http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article34560.htm
What Christians Don't Know About Israel
By Grace Halsell
Note: This article was written in 1998 by the late Grace Halsell. Sadly
it remains relevant today.
April 10, 2013 "Information Clearing House" - American Jews
sympathetic to Israel dominate key positions in all areas of our
government where decisions are made regarding the Middle East. This
being the case, is there any hope of ever changing U.S. policy? American
Presidents as well as most members of Congress support Israel -- and
they know why. U.S. Jews sympathetic to Israel donate lavishly to their
campaign coffers.
The answer to achieving an even-handed Middle East policy might lie
elsewhere -- among those who support Israel but don't really know why.
This group is the vast majority of Americans. They are well-meaning,
fair-minded Christians who feel bonded to Israel -- and Zionism -- often
from atavistic feelings, in some cases dating from childhood.
I am one of those. I grew up listening to stories of a mystical,
allegorical, spiritual Israel. This was before a modern political entity
with the same name appeared on our maps. I attended Sunday School and
watched an instructor draw down window- type shades to show maps of the
Holy Land. I imbibed stories of a Good and Chosen people who fought
against their Bad "unChosen" enemies.
In my early 20s, I began traveling the world, earning my living as a
writer. I came to the subject of the Middle East rather late in my
career. I was sadly lacking in knowledge regarding the area. About all I
knew was what I had learned in Sunday School.
And typical of many U.S. Christians, I somehow considered a modern state
created in 1948 as a homeland for Jews persecuted under the Nazis as a
replica of the spiritual, mystical Israel I heard about as a child. When
in 1979 I initially went to Jerusalem, I planned to write about the
three great monotheistic religions and leave out politics. "Not write
about politics?" scoffed one Palestinian, smoking a waterpipe in the Old
Walled City. "We eat politics, morning, noon and night!"
As I would learn, the politics is about land, and the co-claimants to
that land: the indigenous Palestinians who have lived there for 2,000
years and the Jews who started arriving in large numbers after the
Second World War. By living among Israeli Jews as well as Palestinian
Christians and Muslims, I saw, heard, smelled, experienced the police
state tactics Israelis use against Palestinians.
My research led to a book entitled Journey to Jerusalem. My journey not
only was enlightening to me as regards Israel, but also I came to a
deeper, and sadder, understanding of my own country. I say sadder
understanding because I began to see that, in Middle East politics, we
the people are not making the decisions, but rather that supporters of
Israel are doing so. And typical of most Americans, I tended to think
the U.S. media was "free" to print news impartially.
'It shouldn't be published. It's anti-Israel.'
In the late 1970s, when I first went to Jerusalem, I was unaware that
editors could and would classify "news" depending on who was doing what
to whom. On my initial visit to Israel-Palestine, I had interviewed
dozens of young Palestinian men. About one in four related stories of
torture.
Israeli police had come in the night, dragged them from their beds and
placed hoods over their heads. Then in jails the Israelis had kept them
in isolation, besieged them with loud, incessant noises, hung them
upside down and had sadistically mutilated their genitals. I had not
read such stories in the U.S. media. Wasn't it news? Obviously, I
naively thought, U.S. editors simply didn't know it was happening.
On a trip to Washington, DC, I hand-delivered a letter to Frank
Mankiewicz, then head of the public radio station WETA. I explained I
had taped interviews with Palestinians who had been brutally tortured.
And I'd make them available to him. I got no reply. I made several phone
calls. Eventually I was put through to a public relations person, a Ms.
Cohen, who said my letter had been lost. I wrote again. In time I began
to realize what I hadn't known: had it been Jews who were strung up and
tortured, it would be news. But interviews with tortured Arabs were
"lost" at WETA.
The process of getting my book Journey to Jerusalem published also was a
learning experience. Bill Griffin, who signed a contract with me on
behalf of MacMillan Publishing Company, was a former Roman Catholic
priest. He assured me that no one other than himself would edit the
book. As I researched the book, making several trips to Israel and
Palestine, I met frequently with Griffin, showing him sample chapters.
"Terrific," he said of my material.
The day the book was scheduled to be published, I went to visit
MacMillan's. Checking in at a reception desk, I spotted Griffin across a
room, cleaning out his desk. His secretary Margie came to greet me. In
tears, she whispered for me to meet her in the ladies room. When we were
alone, she confided, "He's been fired." She indicated it was because he
had signed a contract for a book that was sympathetic to Palestinians.
Griffin, she said, had no time to see me.
Later, I met with another MacMillan official, William Curry. "I was told
to take your manuscript to the Israeli Embassy, to let them read it for
mistakes," he told me. "They were not pleased. They asked me, "You are
not going to publish this book, are you?" I asked, "Were there
mistakes?" "Not mistakes as such. But it shouldn't be published. It's
anti-Israel."
Somehow, despite obstacles to prevent it, the presses had started
rolling. After its publication in 1980, I was invited to speak in a
number of churches. Christians generally reacted with disbelief. Back
then, there was little or no coverage of Israeli land confiscation,
demolition of Palestinian homes, wan ton arrests and torture of
Palestinian civilians.
The Same Question
Speaking of these injustices, I invariably heard the same question, "How
come I didn't know this?" Or someone might ask, "But I haven't read
about that in my newspaper." To these church audiences, I related my own
learning experience, that of seeing hordes of U.S. correspondents
covering a relatively tiny state. I pointed out that I had not seen so
many reporters in world capitals such as Beijing, Moscow, London, Tokyo,
Paris. Why, I asked, did a small state with a 1980 population of only
four million warrant more reporters than China, with a billion people?
I also linked this query with my findings that The New York Times, The
Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post -- and most of our nation's
print media - are owned and/or controlled by Jews supportive of Israel.
It was for this reason, I deduced, that they sent so many reporters to
cover Israel -- and to do so largely from the Israeli point of view.
My learning experiences also included coming to realize how easily I
could lose a Jewish friend if I criticized the Jewish state. I could
with impunity criticize France, England, Russia, even the United States.
And any aspect of life in America. But not the Jewish state. I lost more
Jewish friends than one after the publication of Journey to Jerusalem --
all sad losses for me and one, perhaps, saddest of all.
In the 1960s and 1970s, before going to the Middle East, I had written
about the plight of blacks in a book entitled Soul Sister, and the
plight of American Indians in a book entitled Bessie Yellowhair, and the
problems endured by undocumented workers crossing from Mexico in The
Illegals. These books had come to the attention of the "mother" of The
New York Times, Mrs. Arthur Hays Sulzberger.
Her father had started the newspaper, then her husband ran it, and in
the years that I knew her, her son was the publisher. She invited me to
her fashionable apartment on Fifth Avenue for lunches and dinner
parties. And, on many occasions, I was a weekend guest at her Greenwich,
Conn., home.
She was liberal-minded and praised my efforts to speak for the underdog,
even going so far in one letter to say, "You are the most remarkable
woman I ever knew." I had little concept that from being buoyed so high
I could be dropped so suddenly when I discovered -- from her point of
view -- the "wrong" underdog.
As it happened, I was a weekend guest in her spacious Connecticut home
when she read bound galleys of Journey to Jerusalem. As I was leaving,
she handed the galleys back with a saddened look: "My dear, have you
forgotten the Holocaust?" She felt that what happened in Nazi Germany to
Jews several decades earlier should silence any criticism of the Jewish
state. She could focus on a holocaust of Jews while negating a modern
day holocaust of Palestinians.
I realized, quite painfully, that our friendship was ending. Iphigene
Sulzberger had not only invited me to her home to meet her famous
friends but, also at her suggestion, The Times had requested articles. I
wrote op-ed articles on various subjects including American blacks,
American Indians as well as undocumented workers. Since Mrs. Sulzberger
and other Jewish officials at the Times highly praised my efforts to
help these groups of oppressed peoples, the dichotomy became apparent:
most "liberal" U.S. Jews stand on the side of all poor and oppressed
peoples save one -- the Palestinians.
How handily these liberal Jewish opinion-molders tend to diminish the
Palestinians, to make them invisible, or to categorize them all as
"terrorists."
Interestingly, Iphigene Sulzberger had talked to me a great deal about
her father, Adolph S. Ochs. She told me that he was not one of the early
Zionists. He had not favored the creation of a Jewish state.
Yet, increasingly, American Jews have fallen victim to Zionism, a
nationalistic movement that passes for many as a religion. While the
ethical instructions of all great religions -- including the teachings
of Moses, Muhammad and Christ -- stress that all human beings are equal,
militant Zionists take the position that the killing of a non-Jew does
not count.
Over five decades now, Zionists have killed Palestinians with impunity.
And in the 1996 shelling of a U.N. base in Qana, Lebanon, the Israelis
killed more than 100 civilians sheltered there. As an Israeli
journalist, Arieh Shavit, explains of the massacre, "We believe with
absolute certitude that right now, with the White House in our hands,
the Senate in our hands and The New York Times in our hands, the lives
of others do not count the same way as our own."
Israelis today, explains the anti-Zionist Jew Israel Shahak, "are not
basing their religion on the ethics of justice. They do not accept the
Old Testament as it is written. Rather, religious Jews turn to the
Talmud. For them, the Talmudic Jewish laws become "the Bible." And the
Talmud teaches that a Jew can kill a non-Jew with impunity.
In the teachings of Christ, there was a break from such Talmudic
teachings. He sought to heal the wounded, to comfort the downtrodden.
The danger, of course, for U.S. Christians is that having made an icon
of Israel, we fall into a trap of condoning whatever Israel does -- even
wanton murder -- as orchestrated by God.
Yet, I am not alone in suggesting that the churches in the United States
represent the last major organized support for Palestinian rights. This
imperative is due in part to our historic links to the Land of Christ
and in part to the moral issues involved with having our tax dollars
fund Israeli-government-approved violations of human rights.
While Israel and its dedicated U.S. Jewish supporters know they have the
president and most of Congress in their hands, they worry about
grassroots America -- the well-meaning Christians who care for justice.
Thus far, most Christians were unaware of what it was they didn't know
about Israel. They were indoctrinated by U.S. supporters of Israel in
their own country and when they traveled to the Land of Christ most all
did so under Israeli sponsorship. That being the case, it was unlikely a
Christian ever met a Palestinian or learned what caused the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
This is gradually changing, however. And this change disturbs the
Israelis. As an example, delegates attending a Christian Sabeel
conference in Bethlehem earlier this year said they were harassed by
Israeli security at the Tel Aviv airport.
"They asked us," said one delegate, "Why did you use a Palestinian
travel agency? Why didn't you use an Israeli agency?" The interrogation
was so extensive and hostile that Sabeel leaders called a special
session to brief the delegates on how to handle the harassment.
Obviously, said one delegate, "The Israelis have a policy to discourage
us from visiting the Holy Land except under their sponsorship. They
don't want Christians to start learning all they have never known about
Israel."
--
Robert Luis Rabello
Adventure for Your Mind
http://www.newadventure.ca
Meet the People video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txsCdh1hZ6c
Crisis video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZedNEXhTn4
The Long Journey video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vy4muxaksgk
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