This essay was first published in the Palestine Chronicles 2004 12 29 and is copyright protected.
Not to be published without consent of the author.
This is the sixth in a series of articles that explores the rise to power of the fundamentalist Christian right within the government of the United States and its affects on perceptions and actions in the Middle East. The previous article looked at the ideas and arguments with Just War. This article focuses on the Israeli view supported by American arguments of bibilical prophecy.
Part VI –– American Prophecy and The Crusade Against Evil
Arguments for ‘Just War’ are based mainly on a rational basis, fully within the realm of secular arguments. Certainly biblical sources are used as support for various arguments but the main presentation of views sits well within the rational thesis outline – a view has been stated, this is the support for it. Thus a rational argument against ‘Just War’ is readily available. Conversely, arguments against the prophetic basis of actions, of war, are invalid as prophecy relies on interpretations of the bible as a book of prophecy, neither logical nor comprehensible to the average person. Either one believes, or one does not believe. Arguments may be made by those within the faith as to how the prophecy can be interpreted; those outside the field of believers cannot argue against a faith-based approach. The former can only be argued by co-religionists as to the specific interpretations of prophecy; the latter can only state the views of the ‘prophets’ as interpreted by others, and then relate them as to how they may or may not affect the secular world. The latter is my view and purpose here.
I am not going to argue the validity or non-validity of the prophecies, that would require much more biblical knowledge than my own. Arguments for prophetic wars, for Armageddon and the Apocalypse, are not rationally based and cannot be rationally argued, the “Rational arguments are of no avail, because the divergence…between the fundamentalists and those who adopt a more positive attitude to the modern secular world…springs from a deeper and more instinctual level of the mind,”[1] the part of the mind that operates on the intuitive level rather than on intellectual deconstruction. What I will do is look at those interpretations that I have come across and look at how they affect the outlook of the current American government, an effect as has already been explored with the overview of the neocons in government. For the unelected players in the current government are faith based, and hold to the tenets of Christian fundamentalism.
“This crusade, this war on terrorism,” said George Bush speaking spontaneously after the September 11 attack. The use of the word ‘crusade’ brought out “his exact truth, an unmasking of his most deeply felt purpose.” He had, “offhandedly…said exactly what he meant.”[2] The word has not been used since by those in government office, and the war has been redefined, sort of, in terms of ‘evil’ and ‘terrorists’ and ‘us against them’ and, the war is ‘moral’ and ‘just’ but it is not a crusade, it is not a religious war. Those evasions, those denials, are futile from both the rational secular perspective and the prophetic biblical perspective: as the most ardent secular arguments for war rely on religious terminology, the ‘evil’ nature of the other, and the justness of our revenge or ability to set it right; and the Christian right wing reads nothing but prophecy and the wrath of God into recent events, with the events of September 11 itself being ‘God’s punishment’ for both America’s turning away from Christian values and for turning away from supporting Israel. It is a religious war for those in power perpetrating it. It is a “cosmic moral-religious battle [justifying], equally, risks of world historic proportioned disaster, since the ultimate outcome of such a conflict is to be measured not by actual consequences on this earth but by the earth-transcending will of God.”[3] As will be examined later, this statement is supported by the leaders of the Christian right who say, “there is a direct co-relation between current events and prophecy” and that the “final battle in prophecy will take place in Israel.”[4] Perhaps they are right.
There is a strong relationship between the Jewish faith and the Christian faith; there is much that is common to both and there is also an historical antagonism between the two. In précis, Israel’s covenant with God is the fulfillment of the establishment of Eretz Israel, leading to global peace. Christianity posits this as well, but only as a pre-requisite to the second coming of Jesus Christ and the final Apocalypse, the end of time. Palestine and the Islamic fundamentalists, among others, are in the way. I will present various perspectives on Judeo-Christian interactions, but because they are so tightly intertwined as to be almost inseparable, they cannot be separated clearly into distinct ideas, and one discussion by necessity blends into the others. I will not, as part of the presentation or argument, refer to scriptural sources as that has already been addressed sufficiently by the sources that I am using as documentation. But to start, I will look at the Jewish Zionist tradition and its role in the Palestinian ‘problem’, from belief to practice. This is to be followed with the Christian view of Israel, followed by further representations on where this leaves the state of Israel and Palestine. Finally the views of the American Christian fundamentalists will be expressed, as they support current foreign policy trends towards the Middle East, both from the perspective of the military geopolitics of the region but mainly as the prophetic voice anticipating Armageddon. The latter two strands are essentially the same item with slightly different emphasis.
Currently in Israel the Knesset’s one hundred twenty members are divided among a variety of parties, with the Likud holding a minority power with forty of those seats. They are assisted in this balancing of power that is necessary under such circumstances by smaller religious parties, the Shas, a party based on the Haredim, being one of the more prominent. In alliance with these groups is the Gush Emunim, now referred to as the Ne’emaney Eretz Israel (those who are loyal to the land of Israel), who play a large role in the actual settlement of Palestinian territory. The Likud, up until most recently, have been supported in power through this legislature by the Shinui, a supposedly centrist party, but a party that fully accepts many of the Likud stands on the non-establishment of a Palestinian state. The cessation of Palestinian terror, the non-evacuation of settlement blocks and their integration into Israeli territory, the separation fence and no right of return are all part of their platform. Finally, Palestine would only be recognized if they renounce the ‘right of return’ to their former homes in Israel. Apart from arguing for a secular state rather than a religious state, they are economically and politically well to the right and they would otherwise fit in well with the American neocons and Christian Right.[5]
The Likud party platform carries clear statements about the future of the Palestinian people, that they “can run their lives freely in the framework of self-rule, but not as an independent and sovereign state,” and their activity “shall be limited in accordance with imperatives of Israel’s existence, security and national needs.” They very clearly state, “The Government of Israel flatly rejects the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state west of the Jordan river.” As for Jerusalem, it is “the eternal, united capital of the State of Israel and only of Israel. The government will flatly reject Palestinian proposals to divide Jerusalem,” and rejects questions about the “3,00-year-old special connection between the Jewish people and its capital.”[6] The Likud receive support from a reluctant coalition party, the Shas or Haredim, a group that argues with secular Israel, with Orthodox Israel, yet “almost in spite of themselves, [they] had acquired unprecedented power in the state with which they felt at war.”[7] While they have “relatively flexible views on policy towards Palestinians” they also are able, although with reduced numbers in the current Knesset, to court both the right and left political blocks who are “willing and eager to make concessions to the Haredi parties in order to advance their own agendas regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,”[8] and have given their support to the Likud party.
As a result of these ongoing alliances, “the Zionist right wing provided Jewish fundamentalism with the status, self-confidence, and large-scale economic resources the movement needed to attempt the actual implementation of its program.” By 1984, over 38 thousand ‘settlers’ lived in Arab areas of the West Bank and that has risen today to a total of 229 thousand Jewish settlers in one hundred twenty-three settlements, aided and assisted by huge cash infusions, land requisitions, zoning changes, access to political leaders, employment and large social benefits, mostly afforded to the Gush Emunim. The fundamentalists have been able to “sustain a wide range of intensive political and practical efforts in support of their program to transform the shape and direction of Israeli society”[9]
The Gush members “agreed that the Palestinians had no rights to the land and that there was no place for them there,” and were commanded to drive out the indigenous people from the Promised Land, …even to exterminate them.”[10] While the secular Zionists had brought about the conquest of Eretz Israel, the Gush argue that this “brought about the beginning of the messianic age, which would end in the coming of the messiah and the recognition of the Jewish superiority of all peoples.” It is easy at this point to see where there would be a clash with Christian fundamentalists concerning the messianic age, where there would be clashes with the native Palestinians who watched, lived, with a steadily eroding homeland. The Gush believed as well, and this they also have in common with the Christian fundamentalists, that they can assist the process “through Jewish settlement on land they believe God has allotted for Jews.”[11] I introduced the prospects of the nuclearization of this conflict earlier: in an earlier dispute concerning the Dome of the Rock and its possible destruction which threatened nuclear force between the then Soviets, the Americans, and the Israelis, the fundamentalists were convinced “that by instigating an apocalypse here on Earth, they would activate powers in the divine world and ‘oblige’ God to intervene on their behalf and send the Messiah to save Israel.” [12]
These values are extreme to most, but in both America and Israel those holding to these beliefs have achieved significant power and control. Before turning to the American influence both within and without Israel, the statement on settlements from the Likud party platform is very clear and unambiguous: “The Jewish communities in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza are the realization of Zionist values. Settlement of the land is a clear expression of the unassailable right of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel and constitutes an important asset in the defence of the vital interests of the State of Israel. The Likud will continue to strengthen and develop these communities and will prevent their uprooting.” This or course raises huge doubts about any ‘peace plan’ of any kind, of the kind of ‘peace’ that Israel wants, either as per Perle, Feith, and Wurmser of the neocons, or as per the stated goals of the Likud for a peaceful strong united Israel.
I had earlier parenthesized ‘settlers’ as to my mind it reminds me of the American ‘settlers’ settling the ‘unoccupied’ indigenous territories of North America, ignoring and eliminating the native population that had not previously succumbed to epidemics or starvation or earlier acts of genocide. It also is reminiscent of the cantons of South Africa where the apartheid policies of the white supremacist South African government tried to isolate the blacks in areas removed from there native lands, lands that had been productive for them and had provided a sustainable existence. And I have read the phrase ‘balkanization’ used in describing the West Bank, referring to the winding boundary lines being drawn unilaterally by Israel, and to the separation of religions and ethnic groups into small parcels broken up amongst a larger group of people. There is a simple lesson here if anyone is ever to listen to history.
It does not work.
It hasn’t worked. It won’t work. It did not work in South Africa. It has not worked to bring peace to the Balkans without continued military force being present. It did work in Canada and the United States but only because the natives were systematically eliminated with the remnants isolated on marginal low productive land and without access to employment and other social constructs of the conquering people. It will not work in Palestine – as long as there is a Palestinian people held in subjugation by the Israeli state, the Israeli people, there will be strife, and war, and fear, and ongoing turmoil. However it is evident that regardless of ‘peace’ with the Palestinians, regardless of any interim accommodations, regardless of any ‘roadmap’ Israel intends to fully settle and control the West Bank and Gaza, to reclaim their biblical heritage, to reclaim the only country in the world that has a God given covenant for existence. But what about the Christians who see beyond this to the second coming of Jesus Christ?
In support of all that has been seen above from the Likud, the Haredim, and the Gush Emunim, Malcolm Hedding, the Director of the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem, agreed with the intended outcomes. “There has to be a Christian embassy in Jerusalem because there are millions of Christians out there who support the state of Israel, who support the Jewish people, who believe that the restoration of the Jewish state in our time is not a political coincidence, but the fulfilment of God’s promise to that great old patriarch Abraham.” As for Jerusalem itself he says, “this city is the capital city of only one people and that is the Jewish people….”[13]
As if to reassure the solidity of this thesis, the Reverend Glenn Plummer, who claims over 150 million American listeners for his National Religious Broadcasters show, says this “is a religious issue – the war in Iraq. I mean it has such a religious basis to all of it and it’s more than just economics, it’s more than just politics, it’s much more than just a secular question. The bigger question is a religious one and that’s why the significance of Israel and its continued existence and the relation with America is absolutely vital.”[14]
In America there is little doubt that the Christian fundamentalists support Israel’s hard messianic line as being fully a part of their own destiny. Both sides argue, at least since September 11, that the war against terror is the same war that Israel has been fighting for fifty years, at least, since the inception of a homeland called Israel; is the same war that America is fighting against ‘Islamofascist’ terror (a wonderful spin doctored term used frequently by Frank Gaffney, a neocon with previous associations to Reagan and Richard Perle); and thus the same war that is ongoing in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Palestine and may spread to Syria and Iran and others that could challenge Israeli military supremacy in the Middle East. The Christian right’s support “for Israel is closely interrelated with prophetic concerns” in that “Israel is the only nation created by a sovereign act of God, and He has sworn by His holiness to defend Jerusalem, His Holy City. If God created and defends Israel, those nations that fight against if fight against God.”[15] This view is supported by the televangelists as they continually reiterate their support for a united Israel in the same vein as the Likud and Gush Emunim do. In an October 2002 “rally for Israel”, the same one attended by Wolfowitz, Pat Robertson says, “We should not ask Israel to withdraw from the so-called occupied territories, we should stand by them and fight. Jerusalem is the eternal, indivisible capital of the state of Israel and it must not be divided.”[16]
Jerry Falwell puts it into a political framework as well, “There’s nothing that would bring the wrath of the Christian public in this country down on this government like abandoning or opposing Israel in a critical matter,” and further that “the Bible Belt in America is Israel’s only safety belt right now.” Speaking even more forcefully, more prophetically, Ed McAteer, the ‘Godfather of the Christian Right’ and founder of the Moral Majority, sees in Israel “prophecy unfold so rapidly and dramatically and wonderfully and, without exaggerating, makes me breathless.” As for Palestine, McAteer says, “every grain of sand between the Dead Sea, the Jordan River, and…the Mediterranean Sea belongs to the Jews,” while the Palestinians themselves “could be cleansed from their God-given real estate and moved to some Arab country.”[17]
This message works it way down from these modern day lay prophets into the followers of the Christian right who give their full support to the Israeli state. In the same ‘rally for Israel’ noted above, one believer said, “Christians owe their beliefs, their faith to the Jewish people, that’s who our Messiah came from. Jesus was Jewish. I think that’s as basic as you can get.” In a more literal reference to the bible another follower said, “In a theological basis is the Old Testament, its many references to blessing those that bless Israel and in that context the people who practice the covenant are obligated to get out there and support Israel. It’s not an elective.”[18]
There are, or should be, readily seen undercurrents in the messages that are used in support of Israel, as it is a basic tenet of the prophetic literalists that the Jewish people need to resettle and unify Israel and Jerusalem – which in all degrees of argument ignore and deny the Palestinian people - before the next stages of prophecy will occur. In the eventual turn of prophetic events, the Jewish people will either convert to Christianity or be slaughtered along with the rest of the world’s non-believers. One should wonder how the Jewish people could accept the support of the fundamentalist right under these circumstances, yet at the same time, it is easy to recognize that the Israeli fundamentalists would accept the convenience of the situation to support their views. The US has supported Israel immensely, with billions of dollars in aid, with the latest of military technology and hi-tech instrumentation, as well as ignoring their own profession of interest in the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons by conveniently ignoring the issue of Israel having nuclear weapons. It is hard to believe the Israelis are ignorant of all this – the prophecy and its support - and to no surprise, they are not. Next week’s continuation - Part VII - will address this issue and then look at the American Prophecies in America.
[1] Armstrong, Karen. The Battle for God – A History of Fundamentalism. Random House. NY. 2000.
[2] Carroll, James. Crusade – Chronicles of an Unjust War. Metropolitan Books (Henry Holt), NY. 2004.
[3] James, ibid.
[4] Evans, ibid.
[5] http://www.shinui.org.il/elections/eng/principles.html
[6] http://www.knesset.gov.il/elections/knesset15/elikud_m.htm
[7] Armstrong, ibid.
[8] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-Orthodox_Judaism
[9] http:/www.sas.upenn.edu/penncip/lustick/lustick12.html
[10] Armstrong, ibid.
[11] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-Orthodox_Judaism
[12] Armstrong, ibid.
[13] Jerusalem Post Radio at http://info.jpost.com/COO2/Supplements/AmericasVoices/bc_01.html
[14] Jerusalem Post Radio at http://info.jpost.com/COO2/Supplements/AmericasVoices/gp_01.html
[15] Oldfield, Duane. “The evangelical roots of US unilateralism.” www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/FCAa01.html. March 26, 2004.
[16] Robertson, Pat, cited in Thompson, Scott and Steinberg, Jeffrey. “25 Year ‘Shotgun Mariage’ of Israel’s Likud and U.S. Fundamentalists Exposed” www.larouchepub.com. November 29. 2002.
[17] __________ . “Zion’s Christian Soldiers”, www.cbsnews/stories/2002/10/03/60minutes/main524268.shtml, June 08, 2003.
[19] Abigail Hackman, Richard Davis cited in www.nclci.org/washrally-Wolfowitz.htm