Category: current events

This Land Is Mine

map-story-of-palestinian-nationhood

As you may have noticed, I have an opinion on just about everything. I’m moderately well-read and yet readily admit I’m no expert. With that disclaimer in place, I’m about to wade into a controversial subject: Israel.

You’d think that Jewish people suddenly gaining the support of Western nations in establishing the State of Israel after 1948 would be thankful, grateful, and humbled. After all, their return to the Middle East after centuries of diaspora involved shoving aside a mixed Palestinian population that had enjoyed occupancy of those lands for more than a thousand years.

Supporters of Israel would say that Palestine didn’t really exist all that time, that the lands now contested by Israel had never been a Palestinian state. But that’s not exactly true.

  • Palestinians in Ottoman times were “[a]cutely aware of the distinctiveness of Palestinian history …” and “[a]lthough proud of their Arab heritage and ancestry, the Palestinians considered themselves to be descended not only from Arab conquerors of the seventh century but also from indigenous peoples who had lived in the country since time immemorial, including the ancient Hebrews and the Canaanites before them.[1]

In other words, before the 1948 effort to establish a new Zion, people of Christian, Islamic, and Jewish faith lived peaceably side by side.

I grant that a traumatized population of Jews needed a safe place to call their own. The so-called Zionist movement among Jews had gained strength since the late 1800s. After World War II, the time seemed right to create such a place amid the political chaos and horrors of concentration camps, and as the most recent controlling power over that region, Britain agreed to portion an area for this purpose.

The question of who has ‘rights’ to the lands designated now as Israel and Palestine quickly runs into quicksand of epic proportions. Britain had no more legitimacy in its occupation of that region than anyone else, so whatever it did stands on shaky ground. Before them, the Ottoman Turks controlled it and before that a series of strongmen and empires dating far before the Romans.

Does the Jewish claim hold any greater merit than the Palestinian claim?

Short answer: No.

In fact, if the same argument were used in the United States, Native Americans have the right to reclaim the entire continent because, after all, they ‘owned’ these lands for thousands of years up until four hundred years ago. For much of the land mass, Native ownership continued until less than two hundred years ago. Europeans committed genocide to gain control, just as many of the Jewish faith have been slaughtered over the centuries. Does that mean that foreign nations, working together, should come into the United States, champion the Native claim, and forcibly remove people from their farms and cities in order to return some of these lands to the Natives?

I’ll let you think about that for a minute.

Like it or not, lands of this planet change ownership. The Celts invaded the British Isles which were then invaded by the Romans then later invaded by Angles, Saxons, and other Germanic tribes, and then by marauding Danes and Norse until an amalgam began calling itself England. There’s no turning back the clock to some theoretical golden age of Israel when the Jewish faith controlled some portion of the Levant any more than Florida can be returned to the control of the Seminoles. So why do those currently in control of Israel’s politics think they have the right to seize ever more Palestinian lands?

More to the point, why would any American think we had a legitimate dog in this fight?

Yet, hearing the slander issuing from the assumed incoming president against President Obama (no doubt using words put in his mouth by his Jewish son-in-law and Christian radicals swarming into his nascent inner circle), you’d think that any criticism or restriction of continuing Jewish invasion of Palestinian lands was an act of treason on our part.

It’s way past time for the United States to join United Nations efforts to chastise Israel for its aggression.

You’d think a people long stigmatized by reputations for greed, insularity, and arrogance would be cautious about validating those prejudices by acting in exactly that way. But what else does the world see but Israeli settlers bulldozing Palestinian orchards and homes to make way for illegal settlements?

  • Three large clusters of traits are part of the Jewish stereotype (Wuthnow, 1982). First, Jews are seen as being powerful and manipulative. Second, they are accused of dividing their loyalties between the United States and Israel. A third set of traits concerns Jewish materialistic values, aggressiveness, clannishness.[2]

The U.S. agenda with Israel isn’t just a benevolent hand-up to downtrodden people devastated by the Holocaust. The mostly silent force behind the U. S. involvement in Israel are certain American Jews and Christians who, based on the Bible, believe that prophecies preordain that Israel will return to Jewish control in the end times, presaging the second coming. It has become a fanatical belief for some Christians (Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton, for example) that Israel must be protected at any cost.

  • We are living in exciting times when we can witness Bible prophecy being fulfilled before our very eyes. Many of these prophecies relate to the Jewish people and their nation. [See Christian Prophecy]

Aside from the push to implement Christian prophecies (an easy tool of wealth-driven politicos to gain support of credulous voters) and self-serving blather about Israel being the shining light of democracy in an otherwise benighted region, it’s highly likely that some of the U.S. agenda is far removed from benevolence and derives from our thirst for oil. We’ve covertly overthrown legitimate governments in retaliation against oil-rich Middle East nations trying to control their own natural resources.

  • In 1951, Mohammad Mosaddegh was elected as the prime minister [of Iran]. He became enormously popular in Iran after he nationalized Iran’s petroleum and oil reserves. He was deposed in the 1953 Iranian coup d’état, an Anglo-American covert operation that marked the first time the US had overthrown a foreign government during the Cold War.[3]

So much for the shining moral light of democracy.

Other reasons for our support of Israel might be that our money buys cooperation in a place where an imperialist nation like us needs a friend. Spying, meddling, and otherwise keeping oil-rich nations off balance improves the U.S. advantage and assures the continuing flow of oil. After all, why pump domestic when we can use theirs first?

Surely a complex hidden U.S. agenda includes strategies about Russia, China, and other powers that border the Middle East. If there must be conflict, let it happen there, far from our shores. It’s easy to see why we might hesitate about getting too tough on Israel.

Our annual tithing of foreign economic aid to Israel tops $347 for every man, woman, and Jewish child, courtesy of the American taxpayer. In 2013, the last year for which data is available, we gave Israel $2,943,230,000 in military aid alone, more than twice as much as any other country on earth.[4] We’ve ensured they have the latest in modern weaponry and nuclear technology.

When is it ever enough? America’s diplomacy toward the Middle East has favored Israel to the point that we tolerate their continuing arrogance in pushing into Palestinian lands, thus earning us the enmity of Islamic extremists. After all, suicide bombers didn’t spring fully formed from the forehead of Zeus.

While events in the Middle East may be based in part on territorial disputes and conflicts of cultures, the oil markets, and other political and economic realities, underneath it all is religion. At the heart of that is Judaism and its use by Jews to define themselves as a justified and holy people no matter how much blood is on their hands. As the old song goes, “This land is mine, God gave this land to me.” [An astute cartoon rendering of this song says it all.]

Why should the age of a religion be a criterion by which to judge its righteousness and therefore its legitimacy in world affairs? But then, when did righteousness have anything to do with it?

There’s nothing wrong with groups of people holding onto traditional religious beliefs and practices. That is, until those beliefs and practices lead to violence, until individuals, states, or churches use religion to justify taking power and wealth by force. But if religion justifies taking land to form a nation, where is the Catholic nation? Or the Buddhist nation? Or, for that matter, a nation of Wiccan?

Herein lies the inherent evil of religion and with it the current threat to our future. If we’re not careful, the incoming Trump Administration—led by a man who won’t learn or think and given over to his zealot minions to run—will plunge us headlong into World War III.

Over Israel.

~~~

Latest development: Dec 29 comments by US Secretary of State John Kerry on how Israel is committing suicide.

Don’t like the headline map? Check the comments pro and con.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinians

[2] From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereotypes_of_Jews#cite_ref-26, citing Schneider, David J. (2004). The psychology of stereotyping. Guilford Press. p. 461.

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran#Contemporary_era

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_foreign_aid

 

 

No Ecstasy Here

godWe shouldn’t hold our breath. Phil Robertson and the Church of Christ aren’t going to change. They pride themselves in rigidity, which they see as their unwavering discipline in the Word of God. Descended to American backwoods and byways from the Puritans and Presbyterian Scots tradition of strict religious practice, the practitioners of this fundamentalist sect forbid women to speak in church, refuse instrumental music, and do not offer Sunday school. Worship is intellectual rather than emotional, an embrace of rules and edicts interpreted from the King James version of the Bible.

I was raised in this church. There were preachers in the family, and church formed the social and political center of our lives. We went every time the door was open—literally. Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night, plus special nightly meetings with a traveling preacher or “singing” services where the church elders would take turns leading songs…a cappella, of course—all were mandatory to the true Christian.

None of this was fun. It wasn’t supposed to be fun. Oh, there were the sometimes pleasurable associations with others of our own kind. This was our world. There was the benefit of being relieved, temporarily, of our duty to work without ceasing. But whatever enjoyment might be gained in the gathering had to be tempered by the greater framework of our purpose in obedience to the Almighty Father’s plan. Outright laughter in the House of the Lord would have been unseemly.

The teachings were that humans were born with sin, and that we were here to suffer for it. Without a life of suffering, we couldn’t get to heaven. Sensory gratification formed the greatest temptation to sin, especially delight in The Flesh. It all served as major stumbling blocks on the road to salvation. Our embodiment in corporeal form was punishment, no ecstasy allowed. Joy came after life—if we toed the line. Otherwise we would burn in eternal hellfire. Church services dragged on with a few songs to break up sermons where a certain cadence of voice marked the rising passion of the message until the thundering conclusion arrived meant to stir every heart to confess the inevitable sin we all carried.

At the conclusion of the sermon, a song invited sinners to come home. Those with guilty consciences were expected to walk down the aisle of the church toward the front, where—if previously baptized—he/she would kneel and confess before the congregation. If not baptized, this wayward soul would be scheduled for full-immersion baptism, usually on the heels of the regular church program. Everyone would cluster in excited hushed conversation while the sinner was taken to a private room, dressed in a white gown, led to a tank of water which in many cases had not been warmed, and lowered into the water while the preacher called on God to welcome His new servant.

Although as a thoughtful female child I had resisted much of what the preachers had to say, I still wanted to belong to this club. I wanted to be saved, to experience the blessings of God, and partake in the weekly communion of wafers and grape juice given as a symbolic sharing of the body of Christ. I wanted that magical sense of well-being in my otherwise fretful existence. So when I was fourteen I walked down the aisle. My parents wept at my salvation. The water in that small Oklahoma church was ice cold, and I gasped as it surrounded me. Water flooded into my nose and mouth and I strangled. The thin cotton gown hid nothing when I stood up coughing in the miserable icy water, newly formed as a child of God but shivering as the wet fabric clung to my naked pubescent form. The overriding sensation was not that I had been welcomed to the loving arms of Jesus but that I wanted to die of humiliation

I didn’t feel saved, relieved, or welcomed. I would never admit it, not in those early years, but I didn’t really believe in any of it. How could a loving God also be an angry and vengeful God? Why was God a man if we were made in his image? Where did God come from? I asked these questions but quickly learned that these were questions not to be asked. Certain things were to be taken on faith. Shut up and listen.

I wanted to feel ecstasy about God the way I felt when I looked at a stunning blue sky or the wings of a butterfly. Everywhere around me I saw beauty, yet I wasn’t supposed to embrace the pleasures of the earth. Slowly I came to understand that only a sadistic, evil God would create a sensational world and people who gained such joy in experiencing those sensations, and then threaten eternal damnation for enjoying it. Nothing sacred or holy existed in that God. I rejected all of it.

For those who accept this belief system, the official expression is dour. Like Phil Robertson’s stern face, outward demeanor is meant to convey the seriousness of God’s judgment and unceasing fear of His wrath. Everything is sin, but especially certain things that threaten the patriarchal foundations of the faith. Women are advised to be obedient and serve their husbands in the same way that men are to serve God. As the lesser sex, woman’s path to God is through her husband, as he was formed in God’s image and she was formed from man’s rib. Many a sermon centers on woman’s innately sinful nature and her duty to suffer for tempting Adam to eat that damn apple.

In spite of their Christian belief in the role of Jesus Christ and the New Testament as the foundation of their religion, fundamentalists love to dredge up Old Testament bits as a rich source of rules and exhortations, with quoted sections carefully chosen to serve the featured topic of the day. Other parts of these old conglomerated writings, not so useful bits about slaves (how to obtain slaves, how hard you can beat them, and when you can have sex with the female slaves) or war captives (Follow him through the city and kill everyone whose forehead is not marked.  Show no mercy; have no pity! Kill them all – old and young, girls and women and little children.) tend to be left out.

As I grew older and made a point to study the entire Bible’s text, these selective uses of Scripture caused a growing cognitive dissonance that affirmed my instinctive rejection of this narrow-minded view of the world and of God. Perhaps most alarming, those most faithful to the dogma seemed to lack any real belief in their own salvation. Satan lurked at every corner. Constant fear and anxiety haunted my parents and others in the congregation. And ironically, instead of benefitting from their religious practice, they suffered. There was no joy.

To me, the most unacceptable tenant of the Church of Christ was the belief that this faith is the only path to God. Followers of all other belief systems are going to hell. There is no wiggle room on this point of total arrogance and closed-mindedness. Any hint of updating to a more open-minded view of our fellow man is trumped by the feverish fear of offending God.

Mr. Robertson and his ilk risk hellfire and damnation if they don’t exhort against sin. They believe it’s their Christian duty. Perhaps he faintly recognizes that he’s already skirting condemnation because he has accumulated great wealth, and this drives him to an ever-more agitated thumping of his holy book. (“Again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”)

If A&E had persevered in its banishment of Phil, he might have secretly welcomed his exile as a suitable end to his dabbling in the perverse world of commercial entertainment and all the divorce, blended families, homosexuality, half-dressed bodies, independent women, and other defilements of God’s plan that are routinely displayed there. Secure in his manly beard and violent conquest of Nature as his God-given right, Phil will always sink to the level of his ultimate comfort, the ways and beliefs he has always known.

As it is, he and his Ducky family can continue to feel righteous as they judge the rest of us. Once again in the tradition of all fundamentalists, they’ve managed to skip over key parts of their own literature:  “Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?”