I am old enough to remember the politically conservative mantra of the late 1960s and ’70s: “My country, right or wrong.” I was young enough and naïve enough during those years to believe in the absolute moral integrity of America’s leadership. I have always tended to have my head in the clouds.
As a young Marine in the early ’70s, it was easy to believe that those who did not share my patriotic views were, in contrast, unpatriotic and didn’t love America. If they didn’t love it, they should leave it, sang the bards.
Jim White
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Then the news media began reporting on a massacre at My Lai and on other atrocities. I consequently branded the media as liberal rather than acknowledge that America and Americans are capable of some of the worst kind of behavior.
Watergate further attacked my idealism, and I blamed Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the newspaper reporters who broke the story of the break-in, for creating the mess. How ironic that today I am editor of the Herald. God must have a sense of humor.
But those events planted in me a grudging admission that the truth must be told, even if it is painful. Without the corrective light of public scrutiny, even good leadership will almost inevitably begin to serve its own interests.
More recently, we invaded Iraq in search of weapons of mass destruction. They had to be there. Our leaders told us so. That’s what they were told by the best intelligence they could gather. Even America has been wrong at times.
Now, the point of my jog down memory lane is to observe that many conservative American Christians are in danger of making the same mistake with Israel. Believing as they do that Israel exists by some divine right, they further seem to believe that Israel is immune to behaving badly. They want a president who will support Israel right or wrong, but they seem to discount the potential that Israel could really be wrong.
In the latest conflict with Gaza, for example, could Israel have been at least partially responsible? Could the fact that it continues to occupy Palestinian land have anything to do with the attitude of the Palestinians? Or could the fact that Palestinian families have been separated from each other by the ghettoization of Palestinian enclaves by a monstrous wall?
I am no expert in Middle Eastern affairs. Let me hasten to say that before someone else does. I know there are intricacies and intrigues at play with plenty of blame to spread around. But I also know that it is a terrible mistake to paint all Palestinians with the terrorist brush. It is sickeningly wrong for a Palestinian woman to strap explosives to herself and kill many innocent victims in a suicide bombing. But it is also wrong for Israeli drones to strike down those whose only crime was to be a Palestinian living in Gaza. Innocent people have died, some killed by munitions while others have literally been scared to death. Among them a Baptist layman named Salem Boulos Swaylem. According to Issam Farah, head deacon of the Gaza Baptist Church, Swaylem was the only member the congregation lost during the recent conflict. According to Farah, he died, “with a heart attack, as the man was under psychological tension and scared to death. He is with the Lord now!”
Because Americans tend to see all Palestinians through the prism of Israeli support, our views are distorted. We miss the fact that among the Palestinians in Gaza are Baptist brothers and sisters.
The Baptist church there has about 70 members and is one of three Christian churches. The other two are Orthodox and Roman Catholic. The pastor of the church is Hanna Maher Salbouta, a native Egyptian.
In 2009, Palestinian Christians penned a plea to their fellow believers in a document that has come to be called Kairos Palestine (after the 1985 South African challenge to apartheid). In it we catch something of their pain, their desperation and their frustration. It says, in part, “The hearts of the faithful are filled with pain and with questioning: What is the international community doing? What are the political leaders in Palestine, in Israel and in the Arab world doing? What is the Church doing? The problem is not just a political one. It is a policy in which human beings are destroyed, and this must be of concern to the Church.
“We address ourselves to our brothers and sisters, members of our Churches in this land. We call out as Christians and as Palestinians to our religious and political leaders, to our Palestinian society and to the Israeli society, to the international community, and to our Christian brothers and sisters in the Churches around the world.”
Do you hear their voices? Do you sense that their hope is beginning to falter?
We have seen in our newspapers and newscasts the faces of those few who are called Palestinian terrorists. But there are many, many other faces: of old women who want to die in peace; of young men who want to earn a living; of children who want to live long enough to grow up. And some, admittedly few, but some of these faces are Baptist brothers and sisters.
I am not one who believes that modern Israel has been called into existence by divine authority. I know some will quote a promise God made to Abraham that his seed would be blessed forever. But I agree with the Apostle Paul who argues that the true Israel is not those who are born into Jewish homes, but those who are born again through faith in Christ. He writes, “In other words, it is not the natural children who are God's children, but it is the children of the promise who are regarded as Abraham's offspring” (Romans 9:8).
To support Israel, right or wrong, is a foolish and dangerous policy. Support your local (and international) Baptists.
Jim White (jwhite@religiousherald.org) is executive editor of the Religious Herald.