MWR : With new attitudes, Middle East peace is possible

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Aug. 18, 2008 issue

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Tags: Perspective Middle East

With new attitudes, Middle East peace is possible

By S. Roy Kaufman

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American Christians need changed attitudes about the Holy Land. After visiting with Israeli and Palestinian people and groups from Jewish, Muslim and Christian communities working for nonviolence, I am confident a Middle East peace is possible, if only the people living there are allowed to work toward reconciliation.

S. Roy and Loretta Kaufman met Atta Jaber, center, a Palestinian farmer in the Beqa’a Valley north of Hebron, on a Christian Peacemaker Teams delegation in March. Jaber’s house was destroyed several times by Israeli authorities, once in 1999 during the time the Kaufmans’ daughter Joanne was serving with CPT in Hebron. *— Photo provided by S. Roy Kaufman*

My wife, Loretta, and I reported to our church, Salem Mennonite of Freeman, S.D., on Aug. 3 about a two-week Christian Peacemaker Teams delegation to Israel-Palestine in which we participated March 4-16. This was a part of a sabbatical funded by a National Clergy Renewal Grant from Lilly Endowment.

We acknowledge that there are extremist Arab Palestinian groups who continue to actively seek the destruction of Jewish people through suicide bombings and other terrorist acts. We also observed that there are Israeli Jewish extremists who behave inhumanely, calling for the expulsion and even the extermination of their Palestinian neighbors.

All of these extremists undermine the will of the majority to live together in peace.

We appreciate that the more than 13 million Jewish people around the world are able to feel they have a homeland in Israel, whether or not they immigrate to Israel, where some 5 million Jewish people now live.

However, the nation of Israel has been established at the expense of the Palestinian people who have inhabited Palestine. Currently there are some 10 million Palestinian Arabs in the world, about 3.2 million in the West Bank and Gaza, another million living as Arab citizens of Israel, and the rest living as refugees, in some cases since 1948 when the State of Israel was declared.

Since the Israeli state is responsible for the displacement of the Palestinian people, Israel is responsible for redressing the problem of Palestinians living as refugees or in the West Bank. It can do so by withdrawing Jewish settlements from the West Bank as has been done in the Gaza Strip, ceasing construction of the separation barrier begun in 2002, and withdrawing the Israeli Defense Forces occupying the West Bank. These steps are necessary for a viable Palestinian state to emerge.

As the United States is the primary ally of Israel, giving economic and military aid, the United States could apply pressure on Israel to effect these changes.

We know applying such pressure on Israel would be political suicide for many American pol-iticians. Significant changes of attitude are required in the American electorate — particu-larly among Christians — before such political changes will occur.

First, we ask American Christians to realize it is not anti-Jewish to be concerned for Palestinians. While anti-Semitism is always wrong, we do not have to choose the welfare of Jewish allies over the welfare of Palestinian people. Both Jewish and Palestinian people of good will profess a desire to live together in peace.

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Comments

The West Bank belongs to Israel and not the Palestinians. It would be sucidial for Israel to vacate the West Bank. What is there about Muslim hate of the Jews and Christians that you do not understand. Muslims do not recognize Jesus in their religion, however, Christians do recognize that the Jews have been and contnue to be God's chosen people. Read Matthew 24. Without Jesus, there can be no reconciliation of a problem that goes all the way back to Isaac and Ishmael

- A. Dale Welty (aug 13 at 9:39 p.m.)
Hi Roy - Thanks for the thoughtful and articulate piece! If I could presume to add a fifth encouragement, it would be for American Christians to become more familiar with our own history of occupation and dispossession of Native people on this continent (and the continuing disaster that is US policy towards Native people) in order to make a more authentic and humble witness against our government's support for similar policies in various places around the world. (I know that you and Loretta already make this awareness part of your pastoral work at Salem).

Dale, there isn't a single sentence in your comment that I could agree with. Except maybe "Read Matthew 24," which I just did, and I find nothing in it that supports anything else you say.

- Carl Meyer (aug 14 at 12:52 p.m.)
Roy, I just read your article and agree with it wholeheartedly. We need more like it. I also clicked for the first time on the MWR website. In Dale's response he evidently missed your quote of Eph. 4:2. Yes, as a believer in Jesus, I know the dividing walls of hostility have been broken down. Why do we build them back up?? I would only wish yu had used more Scripture. That is the background for our belief. I noted with appreciation the quote by Sarah Shirk from Desmond Tutu. Dale responds to your article that "Many Christians recognize that the Jews have been and are God's chosen people." Are we more interested in what "many Christians recognize" or Col. 3:12, 1 Peter 2:9, etc.? I don't think Paul and Peter were only referring to Jews or first century Christians.

- Carl Smeltzer (aug 31 at 5:50 p.m.)
Roy, you wrote, "We acknowledge that there are extremist Arab Palestinian groups who continue to actively seek the destruction of Jewish people through suicide bombings and other terrorist acts."

Okay, so what are you going to DO about it. The Christian Peacemaker Teams specialize in confronting Israeli misdeeds in the West Bank. CPTers routinely get in the way of Israeli soldiers and settlers in the West Bank, but very rarely get in the way of the misdeeds of Hamas and Hezbollah.

What are you going to do to get in the way of Israel's adversaries?

You also write, "Since the Israeli state is responsible for the displacement of the Palestinian people, Israel is responsible for redressing the problem of Palestinians living as refugees or in the West Bank."

Well, Israel was created under the authority of UN Resolution 181 which called for the creation of both a Jewish and an Arab state. Israel accepted the partition plan, the Arabs did not. Do Arab leaders have any responsibility for the creation of the refugee problem?

Testifying at the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry on the Jewish Problem in Europe and Palestine, Reinhold Niebuhr acknowledged that the creation of a Jewish state in the former British Mandate would impinge on Arab interests. But he also stated: "There is no way of finding a perfectly just solution for the conflict of rights and priorities between the Arabs and the Jews in Palestine. There is, in fact, no perfectly just solution of any political problem. The fact, however, that the Arabs have a vast hinterland in the Middle East, and the fact that the Jews have nowhere to go, establish the relative justice of their claims and of their cause."

In another comment, a correspondent stated Americans should learn more about their own history of occupation. Well, the Mennonites should also learn about their own history of taking advantage of this oppression. Mennonites in North America live on land taken, by force, without legal or moral claim, by European settlers.

The fact is that since the 19th Century, Mennonites have been increasingly able to rely on others to use force -- the sword -- to provide for their safety. The Jewish people have not.

Mennonite commentary about the Arab-Israeli conflict is largely an effort to place a burden pf radical nonresistance on Israelis that Mennonites themselves are unwilling to bear(Matthew 23:4). And yet, for some reason, the MCC and its activists enjoy a prominent place of honor in the world of Christian peacemaking (Matthew 23:6). Maybe the place of honor should be given to the Israelis, who have been attacked from virtually every bit of territory from which they have withdrawn since the 1990s in hopes of achieving peace.

- Dexter Van Zile (dec 8 at 8:18 a.m.)

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