Whose Promised Land? (5^th edition), by Colin Chapman.

Synopsis of chapter 6a – Other Biblical Themes: Is There Any Word From The Lord?

6.1 A passion for truth

Jews and Palestinians each have a narrative of what is going on.  How can we form an accurate picture of the conflict, and map a path towards resolution?

Robert I. Rotberg: We should try to determine the beliefs and commitments which inform the two opposing narratives.

Edward Said: This requires intellectual honesty.

The Old Testament prophets insist on the primacy of truth: Amos 5:10; Isa 59:12-15; Jer 7:28f; 9:5f; Zech 8:3, 14-17.

General Carl von Horn: How difficult it is to remain objective and impartial in the midst of conflict!  Horn found his very neutrality being branded as ‘antisemitic’.

Simha Flapan (an Israeli historian): Israel, despite having the most sophisticated army in the region, regards itself as victim, engaged only in self-defence.  Zionist acceptance of UN Partition Resolution of 1947 was, actually, a tactical move, aimed at thwarting the creation of a Palestinian Arab state and seeking to increase the territory assigned by the UN to the Jewish state.

Benny Morris, formerly a revisionist historian, is criticised by Avi Shlaim for claiming that the root problem today is the Palestinian denial of the legitimacy of the Jewish state.  Shlaim concludes that the root problem is the continuing occupation by the Jewish state of the Palestinian territories that it captured in June 1967.

Denys Baly (1957): The Palestinians have done much less to help their own people than the Jews have done to help theirs:

‘nor can it be denied that their politicians have often callously used the misery of the refugees as a means to an end; that the very existence of the refugees is partly the result of Arab misunderstanding of the situation; that the Arabs have from time to time encouraged violence and hatred…; and that they have been far too ready to blame their unhappiness on anyone but themselves.’

Baly continues:

‘Repentance is not merely an act; it is an attitude of mind. It is a passion for the truth, an urgent desire to know the worst as well as the best, a readiness to begin again in a new way, a constantly proceeding examination of one’s way of life, and with it all an ever remade decision to put right what is wrong…

‘What is needed there [in the Middle East] almost more than anything else is a ruthless intellectual honesty which will break every barrier of emotionalism, sentiment, tradition and nationality, so that at the last people will be found able to question their own motives and behaviour. Hardly anywhere does it exist, and neither Islam nor the type of Judaism which is found in Israel encourage it… Only if the Christian Church can regain this passion for truth, whatever it may cost, will they begin to see it as a way of life.’

6.2 The problem of prejudice

Mark Twain in 1876 criticised the Protestant biases of Christian writers on this issue.

Luke 12:13-16 – ‘Who made me a judge or divider over you?’

N.T. Wright: He is refusing to be, in this sense, a new Moses who will parcel out the promised land (cf Ex 2:14).  He has come, rather,

‘to bring Israel to her real “return from exile”; but, just as this will not underwrite Israel’s ethnic aspirations, so it will not reaffirm her symbolic, and zealously defended, territorial inheritance and possession.’

Or, perhaps Jesus was wanting to address the covetousness (on the part of one or both) that lay beneath the surface.

It could be that Jesus would be similarly reluctant to take sides in the present Arab/Israeli conflict.

Jn 8 ‘If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone’.

Jesus does not condone the adultery (it is ‘sin’).  But he refuses to condemn her or to approve of her stoning.

Give their history of antisemitism, Christians have good reason for humility towards Jewish people on the issue of the land:

‘If Christians do not want to forget all the good that has been done in the name of Christ, Jews can hardly forget all the suffering that Christians have brought to Jews in the name of Christ.’

Quaker Report: There is right and wrong on both sides.  Many on both sides will denounce any criticism as antagonistic.  Simple compromise will not work.  It is possible to be both pro-Jewish and pro-Arab.

Denys Baly: Reconciliation is only possible when both sides make a genuine effort to understand the beliefs, hopes, fears and grievances of the other.

6.3 The demands of the law

Beware of selective reading of Scripture.  The same Torah that promises a return to the land also sets out God’s commandments.

‘Thou shalt not ’murder…steal…covet your neighbour’s house (Ex  20:13, 15, 17).  Some Jews have been willing to be judged by these commands.

‘Do not oppress an alien’ (Ex 22:21; 23:9).  Jews, of all people, should know what it is like to be a stranger in a foreign land.  And yet the rights of Palestine Arabs have often been disrespected.

Simha Flapan: The gravest weakness of Chaim Weizmann’s leadership was his disdain for, and non-recognition of, Palestinians.

David Ben-Gurion: Israel is the country of the Jews.  Every Arab who lives there must accept his status as a minority citizen.

Golda Meir, Samuel Katz: There has never been a ‘Palestinian Arab’ nation.

Menachem Begin: There is only room for Jews in our country.

Nahum Goldmann (Zionist leader): Insufficient attention was paid to relations with the Arabs.

On Palestinians as ‘aliens’:

‘Since Palestinians have been living in the land for centuries, they find it particularly hard to be thought of by Jews in Israel as being in the same category as the ‘aliens’ of the Old Testament. But perhaps they would not mind so much if they felt that the Jews had treated them in the way that the Mosaic Law required aliens to be treated.’

The stronger the appeal of Jews to Torah, the stronger must be the insistence that they be judged by its moral teaching.

6.4 The prophetic concern for justice

Many popular writers on Old Testament prophecy pay scant to the rights and wrongs of what has been done.  The land belongs to the Jews, and no further questions need be asked.

Derek Prince: Injustices have been committed by all parties.  But none have suffered as much as the Jews.  But this ignores the Old Testament’s emphasis on justice: David and Nathan (2 Sam 12:1-7); Ahab and Naboth (1 Kings 21, a storyline that has been repeated many times in Palestine).

Amos 3:2 – The prophet reserves the greatest condemnation for his own nation.

See also Mic 3:8; Isa 59:1–4, 6–9, 11.

It follows that:

‘Those who appeal to the Old Testament to support Jewish claims to the land ought at the very least to be willing to take seriously what the prophets had to say about the practice of justice in the land.’

A number of Jewish speakers and writers have given voice to this concern for universal justice.  Rabbi Elmer Berger, for example: God must be allowed to stand in judgment on every nation, including Israel.

6.5 God’s judgment in history

God is sovereign, not only in the lives of individuals, but also in societies and nations.  His utter antipathy towards all that is evil – his refusal to be neutral about it – is what we call his ‘wrath’.

The Lord was willing to use Assyria as an instrument of judgment on his own people, Isa 7:17,20.  And yet the Assyrians themselves would be subject to judgment, Isa 10:5-25.  It was a ‘double judgment’.

Denys Baly: Do not suppose that by finding fault with the Arabs we can thereby excuse Israel.

God answers Habakkuk’s complaint about the Babylonians (Hab 1:2-4, 12f) by affirming that Babylon will be judged for her crimes (Hab 2:4-8, 12-17).

Is it not the case that:

• Christian churches have ‘humiliated and disgraced’ (Hab 2:15) their Jewish neighbours over many centuries?
• Enlightenment ideas have been allowed by European societies to foster anti-Semitism, and thus ‘plot the ruin of many peoples’ (Hab 2:10)?
• Western powers have been as ‘greedy as the grave’ (Hab 2:5) and have ‘plundered many nations’ (Hab 2:8)?
• The Irgun and the Haganah ‘shed man’s blood’ (Hab 2:8, 17) and ‘built a city with bloodshed’ (Hab 2:12)?
• And the fedayeen and the Islamic suicide bombers of Hamas have ‘shed man’s blood’ (Hab 2:8, 17) in determination to resist Zionism and to win back their land?
• Some Zionist leaders have been trying to build ‘a realm by unjust gain to set its nest on high, to escape the clutches of ruin’ (Hab 2:9)?
• The Arab countries which have used their oil wealth as a political weapon have made themselves ‘wealthy by extortion’ (Hab 2:6)?
• An imperial power – whether the Ottomans, Britain, France, the USA, or Iran – may be guilty of ‘gathering to himself all nations and taking captive all the nations’ (Hab 2:5)?