaza in 2008 when Israel’s “Operation Cast Lead” brought destruction through the whole of tiny Gaza. Qishta and friends simply recorded on their cameras what they were witnessing. The film is a remarkable work from those under attack. (Another documentary covering Cast Lead is “Tears of Gaza” by director Vibeke Lokkeberg.)
- “Peace, Propaganda and the Promised Land” was made 10 years ago but is important in helping us understand what we are told and not told in the U.S. media and who shapes the story of the Israelis and Palestinians.
- “Forget Baghdad” is a most amazing story of the Jews of Baghdad. That story begins more than 2,500 years ago. “By the rivers of Babylon” scholars and saints built Judaism’s life and ritual. In recent years those who were taken to Israel in the 1950s and their children are telling the stories. This important film is one such effort.
Online searches will lead you to many other films and books. Current information and analysis is available, as mentioned above, on electronicintifada.net.
Four final points:
- First, when we speak to this situation we should remember that among the Arabs of Palestine, as in many Middle Eastern countries, there were and are both Muslims and Christians. These are the lands where both traditions, and Judaism also, were formed. They are lands where people of all three faiths, and some others too, found ways of living together through many centuries.
- Second, the holocaust. In his book The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering, Norman Finkelstein, himself the child of holocaust survivors, denounces the ways that many use the deaths of six million Jews to achieve their own political ends. Many questions are raised in this book about honoring and dishonoring the dead.
- Third, BDS. That is: Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions. This is a campaign modeled on the effort to combat apartheid in South Africa. A Google search will bring many websites where more can be learned (e.g., bdsmovement.net). In the U.S., this nonviolent tactic is coming to the attention of religious communities. Question: What can we do about an awful situation? Answer: We can stop paying for it. We can stop buying things made by Israeli companies in occupied territories. We can make sure our investments aren’t supporting weapons manufacturers whose planes and missiles will be used to target Palestinians. We can oppose tourism in Israel. We can support academics and athletes and artists who publicly refuse invitations to events in Israel. As with South Africa, the message has to be given with economic teeth.
- Fourth, we need to be aware that many in the Jewish community in the U.S. who are opposed to Israel’s present course. They make a powerful statement on all of these questions. One window into this is Tikkun. Founded and edited by Rabbi Michael Lerner, this magazine raises questions and speaks to issues that are important to all of us.
Invite others to grapple as you do with these questions. Realize that we can have influence, that more and more voices raised to question U.S. policy will make a difference. By what we do and what we do not do, this tragedy of Palestine/Israel is played out.