Division and conflict in Israel: a Jewish-Christian exchange

Christian Century, August 26, 1998 by Yehezkel Landau, Tom Getman

Yehezkel Landau and Tom Getman recently met over lunch in East Jerusalem to discuss political and spiritual issues. As friends and colleagues in reconciliation projects in both the West Bank and Israel, they challenge each other's views, meeting regularly to probe the causes of division and conflict. The increasing hostility between Palestinians and Israeli Jews pushes them to seek common ground for themselves and their friends. The following exchange of letters arose out of that luncheon engagement.

DEAR TOM,

Thinking about our lunch conversation, I felt uneasy about your answer to my question about the meaning and justification of Israel's coming into being as a state. You said, "It's an open question." That answer gives the impression that Israel's existence is conditional on how we treat the Palestinians, who have been our declared enemies. Would you say, "Let's wait and see and time will tell whether the state should exist" about any other country?

The U.S. came into being with a genocidal displacement of the Native Americans; it enslaved black Africans; it waged an unjust war in Indochina; and it has been guilty of an economic imperialism that continues to this day. Would you say that the U.S. consequently has forfeited its right to exist? Should it give all its territory back to the original owners?

If you can't say this about the U.S., how can you say it about Israel, especially since the United Nations created the Jewish state under international law in 1947? The Jewish leadership here accepted the partition plan, while the Arab world fought against it, refusing to recognize the Jewish right to national self-determination alongside a Palestinian Arab state.

Israel's resistance to Palestinian statehood since 1948 has less to do with fear of Palestinian sovereignty than with anxiety over how a Palestinian state could be used by more powerful enemies to attack us. Israel did not seek the role of occupier in 1967, but prolonged military rule over some 2 million Palestinians, coupled with the establishment of Jewish settlements that enjoy a preferential status, created an Israeli mind-set that justified an unjust status quo. It took the Intifada to shake most Israelis out of their complacency.

The often-invoked "security" rationale must not be used as a cover for systematic injustice and human rights violations against Palestinians. But the zero-sum war mentality that breeds and condones such injustices is not Israel's alone. Surely the rejectionist stance of the Palestinian leadership before 1988, and its attacks against civilians, has had a lot to do with Israelis' reluctance to trust Yasir Arafat and his colleagues in the Palestine Liberation Organization.

This mistrust in turn has conditioned many Israelis to accept whatever has been deemed necessary to thwart the Palestinian dream of liberation. Hindsight has allowed us to see that the resultant policies backfired; but over the years they seemed a lesser evil aimed at preventing a greater one: the military defeat and destruction of Israel.

To have expectations of Israel that you do not have of any other country--that it treat its adversaries with compassion and accept their standards of justice--is to compound the Israeli or Arab double standard with one of your own. Then Israel will always disappoint you. It is one thing for Jews to hold Israel up to a higher standard than they would expect from other nations; but when Christians do it, even in the name of solidarity, Jews will inevitably see that form of criticism as prejudiced and judgmental.

We need to transcend judgmentalism, to critique the misguided actions and clear sins of others with greater compassion, recognizing the tragic dimension of human affairs. We must acknowledge what Jung calls the "shadow" in all of us and lovingly help others to see their own repressed "shadows" (e.g., anti-Judaism in Christianity, anti-Palestinianism in Zionism and anti-Zionism in Palestinian nationalism).

If you were to ask me if I thought it was a mistake for the Christian church to have emerged in the first and second centuries, wouldn't you be upset if I were to answer, "It's an open question," rather than to say something like, "I see God's grace in the emergence of Christianity alongside Judaism, but I strongly condemn what Christians have done in the name of God or Jesus to Jews, Muslims and fellow Christians"?

If we can't make space in our hearts for our neighbors' identities, without condoning their harmful actions, we can't be effective peacemakers or even effective prophetic critics. The people who should be listening will shut their ears. Part of the problem is that folks in your position relate to Israelis as soldiers, settlers or government officials. The rest of us--fathers, mothers, teachers, farmers, scientists, artists--become marginalized in the field of vision, and the perceived character of Israeli society gets skewed.

God's Holy Land is also the homeland of two peoples: the Jews and the Palestinians. By divine grace, both belong in this land to consecrate life here. If we begin with this spiritual understanding, we can translate it into a political framework that achieves reasonable (though not absolute) justice for both sides. We can create two states, both of which guarantee the rights of their minorities and share Jerusalem as their capital. We can negotiate boundaries, the sharing of water resources, and compensation for refugees who cannot return to their original homes. For emotional and spiritual healing, the injustice of the Palestinians' dispossession should be acknowledged by Israeli leaders in the hope that Palestinians can forgive.