Obama and Cairo
Jun 9, 2009
David P. Goldman
Under the cover of continuity, President Obama has effected a revolution in American foreign policy. As a result, America's position as a world superpower well may have peaked in 2008, and its long-term decline to a status better resembling Britain. But unlike Britain's misery, America's decline will be a willful withdrawal from a leading position in world affairs, an act without obvious precedent in world history. Were this to occur—and that is the present trajectory—Obama will have had a decisive role in bringing it to pass. What motivates the president? The answer, I believe, should be sought in the tragic circumstances of the Muslim nations.
What a master of the hot button, though, this president is. Jews invest a great deal of their emotional energy in the Holocaust, and he pressed their button at Buchenwald. Jewish voters, almost eighty percent of whom supported Obama last November, are more susceptible to the sucker punch than other denizens of a cynical world, and Obama is its master practitioner.
Amidst general adulation, Jewish protests sound shrill. The Zionist Organization of America denounced the address as "inimical to Israel" and warned that Obama "may become the most hostile President to Israel ever." One can read the thought bubble above the average reader of East Coast newspapers: "Aren't the Jews ever satisfied? Can't they ever split things down the middle?" Churlish as it may sound, the ZOA statement is the most accurate characterization of the Cairo address I have seen.
Many analysts (including this one) have called attention to the inaccuracies and half-truths that infest the Cairo speech. They are too numerous to recount here. Psychological truth, though, often lurks behind the lies. That is true for the most offensive gaffe of all, namely Obama's trivialization of the Holocaust. The president said, "Six million Jews were killed. . . . Denying that fact is baseless, ignorant, and hateful. Threatening Israel with destruction—or repeating vile stereotypes about Jews—is deeply wrong, and only serves to evoke in the minds of Israelis this most painful of memories while preventing the peace that the people of this region deserve. On the other hand, it is also undeniable that the Palestinian people—Muslims and Christians—have suffered in pursuit of a homeland. For more than sixty years they have endured the pain of dislocation."
As many Jewish critics protested, it is distasteful in the extreme to equate a camp in which a Jew is gassed to death, and a camp in which an Arab is fed, clothed, housed, and educated, in most cases far better than before. Through Western eyes, the comparison seems odious. Palestinian living standards rose sharply after 1948 thanks to the largesse of the United Nations, and remain much higher than those of neighboring Arab countries. Per capital income of Palestinian Arabs on the West Bank and Gaza strip is estimated at eight dollars a day. By contrast, half of Egyptians live on two dollars a day or less. Living standards among Palestinian refugees (no where else in history have the great-great-grandchildren of refugees been classified as refugees) are considerably better than those in Egypt and other Arab countries without substantial oil exports. Foreign aid per capita of $300 per year is the highest in the world.
Millions died in other population exchanges of the twentieth century—Greece and Turkey in the early 1920s, Germany, Poland, and Czechoslovakia in 1945, India in 1947—but virtually no Palestinian Arabs died in the population exchange of 1947–1948. Over 800,000 Jews were expelled from Arab countries, which is why the majority of Israelis today come not from Europe but from the Arab world, a fact Obama did not see fit to mention. It is not quite true that the Arab countries kept the refugees captive in the camps as political hostages against Israel; many of them remain there because their living standard is far better than in Egypt, the Arab country most able to absorb them in large numbers.
Obama's speech, though, did not address truth, but rather psychological truth. In Arab eyes, the humiliation of the Palestinians is just as grave a crime as the Nazi murder of six million Jews, because humiliation means death. It would be facile to ascribe such an attitude to the exaggerated sense of honor in tribal society, or for that matter to Islam's emphasis upon worldly success. Not only illiterate people earning two dollars a day believe such things. During the 1930s, mainstream German opinion held that a Jewish conspiracy was close to exterminating the Aryan race through miscegenation and syphilis. One thinks in this context of Muslim belief that polio vaccine is a Western plot to sterilize Muslim girls has stopped vaccinations in large parts of West Africa, resulting in the return of a disease that nearly had been eradicated—a fact of which Obama made indirect mention in Cairo.
Obama is a man of the third world, and he understands how fragile the thread of existence looks to third world eyes. An obsession with national death dominates the Arab dialogue, which is accessible to Westerns with a modicum of curiosity in widely available English-language sources. Ali Allawi, a leading politician in Iraq's American-backed government, wrote this year in a widely reviewed book, "The much heralded Islamic awakening of recent times will not be a prelude to the rebirth of an Islamic civilization; it will be another episode in its decline. The revolt of Islam becomes instead the final act of the end of a civilization." The Syrian poet "Adonis" (Ali Ahmad Said), the only Arab writer on the Nobel Prize shortlist, warns, "We [Arabs] have become extinct. . . . We have the masses of people, but a people becomes extinct when it no longer has a creative capacity, and the capacity to change its world . . . The great Sumerians became extinct, the great Greeks became extinct, and the Pharaohs became extinct."
Western observers stuck on the stereotype of Arab hordes overrunning a depopulated Western Europe may find this strange, but the much-vaunted Muslim womb is failing. Iran's fertility decline is the fastest ever observed, and by some accounts has fallen below the level of 1.9 births per female registered in the 2006 census to only 1.6, barely above Germany's. Collapsing fertility is accompanied by social pathologies, including rates of drug addiction and prostitution an order of magnitude greater than in any Western country. Of the fifteen countries that show the biggest drop in population growth since 1980, eight are in the Middle East, and the head of the United Nations population division calls the collapse of Islamic population growth "amazing." Underlying this demographic revolution, I have argued in the past, is a crisis of faith in the Muslim world.
As Obama said, "The sweeping change brought by modernity and globalization led many Muslims to view the West as hostile to the traditions of Islam." But it is even worse: Modernity and globalization are killing the Muslim countries. Wealthy countries such as Europe and Japan barely can avoid national bankruptcy due to rapid aging of the population; for third world countries, the outcome is apocalyptic. The collapse of fertility, so perceptible from one generation to another, may not yet portend the demographic death faced by Estonia or Georgia, but it brings with it the stench of the sepulcher. Political Islam is a response to the death of traditional Muslim society, as the Islamists have emphasized since Sayyid Qutb formulated modern Islamism in the 1940s.
Obama is the son of a Kenyan Muslim father, the stepson of an Indonesian Muslim, and the child, most of all, of an American anthropologist who identified passionately with the fragile, threatened lives of marginal people in the Indonesian marketplace. His mother Ann Dunham's doctoral dissertation, "Peasant blacksmithing in Indonesia: surviving against all odds," celebrated traditional cultures hanging on desperately in the face of the global economic marketplace. As a man of the third world, Obama knows that existential angst is more than a joke in a Woody Allen film for most of the peoples of the world. Deracination and loss of identity are the first symptoms of a disease that is invariably fatal to tribes and peoples, and whose onset instills a terrible presentiment of death in all its adherents.
Ann Dunham's dissertation prefigured her son's political view. Consider this description of the Jakarta of his childhood from Obama's autobiography, Dreams of My Father: "And yet for all that poverty [in the Indonesian marketplace], there remained in their lives a discernible order, a tapestry of trading routes and middlemen, bribes to pay and customs to observe, the habits of a generation played out every day beneath the bargaining and the noise and the swirling dust. It was the absence of such coherence that made a place like [the Chicago housing projects] so desperate." Obama had chance to compare the orderliness and regularity of traditional life with the rough-and-tumble of American capitalism, and chose to identify with the former.
Americans shield themselves from the horror of national death. In the eyes of the third world, the Holocaust is of no special consequence. Every tribe and nation will face its own Holocaust, that is, its own extinction. The world is in the midst of a Great Extinction of peoples, in which between half and nine-tenths of the world's 6,000 languages will be silent forever during the next century. Americans shield their eyes from the horror that pervades life in the Muslim world, the sense of looming extinction that lies upon ordinary life like an unending plague of darkness. As Franz Rosenzweig wrote, "Just as every individual must reckon with his eventual death, the peoples of the world foresee their eventual extinction, be it however distant in time. Indeed, the love of the peoples for their own nationhood is sweet and pregnant with the presentiment of death. Thus the peoples of the world foresee a time when their land with its rivers and mountains still lies under heaven as it does today, but other people dwell there; when their language is entombed in books, and their laws and customers have lost their living power."
At one level, the Palestinian belief that the cozy settlements of their exile are the equivalent of the Nazi death camps is delusional. At a deeper level, it is true, for the Palestinians Arabs are dying of shame and humiliation, that is, of their incapacity to adapt to the modern world. They are not dying quite so fast as their Persian coreligionists, but they are dying nonetheless. They know they are dying. They make a virtue of it in the slogan, "You love life: we love death." They fight like men with nothing to lose, because they have nothing to lose in fact.
It used to be the conservatives who stood athwart history, shouting "Stop!" Now it is the president of the United States. As the son, stepson, and half-sibling of Muslims, Obama's identification with the Muslim predicament runs deep. Contrary to some benign interpretations, I do not believe that Obama has made a well-meaning or naive gesture towards the so-called Muslim world. On the contrary, his opinions were long in formation, and his actions precisely calculated. But he is cleverer by far than his American critics. He understands the various tribes of American politics as cultures to be profiled and manipulated. He is the political equivalent of an alien species against which Americans have no natural defense.
As I wrote early in 2008, Obama profiles Americans the way anthropologists interact with primitive peoples. He holds his own view in reserve and emphatically draws out the feelings of others; that is how friends and colleagues describe his modus operandi since his days at the Harvard Law Review, through his years as a community activist in Chicago, and in national politics. Anthropologists, though, proceed from resentment against the devouring culture of America and sympathy with the endangered cultures of the primitive world. Obama inverts the anthropological model: He applies the tools of cultural manipulation out of resentment against America.
Unfortunately, the facts are consistent with the Zionist Organization of America's warning that the Cairo speech points towards a renunciation of America's alliance with Israel. Superficially, it may seem a small concession to require a stop to construction in Israel's West Bank settlements. But that is not what the Muslim countries heard. Obama said, "The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements," an ambiguous formulation which states that the existence of settlements itself is illegitimate. That is a first step towards making Israel indefensible.
Like a chessboard on which the two players have an equal number of pieces, the battle lines on the West Bank may appear stable. In fact, the front is extremely unstable. Under Iranian tutelage, Hizbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza propose to make large parts of Israel effectively uninhabitable by subjecting them to rocket fire. The rockets are hidden in densely populated civilian areas, such that efforts to eliminate them as in Lebanon in August 2006 or in Gaza earlier this year cause considerable distress to non-combatants. In fact, the rockets are employed as a provocation to draw the Israelis into military operations that cause a large number of civilian casualties.
By withdrawing unilaterally from Lebanon and Gaza, Israel opened itself to the slow erosion of its sovereignty through rocket attacks. The settlements in the West Bank, with about 300,000 residents, constitute a buffer against a similar threat against Israel's biggest population concentrations in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
On the chessboard of the Middle East, Obama's policy turn threatens to put Israel into a double bind. Squeezing out the settlements brings Palestinian rocketry within range of Israeli's largest cities. Iranian patronage enables Hamas and Hizbollah to threaten Israel, but Obama's unconditional engagement of Iran rules out Israeli military pressure on the sponsors of its local adversaries. His concession of "peaceful nuclear power" to Teheran was universally read as a one-sided concession to the Iranian mullahs.
Together, the conciliation of Iran and the pressure on Israel's West Bank buffer constitute a formula for eventual Israeli defeat, and Jerusalem is right to be alarmed over the latest turn of events. How long it will take the complacent, gullible majority of American Jews to notice that they have been sucker-punched is another matter. The center of Jewish opinion in America is close to the extreme left wing in Israel, whose commitment to the Oslo process has resulted in their virtual exclusion from Israel's body politic.
Obama's embrace of a declining culture and his abandonment of America's principal ally in the Middle East are gestures without precedent in American history. The consequences are incalculable; the only certainty is that the outcome will be very different than the one for which the president hopes. In the meantime, American Jews have the opportunity to consider how easily manipulated they were, and how complacent in their exercise of influence. Obama won them over with token gestures, including a Passover Seder at the White House. But he has thrown them under the bus on the only real issue of substance for Jews, namely the security of the state of Israel.
David P. Goldman is associate editor of First Things.
Comments:
6.9.2009 | 3:25am
Ellen says:
Mr. Goldman,
I think you are getting alarmed over something that will never come to pass. Many American presidents have warned Israel about settlement expansion since the days when the settler population was a mere 26,000 in the West Bank. I remember those days well in the mid 1980's. Today it is 300,000, after 25 years of steady growth, all of which were accompanied by threats, warnings, and even worse from the Europeans.
The European states became emasculated years ago, unwilling and unable to impose their malign designs on the Jewish state. Obama will be no different. He doesn't have the support of the American population, who first of all have no sympathy for the Palestinians or Muslim world, at large. Secondly, people are sick and tired of the MidEast peace process which has been pointless for decades now.
If Obama tries to press Israel on anything, his presidency will fail, because there are so many other more important and resolvable issues that he ought to be paying attention to.
I think he realizes this. His Cairo speech was meant to show sympathy for the miserable Muslim predicament, but it won't go further than that, unless he wants his presidency to mirror the Muslim predicament. He's too conscious of his place in history to indulge that level of self destructiveness. Hence, have no fear, Israel will outlive the Obama years.
I think you are getting alarmed over something that will never come to pass. Many American presidents have warned Israel about settlement expansion since the days when the settler population was a mere 26,000 in the West Bank. I remember those days well in the mid 1980's. Today it is 300,000, after 25 years of steady growth, all of which were accompanied by threats, warnings, and even worse from the Europeans.
The European states became emasculated years ago, unwilling and unable to impose their malign designs on the Jewish state. Obama will be no different. He doesn't have the support of the American population, who first of all have no sympathy for the Palestinians or Muslim world, at large. Secondly, people are sick and tired of the MidEast peace process which has been pointless for decades now.
If Obama tries to press Israel on anything, his presidency will fail, because there are so many other more important and resolvable issues that he ought to be paying attention to.
I think he realizes this. His Cairo speech was meant to show sympathy for the miserable Muslim predicament, but it won't go further than that, unless he wants his presidency to mirror the Muslim predicament. He's too conscious of his place in history to indulge that level of self destructiveness. Hence, have no fear, Israel will outlive the Obama years.
6.9.2009 | 5:07am
Mike says:
First, I remember you from the LaRouchian days! You used to call people on the phone for updates, I believe, and I was an updatee on occasion.
Your assertions about flagging demographics in the Muslim world are startling, and yet logical. Certainly the cold war and its accompanying angst was a contributor to similar atrophies in Western Europe, and the Muslim world is stuck in an equally morose, "they're out to get us" paranoia.
I am just curious; in my mind there remains another more general question which, please, is not intended in any way other than as a sort of studied and dispassionate look-back. Is it not at least reasonable to wonder if the whole idea of a Jewish return wasn't just a poorly thought out and badly timed exercise? Is it perhaps the first, and most notable, example of the West simply assuming that the Arab world would see the light of secular democracy and fall to? I suspect that this is an uneasy question which puts us, as Amricans (and you and I as believers in the Abrahamic and Mosaic covenants), in the difficult position of defending what has at all events been a chronic foreign policy no-win.
I look back at at comments RJN made in an article, "Counting by Race." He suggested that in the mid- to late sixties the rank and file of white America had done what they thought they were supposed to do in terms of righting what all seemed to agree was a terrible wrong. The resultant riots, entitlements and race-hustling (Neuhaus's term) were all symptomatic of a tendency on the part of blacks to relentlessly both play the victim and remind whites of black victimhood, an insistence on a running confession of guilt. I think Neuhaus was on to something there when he concluded that people are tired of talking about race, thinking about race, and acting in terms of race. "One wants to argue against this, but it is hard to see just how," I believe that was his conclusion.
Rightly or wrongly, it may be difficult for Americans to avoid a similar weariness with Israel. This should not be construed as an attempt to downplay the serious geopolitical ramifications attendant to the destruction of Israel. As your article implies, Obama uses a brand of cultural and ethnic sympathy in a sort of reverse-psychological manner. But I wonder if it does not, in fact, actually reflect a weariness with the business of Israel on the part of Americans, which raises the larger question of what to do to change American minds and generate a sense of urgency.
Your assertions about flagging demographics in the Muslim world are startling, and yet logical. Certainly the cold war and its accompanying angst was a contributor to similar atrophies in Western Europe, and the Muslim world is stuck in an equally morose, "they're out to get us" paranoia.
I am just curious; in my mind there remains another more general question which, please, is not intended in any way other than as a sort of studied and dispassionate look-back. Is it not at least reasonable to wonder if the whole idea of a Jewish return wasn't just a poorly thought out and badly timed exercise? Is it perhaps the first, and most notable, example of the West simply assuming that the Arab world would see the light of secular democracy and fall to? I suspect that this is an uneasy question which puts us, as Amricans (and you and I as believers in the Abrahamic and Mosaic covenants), in the difficult position of defending what has at all events been a chronic foreign policy no-win.
I look back at at comments RJN made in an article, "Counting by Race." He suggested that in the mid- to late sixties the rank and file of white America had done what they thought they were supposed to do in terms of righting what all seemed to agree was a terrible wrong. The resultant riots, entitlements and race-hustling (Neuhaus's term) were all symptomatic of a tendency on the part of blacks to relentlessly both play the victim and remind whites of black victimhood, an insistence on a running confession of guilt. I think Neuhaus was on to something there when he concluded that people are tired of talking about race, thinking about race, and acting in terms of race. "One wants to argue against this, but it is hard to see just how," I believe that was his conclusion.
Rightly or wrongly, it may be difficult for Americans to avoid a similar weariness with Israel. This should not be construed as an attempt to downplay the serious geopolitical ramifications attendant to the destruction of Israel. As your article implies, Obama uses a brand of cultural and ethnic sympathy in a sort of reverse-psychological manner. But I wonder if it does not, in fact, actually reflect a weariness with the business of Israel on the part of Americans, which raises the larger question of what to do to change American minds and generate a sense of urgency.
6.9.2009 | 5:53am
Martin McPhillips says:
Very dangerous territory, to look into the therapeutic state of a president's mind. The very nature of a mind is that it cannot be truly known except perhaps in retrospect, as a historical fossil, reflecting its judgments vis a vis the finished business of its time.
That said, let's look: the early Obama training from his mother is anthropological but that only contextualizes as Marxist anthropology (am I being redundant?). The therapeutic question is whether or not Obama was broken as a child by the serial abandonments and whether his life is or is not a project of infantile revanchism, aided and abetted by the Marxist constructs that enclose him from childhood to adulthood. My answer is an emphatic "Yes." It is that exactly.
Like a lot of the more committed Marxists, Obama rejects and is resentful of the bourgeois prosperity of America and believes in the noble folkways of the world's oppressed masses. He wants a Third World America to compensate him for the aesthetic displeasure he experiences in his own success in America.
But he wants more than that, too. As a grandiose infantile narcissist Obama must be Planetary Personality One. He needs to be Pope and global Commandante, Mullah One and village headman, George Clooney and Muhammed Ali.
The normative views that Americans have of American political process are not equipped to deal with Obama in and at power. With the presidential steroids fully kicked in now and reality all but abandoned, expect primary trouble followed by secondary trouble from the responses. Think of the way the media is treating this as being the same as the aviator who listens to his inner ear instead of his instruments while flying in viscous weather. A downward spiral is immediately percieved as a climb. Then the ground is right there.
Obama is, by his therapeutic nature, catastrophic trouble ahead.
That said, let's look: the early Obama training from his mother is anthropological but that only contextualizes as Marxist anthropology (am I being redundant?). The therapeutic question is whether or not Obama was broken as a child by the serial abandonments and whether his life is or is not a project of infantile revanchism, aided and abetted by the Marxist constructs that enclose him from childhood to adulthood. My answer is an emphatic "Yes." It is that exactly.
Like a lot of the more committed Marxists, Obama rejects and is resentful of the bourgeois prosperity of America and believes in the noble folkways of the world's oppressed masses. He wants a Third World America to compensate him for the aesthetic displeasure he experiences in his own success in America.
But he wants more than that, too. As a grandiose infantile narcissist Obama must be Planetary Personality One. He needs to be Pope and global Commandante, Mullah One and village headman, George Clooney and Muhammed Ali.
The normative views that Americans have of American political process are not equipped to deal with Obama in and at power. With the presidential steroids fully kicked in now and reality all but abandoned, expect primary trouble followed by secondary trouble from the responses. Think of the way the media is treating this as being the same as the aviator who listens to his inner ear instead of his instruments while flying in viscous weather. A downward spiral is immediately percieved as a climb. Then the ground is right there.
Obama is, by his therapeutic nature, catastrophic trouble ahead.
6.9.2009 | 7:52am
When discussing Israel's place in contemporary international politics, it bears recalling the traditional orthodox Jewish position on secular Zionism. That position involves an emphatic repudiation of Zionism as an hubristic appropriation of a mission on behalf of the Jewish people, the carrying out of which properly belongs to God alone, when He sends His Messiah. This was essentially the universal view among Orthodox Jews until after the Nazi holocaust.
Today, such a notion is so far on the fringes of Jewish thought as to be essentially an unknown phenomenon. Yet, small pockets of Jews who maintain the traditional orthodox Jewish repudiation of secular Zionism do remain. (See, for example, www.jewsnotzionists.org.) Underlying this traditional repudiation is a very Christian, and very Catholic, sensibility that those who worship God are to await God's working out of His purposes in history in a spirit of patient and prayerful suffering.
As a general matter, when Christians and Catholics reflect on the theological and ethical ramifications of modern Israel's place in the world, this traditional Orthodox Jewish position must not merely not be forgotten, but taken with the utmost seriousness in assessing the significance of contemporary events - such as Obama's recent Cairo speech. After all, the traditional Orthodox Jewish rejection of secular Zionism corresponds very closely to both the content and spirit of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount.
Today, such a notion is so far on the fringes of Jewish thought as to be essentially an unknown phenomenon. Yet, small pockets of Jews who maintain the traditional orthodox Jewish repudiation of secular Zionism do remain. (See, for example, www.jewsnotzionists.org.) Underlying this traditional repudiation is a very Christian, and very Catholic, sensibility that those who worship God are to await God's working out of His purposes in history in a spirit of patient and prayerful suffering.
As a general matter, when Christians and Catholics reflect on the theological and ethical ramifications of modern Israel's place in the world, this traditional Orthodox Jewish position must not merely not be forgotten, but taken with the utmost seriousness in assessing the significance of contemporary events - such as Obama's recent Cairo speech. After all, the traditional Orthodox Jewish rejection of secular Zionism corresponds very closely to both the content and spirit of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount.
6.9.2009 | 10:07am
David P. Goldman says:
Ellen,
I hope that you are right, but I am worried. Obama's identification with the Muslim predicament is profound. In numerous ways he expressed himself in uniquely Muslim fashion, referring three times to the "Holy Koran" and to Arabia as the land in which it was "revealed." No Christian can concede that the Koran was revealed, because it specifically refutes Christian doctrine. Frank Gaffney reviews the speech and cites other examples:
http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/gaffney060909.php3
This is light-years outside the bounds of normal diplomacy and political discourse. It is an existential commitment, not a merely rhetorical one, I believe. And it will lead to real trouble.
Church of the East, you do not say why anyone should pay attention to a position held by a tiny minority of ultra-Orthodox Jews. The Orthodox Jewish rabbinate opposed Zionism until the 1930s, in a dreadful mis-reading of the risks to European Jews, but mainstream Orthodoxy (e.g. R. Joseph Soloveitchik) had corrected this position by the 1940s. If Orthodoxy hadn't opposed Zionism, fewer Jews would have died.
Mike,
Pardon me if I don't remember you -- it must have been thirty years ago. Many Americans, I agree, are weary of the Israel matter, including many younger Jews. I address this in an article in the current issue of FT, "Jewish Survival in a Gentile World." It is not yet available on the web. Nonetheless, Obama is out of synch with majority American opinion. Were the Jewish organizations to come out publicly against him -- and I would urge them to treat Obama like a new Pharaoh -- it would have an effect.
I hope that you are right, but I am worried. Obama's identification with the Muslim predicament is profound. In numerous ways he expressed himself in uniquely Muslim fashion, referring three times to the "Holy Koran" and to Arabia as the land in which it was "revealed." No Christian can concede that the Koran was revealed, because it specifically refutes Christian doctrine. Frank Gaffney reviews the speech and cites other examples:
http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/gaffney060909.php3
This is light-years outside the bounds of normal diplomacy and political discourse. It is an existential commitment, not a merely rhetorical one, I believe. And it will lead to real trouble.
Church of the East, you do not say why anyone should pay attention to a position held by a tiny minority of ultra-Orthodox Jews. The Orthodox Jewish rabbinate opposed Zionism until the 1930s, in a dreadful mis-reading of the risks to European Jews, but mainstream Orthodoxy (e.g. R. Joseph Soloveitchik) had corrected this position by the 1940s. If Orthodoxy hadn't opposed Zionism, fewer Jews would have died.
Mike,
Pardon me if I don't remember you -- it must have been thirty years ago. Many Americans, I agree, are weary of the Israel matter, including many younger Jews. I address this in an article in the current issue of FT, "Jewish Survival in a Gentile World." It is not yet available on the web. Nonetheless, Obama is out of synch with majority American opinion. Were the Jewish organizations to come out publicly against him -- and I would urge them to treat Obama like a new Pharaoh -- it would have an effect.
6.9.2009 | 11:13am
Morning's Minion says:
I had hoped that a Catholic outfit would take a position on this matter that better aligns with the Vatican, instead of re-stating the tired old onesided US position. I see little concern here for the daily oppression of the Palestinian people, or of the notion-- emphasized by the pope -- that ending terrorism means addressing the underlying injustices that foster terrorism. So why do I see little about the mistreatment of the Palestinians on a daily basis, the lack of freedom of movement, the unjust distribution of water rights, the cutting up of Palestinian land to create settler-only roads to setter-only communities? Why do I see little here about a gravely unjust war against Gaza, denounced in strong language by the Vatican, and where clear war crimes were committed (bombing on civilian centers, use of chemical weapons, shooting unarmed civilians)?
It is shameful that American policy on this issue is driven by a peculiar alliance between right-wing jews and batty evangelicals.
Support pope Benedict" "No more bloodshed! No more fighting! No more terrorism! No more war!...Let it be universally recognized that the State of Israel has the right to exist, and to enjoy peace and security within internationally agreed borders. Let it be likewise acknowledged that the Palestinian people have a right to a sovereign independent homeland, to live with dignity and to travel freely." Amen.
It is shameful that American policy on this issue is driven by a peculiar alliance between right-wing jews and batty evangelicals.
Support pope Benedict" "No more bloodshed! No more fighting! No more terrorism! No more war!...Let it be universally recognized that the State of Israel has the right to exist, and to enjoy peace and security within internationally agreed borders. Let it be likewise acknowledged that the Palestinian people have a right to a sovereign independent homeland, to live with dignity and to travel freely." Amen.
6.9.2009 | 12:06pm
John Iaco says:
First Things should be ashamed at publishing such nonsense. The Palestinians are "cozy"!!! Cardinal Martino called Gaza a concentration camp. I'll take Martino's word over Goldman's any day. Yes, another way to brainwash conservative Catholics into consciousness of the Zionist--just make it seem that to be against Obama (abortion) is to be for (Israel). Brilliant.
No mention of the Gaza massacre, of course, not the phosphorous bombs, not the bombing of schools and hospitals and the deliberate murder of women and children Yes, it's quite cozy to see one's whole family burned alive.
The amount, intensity, and sophistication of the propaganda surrounding, distorting, and cloaking the Israeli attacks on Gaza in December of 2008 was staggering, and Goldman is continuing the work. Nevertheless, some things one just cannot hide, not even one as talented at it as Goldman. It is now indisputable that the Israeli attack on innocent Palestinians in Gaza was gravely immoral. The Vatican condemned Israel’s actions (no mention of that, of course), and so have the vast majority of the countries of the world. What is also indisputable is that the primary cause of the violence in Gaza, as well as virtually all the violence in the Middle East for the past sixty years, was not primitive, home-made “rockets,” pathetic weapons that killed less Israelis in seven years than the state-of-the-art, American-produced “smart bombs” killed in seven days (unconscionable as these rocket attacks were), nor “Islamic terrorists who hate democracy and freedom,” but the unconscionable treatment of Palestinians by the state of Israel, which Goldman shamefully an d incredibly defends, what can be accurately called ethnic cleansing and apartheid. As I say, Cardinal Martino called Gaza a “concentration camp,” a quite deliberate description, implying that Israel has treated the Palestinians in Gaza since 1948 in a manner not unlike the Germans’ treatment of the Jews in Warsaw during World War II. Is Martino an anti-semite, Mr. Goldman? Is he an Obamaite?
As many reputable commentators have insisted, if Israel were simply willing to observe the pre-1967 borders, a lasting peace with the Palestinian Arabs could be arranged, and quite quickly. I am no fan of Obama, but he at least speaks as if he understands this fact, unlike Bush, whose devotion to the agenda of the right-wing Likudniks was fanatical.. However, due to the Zionist ideology of racial superiority and "god-merited" political hegemony, the State of Israel is intractable about its “right” to the entire area of land, that is, its prerogative to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians. Goldman considers this to be just. This is morally insane.
Any person with even the slightest sense of justice would condemn any regime or people for deliberately murdering civilians, whether Israel or the Palestinians, or for stealing their land, kicking them out (and no Palestinians were killed during this "exchange"--Deir Yassin anyone? But Goldman defends this behavior on the part of Israel, blames victims for having been victimized (and for fighting back, naturally--though no one can excuse firing rockets at civilians), and then inverts the whole thing by identifying the state of Israel as the only and main victim! Why is First Things giving this man a soapbox?
Those non-Obamaite conservatives who criticize Israel object, not to the mere existence of a state populated by Jews, but only to its policies, which are immoral and illegal under international law (and the moral law for that matter). Israel has voluntarily agreed to abide by the UN Charter that forbids offensive wars of aggression and interruptions of the peace. It has broken this numerous times. Any mention of this? America has manifestly broken this charter too, of course, in its illegal and immoral occupation of Iraq, and this fact is also indisputable. Yet, those who make their objections known are automatically accused of anti-Semitism for merely affirming these facts, facts that cannot be objectively disputed by any rational, informed, and good-willed person. The anti-Semitic canard doesn't work anymore. Too many people are waking up to what Goldman is lying about.
Now, one can certainly understand a fanatical Zionist defending this kind of unlawful and illegal behavior, for being both bereft of the light of Christ and possessed by a powerful, pernicious ideology that permits acts that no Christian could ever condone, it would make logical sense. The Palestinias are simply less human than the Israelis, according to Talmudic/Zionist doctrine, so they should be treated in a less-than-human manner.
However, to find such racist propaganda in a journal like First Things that claims to speak with a voice of Christian moral truth is insufferable.
No mention of the Gaza massacre, of course, not the phosphorous bombs, not the bombing of schools and hospitals and the deliberate murder of women and children Yes, it's quite cozy to see one's whole family burned alive.
The amount, intensity, and sophistication of the propaganda surrounding, distorting, and cloaking the Israeli attacks on Gaza in December of 2008 was staggering, and Goldman is continuing the work. Nevertheless, some things one just cannot hide, not even one as talented at it as Goldman. It is now indisputable that the Israeli attack on innocent Palestinians in Gaza was gravely immoral. The Vatican condemned Israel’s actions (no mention of that, of course), and so have the vast majority of the countries of the world. What is also indisputable is that the primary cause of the violence in Gaza, as well as virtually all the violence in the Middle East for the past sixty years, was not primitive, home-made “rockets,” pathetic weapons that killed less Israelis in seven years than the state-of-the-art, American-produced “smart bombs” killed in seven days (unconscionable as these rocket attacks were), nor “Islamic terrorists who hate democracy and freedom,” but the unconscionable treatment of Palestinians by the state of Israel, which Goldman shamefully an d incredibly defends, what can be accurately called ethnic cleansing and apartheid. As I say, Cardinal Martino called Gaza a “concentration camp,” a quite deliberate description, implying that Israel has treated the Palestinians in Gaza since 1948 in a manner not unlike the Germans’ treatment of the Jews in Warsaw during World War II. Is Martino an anti-semite, Mr. Goldman? Is he an Obamaite?
As many reputable commentators have insisted, if Israel were simply willing to observe the pre-1967 borders, a lasting peace with the Palestinian Arabs could be arranged, and quite quickly. I am no fan of Obama, but he at least speaks as if he understands this fact, unlike Bush, whose devotion to the agenda of the right-wing Likudniks was fanatical.. However, due to the Zionist ideology of racial superiority and "god-merited" political hegemony, the State of Israel is intractable about its “right” to the entire area of land, that is, its prerogative to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians. Goldman considers this to be just. This is morally insane.
Any person with even the slightest sense of justice would condemn any regime or people for deliberately murdering civilians, whether Israel or the Palestinians, or for stealing their land, kicking them out (and no Palestinians were killed during this "exchange"--Deir Yassin anyone? But Goldman defends this behavior on the part of Israel, blames victims for having been victimized (and for fighting back, naturally--though no one can excuse firing rockets at civilians), and then inverts the whole thing by identifying the state of Israel as the only and main victim! Why is First Things giving this man a soapbox?
Those non-Obamaite conservatives who criticize Israel object, not to the mere existence of a state populated by Jews, but only to its policies, which are immoral and illegal under international law (and the moral law for that matter). Israel has voluntarily agreed to abide by the UN Charter that forbids offensive wars of aggression and interruptions of the peace. It has broken this numerous times. Any mention of this? America has manifestly broken this charter too, of course, in its illegal and immoral occupation of Iraq, and this fact is also indisputable. Yet, those who make their objections known are automatically accused of anti-Semitism for merely affirming these facts, facts that cannot be objectively disputed by any rational, informed, and good-willed person. The anti-Semitic canard doesn't work anymore. Too many people are waking up to what Goldman is lying about.
Now, one can certainly understand a fanatical Zionist defending this kind of unlawful and illegal behavior, for being both bereft of the light of Christ and possessed by a powerful, pernicious ideology that permits acts that no Christian could ever condone, it would make logical sense. The Palestinias are simply less human than the Israelis, according to Talmudic/Zionist doctrine, so they should be treated in a less-than-human manner.
However, to find such racist propaganda in a journal like First Things that claims to speak with a voice of Christian moral truth is insufferable.
6.9.2009 | 12:10pm
David P. Goldman says:
Morning's Minion,
Who said this was a Catholic outfit?
As a Jew, I have some disagreements with Pope Benedict. Sometimes it's hard to distinguish between a hope for peace and a diplomatic prescription, and I tend to give him the benefit of the doubt. Nonetheless, I consider him a great friend of Israel and the Jewish people, as I wrote here:
http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/spengler/2009/06/08/obama-vs-the-pope/
Who said this was a Catholic outfit?
As a Jew, I have some disagreements with Pope Benedict. Sometimes it's hard to distinguish between a hope for peace and a diplomatic prescription, and I tend to give him the benefit of the doubt. Nonetheless, I consider him a great friend of Israel and the Jewish people, as I wrote here:
http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/spengler/2009/06/08/obama-vs-the-pope/
6.9.2009 | 1:48pm
Martin McPhillips says:
It's a pretty good bet that Israel would not exist without American evangelicals. They were Zionists already in the 19th century. As a Catholic, I rather appreciate their dogged support for Israel, even where their motives might be slightly off-center.
As for "right-wing [J]ews," I think that they have it all over their brothers on the Left. We need more of them. From my limited sources on the Upper West Side of Manhattan I hear talk from the Jewish Left of "just accepting that Israel will cease to exist."
I hope not.
As Goldman points out, Hezbollah et al. intentionally launch attacks from civilian locations so that return fire, even precise return fire, is likely to harm some civilians. You have to be able to see through that.
I don't consider myself clear enough on the border matters to tell Israel what it must do. I know that Israel so far isn't asking Palestinians already living inside Israel to leave, so there is some basis for reciprocity in that regard.
Water rights are a tricky matter for adjoining jurisdictions, even in the U.S. Even northern and sourthern California have very serious issues.
Good faith goes a long way to finding solutions. Continuous rocket fire and suicide bombers? Good faith?
Well, there is political science and then there's political science, aka diplomacy by other means. The Israelis are restrained, in my opinion.
As for "right-wing [J]ews," I think that they have it all over their brothers on the Left. We need more of them. From my limited sources on the Upper West Side of Manhattan I hear talk from the Jewish Left of "just accepting that Israel will cease to exist."
I hope not.
As Goldman points out, Hezbollah et al. intentionally launch attacks from civilian locations so that return fire, even precise return fire, is likely to harm some civilians. You have to be able to see through that.
I don't consider myself clear enough on the border matters to tell Israel what it must do. I know that Israel so far isn't asking Palestinians already living inside Israel to leave, so there is some basis for reciprocity in that regard.
Water rights are a tricky matter for adjoining jurisdictions, even in the U.S. Even northern and sourthern California have very serious issues.
Good faith goes a long way to finding solutions. Continuous rocket fire and suicide bombers? Good faith?
Well, there is political science and then there's political science, aka diplomacy by other means. The Israelis are restrained, in my opinion.
6.9.2009 | 2:11pm
James Pawlak says:
Upon visiting the Nazi death camp at Buchenwald Mr. B. H. Obama noted a need to be "vigilant against evil". What were the special evils of the Nazi rule? Well, they included: Murdering every Jew they could find, even if they hid behind rocks; Killing Gypsies and many Slavs because they were not German; Attacking the moral foundations and leaders of Christianity AND attempting to replace it with a truly Socialist worship of the State; Enforcing a near worship of Hitler (The prophet of the Nazis) and making criticism of him a capital crime, as well as the same for his Mein Kampf; And insisting that the "New World Order" would result in the subjugation of all to the perverse Nazi philosophy (Or, was it a new and neo-pagan religion?).
Perhaps, we should point out the parallels between Nazism and Islam to Mr. Obama (And others).
Mohammed certainly declared that Jews should be killed where found (Even hiding behind rocks) and that Pagans should be given only one chance to either convert (Submit) to Islam or be instantly killed. Others (Christians and those Jews not killed) would be allowed to survive if, and only if, they abased themselves and submitted to the rules for "inferior people" (Like Slavs to the Nazis) under Islamic Law. Islam has declared that to insult the Koran or Mohammed is a deadly offense and reflects a near worship of both by Muslims. Attacking the buildings, moral bases and leaders of Christians is a 1400-year practice of Islam, to this very day. The Islamic goal of establishing world-wide rule (Under a Caliph and Sharia) is much like the "New World Order" of the Nazis.
Oh---I am a Catholic and have no financial interests in Israel.
Perhaps, we should point out the parallels between Nazism and Islam to Mr. Obama (And others).
Mohammed certainly declared that Jews should be killed where found (Even hiding behind rocks) and that Pagans should be given only one chance to either convert (Submit) to Islam or be instantly killed. Others (Christians and those Jews not killed) would be allowed to survive if, and only if, they abased themselves and submitted to the rules for "inferior people" (Like Slavs to the Nazis) under Islamic Law. Islam has declared that to insult the Koran or Mohammed is a deadly offense and reflects a near worship of both by Muslims. Attacking the buildings, moral bases and leaders of Christians is a 1400-year practice of Islam, to this very day. The Islamic goal of establishing world-wide rule (Under a Caliph and Sharia) is much like the "New World Order" of the Nazis.
Oh---I am a Catholic and have no financial interests in Israel.
6.9.2009 | 2:17pm
Aaron Miller says:
The Palestinians have had their own sovereign nation for years. They have land, a government with internationally-recognized leaders, and a military. They lack only a self-sustaining economy, and that they lack because of poor leadership and international welfare programs.
Whether or not the founding of Israel was justified is irrelevant at this point, over half a century and many generations later. If you do not accept that, consider that no nation in existence was founded without use of force and that all nations are transient. Expecting national boundaries to remain permanently is like expecting the weather to remain constant.
There can be no peace as long as Israel's neighbors refuse to acknowledge its right to exist. Israel's neighbors do not desire peace. Abbas rejected the very terms he demanded during Clinton's presidency.
Obama's words may have emboldened Israel's enemies, but the only major way he has changed the equation is by raising doubts concerning America's response to the moment when Israel finally bombs Iran's nuclear facilities.
Whether or not the founding of Israel was justified is irrelevant at this point, over half a century and many generations later. If you do not accept that, consider that no nation in existence was founded without use of force and that all nations are transient. Expecting national boundaries to remain permanently is like expecting the weather to remain constant.
There can be no peace as long as Israel's neighbors refuse to acknowledge its right to exist. Israel's neighbors do not desire peace. Abbas rejected the very terms he demanded during Clinton's presidency.
Obama's words may have emboldened Israel's enemies, but the only major way he has changed the equation is by raising doubts concerning America's response to the moment when Israel finally bombs Iran's nuclear facilities.
6.9.2009 | 2:28pm
cricket says:
Obama had chance to compare the orderliness and regularity of traditional life with the rough-and-tumble of American capitalism, and chose to identify with the former.
I can't believe that Goldman has identified the South Side projects, the worst case result of America's doleful foray into socialism with "rough and tumble American capitalism". The small market places of Indonesia are better standards of capitalism--certainly of free market economics--with all their corruption than these American "War on Poverty" welfare traps. In this case Obama makes the right choice even if he learns the wrong lesson.
I can't believe that Goldman has identified the South Side projects, the worst case result of America's doleful foray into socialism with "rough and tumble American capitalism". The small market places of Indonesia are better standards of capitalism--certainly of free market economics--with all their corruption than these American "War on Poverty" welfare traps. In this case Obama makes the right choice even if he learns the wrong lesson.
6.9.2009 | 4:04pm
Stephen Golay says:
I avoid liberal/progressive Catholic parishes for the same reason I do most Latin-rite ones. In their parish hall chit-chat (beyond local complaints of the local bishop) the conversation too easily drifts into some species of Jew-hatred.
Mr. Iaco, conservative catholicism (??). What in Zion's lovely name are you talking about?
As I used to tag my combox remarks: The Temple Mount is God's Jewish footstep - let it fall.
Mr. Iaco, conservative catholicism (??). What in Zion's lovely name are you talking about?
As I used to tag my combox remarks: The Temple Mount is God's Jewish footstep - let it fall.
6.9.2009 | 4:15pm
Stephen Golay says:
Mr. Goldman,
If you havn't already, you must remind your readers of the article you wrote for the June/July '08 issue: Zionism for Christians.
Groundbreaking it was. Mr. Iaco, I challenge you.
http://www.firstthings.com/article.php?year=2008&month=05&title_link=001-zionism-for-christians-1
If you havn't already, you must remind your readers of the article you wrote for the June/July '08 issue: Zionism for Christians.
Groundbreaking it was. Mr. Iaco, I challenge you.
http://www.firstthings.com/article.php?year=2008&month=05&title_link=001-zionism-for-christians-1
6.9.2009 | 4:39pm
Stephen Golay says:
NOTE TO MR. McPHILLIPS,
When Obama's mother abandoned him at grandparents house in Hawaii, his grandfather promtly marched him downtown and surrendered him to the mentorship of Frank Marshall Davis. There's founding, foundational influence for you. (Google or Wiki info on the man.)
Davis was Marxist to the core (and a more influential influence than his escaping mother). But the man stirred his Marxism within the pot of his perverse personality - and poured it into the boy.
Whether the young Obama understand the ramifications of Davis' mentoring - or even desired it - is besides the point. And if Obama had spent his youth and early adulthood on the hunt for a father, his search (I am sure) was for a father who could rescue him from such.
He never arrived - not even in the shade of Bill Ayers. Obama never found - and that (for me) explains the man.
When Obama's mother abandoned him at grandparents house in Hawaii, his grandfather promtly marched him downtown and surrendered him to the mentorship of Frank Marshall Davis. There's founding, foundational influence for you. (Google or Wiki info on the man.)
Davis was Marxist to the core (and a more influential influence than his escaping mother). But the man stirred his Marxism within the pot of his perverse personality - and poured it into the boy.
Whether the young Obama understand the ramifications of Davis' mentoring - or even desired it - is besides the point. And if Obama had spent his youth and early adulthood on the hunt for a father, his search (I am sure) was for a father who could rescue him from such.
He never arrived - not even in the shade of Bill Ayers. Obama never found - and that (for me) explains the man.
6.9.2009 | 7:29pm
John Iaco says:
With the several propaganda pieces by Mr. Goldman now front and center, First Things is now unambiguously Zionist, which is, by definition, anti-Catholic. Goldman is a talented seducer of Catholics to adopt a Judaized Christianity that will kowtow to Zionist interests (his interests) in America and Israel. If you don't think Goldman is a propagandist, I challenge you to read any non-Zionist, non-anti-semite, orthodox Catholic critique of Zionism (there are many) and the state of Israel to see how insane his ramblings really are. Here's one by Albert Doyle that was first published in "Social Justice Review" am orthodox Catholic journal:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article12620.htm
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article12620.htm
6.9.2009 | 10:03pm
lzzrdgrrl says:
".....Obama is a man of the third world, and he understands how fragile the thread of existence looks to third world eyes. An obsession with national death dominates the Arab dialogue, which is accessible to Westerns with a modicum of curiosity in widely available English-language sources......"
May I suggest one such source?.......
http://www.transitionmagazine.com/currentissue.htm
May I suggest one such source?.......
http://www.transitionmagazine.com/currentissue.htm
6.9.2009 | 11:42pm
Christian and American says:
S. Leslie: I'm not an Israeli now, and don't expect to be one ever. Nor am I a Georgian. Until 1989, I was, in a metaphorical sense, a citizen of Berlin, but the Cold War is over.
Mr. Goldman: Your piece was fascinating and insightful, especially on the subjects of Muslim demographics (a theory that runs contrary to conventional wisdom) and that Islam is suffering a crisis of faith. I hope you will have the opportunity to develop this in the future. I cannot, of course, agree with the Zionist Organization of America's views our President's motives or what constitutes the best interests of the United States.
I am a Christian and an American, very much of the Kennan-realist school. I have observed America's interests irrationally subordinated for many years, only to hear such conduct defended by unlettered radicals whose only argument is to label others "antisemite."
When will we have room for calm, reasonable debate on these complicated subjects, free from epithets and ideology?
Mr. Goldman: Your piece was fascinating and insightful, especially on the subjects of Muslim demographics (a theory that runs contrary to conventional wisdom) and that Islam is suffering a crisis of faith. I hope you will have the opportunity to develop this in the future. I cannot, of course, agree with the Zionist Organization of America's views our President's motives or what constitutes the best interests of the United States.
I am a Christian and an American, very much of the Kennan-realist school. I have observed America's interests irrationally subordinated for many years, only to hear such conduct defended by unlettered radicals whose only argument is to label others "antisemite."
When will we have room for calm, reasonable debate on these complicated subjects, free from epithets and ideology?
6.10.2009 | 8:18am
Dear Mr. Goldman,
Here are the reasons I think the traditional Orthodox anti-Zionism are significant:
1) It constitutes a powerful argument from Tradition against Zionism, and paints the latter as a recent - and false - innovation upon traditional Judeo-Christian truth. The completely ignored fringe groups in Orthodoxy who maintain the traditional Orthodox position constitute an important witness to this tradition.
2) It is premised upon an acknowledgement that God is the ultimate mover in history, that His purposes for Israel as a people are clearly delineated in the Scriptures, and that Zionism runs badly afoul of these purposes - among other reasons because they reject the divine promise of a Messiah as a myth. It is in fact not a myth - neither for Jews nor for Christians. The detailed predictions on this matter contained in both Testaments will yet come to pass.
3) It is premised upon an acknowledgement that prayer and suffering in a spirit of humble trust in God are in the present dispensation what the Judeo-Christian God wants; God does not want violence and repression to be used to effect one's purposes.
4) It is premised upon an acknowledgement that the principal calling of the Jewish people is to love and serve God, and upon an implied recognition that a Zionist state would be religiously apostate - an eventuality that has in fact come to pass.
PS: Just to be clear, I identify myself as a member of the Assyrian Church of the East (the "Nestorians"), not the Eastern Orthodox Church.
Here are the reasons I think the traditional Orthodox anti-Zionism are significant:
1) It constitutes a powerful argument from Tradition against Zionism, and paints the latter as a recent - and false - innovation upon traditional Judeo-Christian truth. The completely ignored fringe groups in Orthodoxy who maintain the traditional Orthodox position constitute an important witness to this tradition.
2) It is premised upon an acknowledgement that God is the ultimate mover in history, that His purposes for Israel as a people are clearly delineated in the Scriptures, and that Zionism runs badly afoul of these purposes - among other reasons because they reject the divine promise of a Messiah as a myth. It is in fact not a myth - neither for Jews nor for Christians. The detailed predictions on this matter contained in both Testaments will yet come to pass.
3) It is premised upon an acknowledgement that prayer and suffering in a spirit of humble trust in God are in the present dispensation what the Judeo-Christian God wants; God does not want violence and repression to be used to effect one's purposes.
4) It is premised upon an acknowledgement that the principal calling of the Jewish people is to love and serve God, and upon an implied recognition that a Zionist state would be religiously apostate - an eventuality that has in fact come to pass.
PS: Just to be clear, I identify myself as a member of the Assyrian Church of the East (the "Nestorians"), not the Eastern Orthodox Church.
6.10.2009 | 10:56am
Douglas Bilodeau says:
Church of the East Member writes: "3) It is premised upon an acknowledgement that prayer and suffering in a spirit of humble trust in God are in the present dispensation what the Judeo-Christian God wants; God does not want violence and repression to be used to effect one's purposes."
There is a big difference between a calling to be prepared to suffer patiently amid persecution when necessary, and the claim that God wants all Christians and Jews to suffer passively in all cases. I don't think the latter is an orthodox view at all. In any case, we would never have had modern democracy and belief in the dignity and rights of the individual if Calvinists had not seen their duty to overthrow un-Godly authority. David was anointed while Saul was still king, and I do not think that the present "dispensation" prevents God from raising up champions of faith such as David. God may even use those who appear to be "religiously apostate" to effect His will in history.
There is a big difference between a calling to be prepared to suffer patiently amid persecution when necessary, and the claim that God wants all Christians and Jews to suffer passively in all cases. I don't think the latter is an orthodox view at all. In any case, we would never have had modern democracy and belief in the dignity and rights of the individual if Calvinists had not seen their duty to overthrow un-Godly authority. David was anointed while Saul was still king, and I do not think that the present "dispensation" prevents God from raising up champions of faith such as David. God may even use those who appear to be "religiously apostate" to effect His will in history.
6.10.2009 | 12:05pm
John Iaco says:
I am surprised Mr. Goldman hasn't yet censored me. I am glad, for it permits me to offer some immunizations and antidotes to his quite effective Zionist propaganda art. There is none better than the redoubtable Paul Craig Roberts. Read anything by him. Counterpunch and Information Clearing House are great as well.
http://www.counterpunch.org/mayer06042009.html
http://www.counterpunch.org/mayer06042009.html
6.10.2009 | 6:28pm
the Angelus says:
Mr. Goldman asks: "How long it will take the complacent, gullible majority of American Jews to notice that they have been sucker-punched is another matter. The center of Jewish opinion in America is close to the extreme left wing in Israel, "
Yes, but the "center of Jewish opinion" is profoundly secularized and acts as an enabler of the political Left. After the noble Jewish participation in the civil rights struggles of the 50s & 60s, the secular factor has intensified to the point where Judaic cultural contributions to Western civilization are about as recognized as American exceptionalism. (And we know where Obama stands on that.) Those who find a Judeo-Christian heritage worth preserving in the West are a courageous remnant. It was Obama who passively sat at the feet of Rev. Jeremiah 'it's them Jews!" Wright for twenty years. Did something rub off?
Mr. Obama's disingenuous and manipulative rhetoric--and its malicious consequences-- will cause the same number of monuments to be erected in his honor in the Middle East as were constructed for Neville Chamberlain in Eastern Europe.
Yes, but the "center of Jewish opinion" is profoundly secularized and acts as an enabler of the political Left. After the noble Jewish participation in the civil rights struggles of the 50s & 60s, the secular factor has intensified to the point where Judaic cultural contributions to Western civilization are about as recognized as American exceptionalism. (And we know where Obama stands on that.) Those who find a Judeo-Christian heritage worth preserving in the West are a courageous remnant. It was Obama who passively sat at the feet of Rev. Jeremiah 'it's them Jews!" Wright for twenty years. Did something rub off?
Mr. Obama's disingenuous and manipulative rhetoric--and its malicious consequences-- will cause the same number of monuments to be erected in his honor in the Middle East as were constructed for Neville Chamberlain in Eastern Europe.
6.10.2009 | 7:26pm
Douglas Bilodeau says:
An addendum to my previous comment: When Orthodox Jews lived scattered across the world, they were a minority without power, and their theology was necessarily the theology of a minority with no worldly power. Once a nation had come into being in which Jews formed a substantial majority, be it in Israel or elsewhere, Jewish religious authority would be faced with a new set of problems. As a majority, Jews would hold civil offices with judicial and military power. Not only power but responsibility. They would be called upon to keep order and enforce the law, and so they would be required to use "violence and repression" to do so. Every criminal or insurrectionist sees the law as an instrument of violent repression. Every court of law is as much a place of "violence" in a broad sense as a gladiatorial arena. One who does not yield to it is ordered by the judge to be restrained by the bailiff, who delivers him to an armed officer, who conducts him to a prison cell. Civilization is impossible without this ordered and formalized kind of violence. If Christians and Jews are to avoid responsibility for it, they must retreat into isolated communities like the Amish. So the argument against Zionism from Orthodox Jewish law and custom is really an argument that Jews must not take part in civil government at all. It is obviously absurd to apply the same argument to Christians, except in those parts of the world where they constitute a small and declining minority.
6.13.2009 | 8:36am
Dear Mr. Bilodeau,
What evidence can you offer that the Zionist project has divine sanction? Can you point to some modern day Samuel who served as God's prophetic mouthpiece to anoint Theodore Herzl or some other late 19th century Zionist as his appointed instrument to bring about a Jewish state? Can you point to any Scripture passages that give a clear warrant to the Jewish people to take the project of their nationhood into their own hands and thus effectively render irrelevant the many other passages in Scripture that exhort them to await the promised Messiah? Clearly, Orthodox Jewish consensus prior to the holocaust emphatically rejected both of these suggestions, and emphatically maintained that both ideas ran contrary to God's wishes for the Jewish people as contained in the Scriptures. Moreover, there is nothing about the Holocaust itself that in any way changes this basic state of affairs. As such, modern Orthodox fringe groups that emphatically maintain this traditional rejection of Zionism are in fact, from the divine standpoint, the single most important agents debating these matters today.
Zionism is premised upon a rejection not only of God's purposes in history (which are fundamentally Messianic), but upon a rejection of God himself. Any extensive reading in the Old Testament should make clear that this state of apostasy is profoundly displeasing to God. As such, God would hardly approve and look kindly upon any Jewish action that emerges from such a spirit in modern times. Remember: We are talking about a God here who explicitly predicted and sanctioned the destruction of Israel by the Babylonians, and later by the Romans, in ancient times due to sin and faithlessness on the part of His Chosen people. There is absolutely no reason to believe that God's stance in this regard has changed from antiquity, since this stance is rooted in immutable moral and spiritual realities.
However, while God does not APPROVE of the Zionist project and its success in founding a state, He does foresee and PERMIT it, and He Providentially fits this eventuality in with his larger purposes in salvation history. The unbelieving nature of the nation of Israel in its initial regathering is in fact clearly indicated Scripturally by passages such as Zechariah 12 and 14, and by Daniel 9:24-27 and 12:1ff., which give detailed prophetic delineations of a yet-future time of unparalleled tribulation and suffering for the regathered Jewish nation. Indeed, 19th century Protestant commentators on Scripture such as G.N.H. Peters clearly discerned the initially unbelieving character of an eventually regathered Israel from passages such as these. God's purpose in allowing the still-future Jewish tribulation prophesied in these passages can only be that of morally and spiritually cleansing and purifying a previously apostate and God-rejecting nation of Israel of their current apostasy and defilement (of which their current brutal subjugation of the Palestineans is one important symptom).
All of this is Messianic in its ultimate divine design. In order to receive the promised Messiah, the Jewish nation and people must be morally and spiritually prepared to accept Him. Due to their apostasy into secularism, they clearly are not so prepared at the present time - and again, their brutal, ungodlike expulsion and subjugation of the Palestineans is one of many current states of affairs that are symptomatic of this lack of preparation. After being refined by the future tribulation predicted in Zechariah and other places, however, the remaining denizens of the Jewish people and nation will be so prepared, and then Zechariah 12:10 will find fulfillment as they gaze upon and mourn "Him Whom they have pierced," as he descends from the clouds into the world a second time - at long last to assume His Messianic kingship over God's Chosen People.
Many people who read this site would probably regard what I have written as fantastic, but in fact, it is based upon a sober-minded appraisal of God's prophetic word. As a believer in Christ, one must be careful not to allow the corrosive spirit of secularism to intrude upon one's understanding of the truth of God's word as revealed in the prophetic Scriptures. As predictions and events in the Scriptures now past make abundantly clear, God is the Lord of History, and his predictions concerning events still future will surely come to pass.
What evidence can you offer that the Zionist project has divine sanction? Can you point to some modern day Samuel who served as God's prophetic mouthpiece to anoint Theodore Herzl or some other late 19th century Zionist as his appointed instrument to bring about a Jewish state? Can you point to any Scripture passages that give a clear warrant to the Jewish people to take the project of their nationhood into their own hands and thus effectively render irrelevant the many other passages in Scripture that exhort them to await the promised Messiah? Clearly, Orthodox Jewish consensus prior to the holocaust emphatically rejected both of these suggestions, and emphatically maintained that both ideas ran contrary to God's wishes for the Jewish people as contained in the Scriptures. Moreover, there is nothing about the Holocaust itself that in any way changes this basic state of affairs. As such, modern Orthodox fringe groups that emphatically maintain this traditional rejection of Zionism are in fact, from the divine standpoint, the single most important agents debating these matters today.
Zionism is premised upon a rejection not only of God's purposes in history (which are fundamentally Messianic), but upon a rejection of God himself. Any extensive reading in the Old Testament should make clear that this state of apostasy is profoundly displeasing to God. As such, God would hardly approve and look kindly upon any Jewish action that emerges from such a spirit in modern times. Remember: We are talking about a God here who explicitly predicted and sanctioned the destruction of Israel by the Babylonians, and later by the Romans, in ancient times due to sin and faithlessness on the part of His Chosen people. There is absolutely no reason to believe that God's stance in this regard has changed from antiquity, since this stance is rooted in immutable moral and spiritual realities.
However, while God does not APPROVE of the Zionist project and its success in founding a state, He does foresee and PERMIT it, and He Providentially fits this eventuality in with his larger purposes in salvation history. The unbelieving nature of the nation of Israel in its initial regathering is in fact clearly indicated Scripturally by passages such as Zechariah 12 and 14, and by Daniel 9:24-27 and 12:1ff., which give detailed prophetic delineations of a yet-future time of unparalleled tribulation and suffering for the regathered Jewish nation. Indeed, 19th century Protestant commentators on Scripture such as G.N.H. Peters clearly discerned the initially unbelieving character of an eventually regathered Israel from passages such as these. God's purpose in allowing the still-future Jewish tribulation prophesied in these passages can only be that of morally and spiritually cleansing and purifying a previously apostate and God-rejecting nation of Israel of their current apostasy and defilement (of which their current brutal subjugation of the Palestineans is one important symptom).
All of this is Messianic in its ultimate divine design. In order to receive the promised Messiah, the Jewish nation and people must be morally and spiritually prepared to accept Him. Due to their apostasy into secularism, they clearly are not so prepared at the present time - and again, their brutal, ungodlike expulsion and subjugation of the Palestineans is one of many current states of affairs that are symptomatic of this lack of preparation. After being refined by the future tribulation predicted in Zechariah and other places, however, the remaining denizens of the Jewish people and nation will be so prepared, and then Zechariah 12:10 will find fulfillment as they gaze upon and mourn "Him Whom they have pierced," as he descends from the clouds into the world a second time - at long last to assume His Messianic kingship over God's Chosen People.
Many people who read this site would probably regard what I have written as fantastic, but in fact, it is based upon a sober-minded appraisal of God's prophetic word. As a believer in Christ, one must be careful not to allow the corrosive spirit of secularism to intrude upon one's understanding of the truth of God's word as revealed in the prophetic Scriptures. As predictions and events in the Scriptures now past make abundantly clear, God is the Lord of History, and his predictions concerning events still future will surely come to pass.
6.14.2009 | 2:12pm
John Iaco says:
Church of the East:
Absolutely wonderful post. I am afraid your wise and thoroughly Christian words will be rejected by many on this site. I just hope not too many Catholics will continue to buy the spiritual snakeoil that Goldman is selling.
Absolutely wonderful post. I am afraid your wise and thoroughly Christian words will be rejected by many on this site. I just hope not too many Catholics will continue to buy the spiritual snakeoil that Goldman is selling.
6.15.2009 | 9:25am
Stephen Golay says:
Jews are G-d's particular people. Israel is G-d's particular nation. And both together is G-d's most "catholic moment" - from a Christian perspective, G-d's standing point for it's fulfillment in the "cathoilic moment" of the Church. G-d planting his feet there is the foundation of the Church. For is not the Flesh G-d took upon Himself Jewish flesh, the Body ascended to the Father's right hand not Jewish flesh (let alone a woman's). In that mystery of Israel's particularism dwells that universal (catholic) promise of Salvation History. (J. Maritian, "The Mystery of Israel . . .").
Zionism may be messy but it is not G-d rejected for that. It's weakness for socialsim (for instance) needed to grounded out. But this hankering (on the part of a few readers) for perfect Jews and a perfect Israel is misguided and dangerous - such may be shielding a hidden agenda.
This hankering for nothing less than the perfect Jew yields to the temptation to purge that which is less than perfect - to reject G-d's way of working out His perfect salvation.
Saw that rejectionism at work in the Orthodox Church - and why I left.
l
Zionism may be messy but it is not G-d rejected for that. It's weakness for socialsim (for instance) needed to grounded out. But this hankering (on the part of a few readers) for perfect Jews and a perfect Israel is misguided and dangerous - such may be shielding a hidden agenda.
This hankering for nothing less than the perfect Jew yields to the temptation to purge that which is less than perfect - to reject G-d's way of working out His perfect salvation.
Saw that rejectionism at work in the Orthodox Church - and why I left.
l
6.17.2009 | 9:11am
Douglas Bilodeau says:
The revolt of the Maccabees could hardly have been seen at the time as having unequivocal divine sanction. Many Jewish "authorities" might have seen acquiescence in Hellenization as the proper path of least resistance. And even in retrospect, given the conduct of the Hasmoneans, they might have a case. And yet . . . celebration of the success of the revolt has been part of Jewish culture ever since. And could the one whom Christians understand to be the Messiah have entered a world in which the prophets of old were forgotten and the temple at Jerusalem had been given over to Bacchus?
The success of the Maccabees was partial and very human, but it does not appear to have been any less a working of divine will in history. As Church of the East member says "God is the Lord of History, and his predictions concerning events still future will surely come to pass." But if there were no human frailty and hardness in every heart in understanding His predictions, Judaism and Christianity would not be separate religions today. God is the Lord of History, but His will is worked out via human vanity and presumption as much as through the purposeful actions of saints and prophets who know what they are doing.
As for evidence that the Zionist project has divine sanction: Imagine someone who desires to go through a locked door, and, after much futile effort and frustration trying to force it open, spends the rest of the day leaning against it. If the door suddenly opens and this fellow falls through the threshold, would it not be reasonable for him to assume that he was finally meant to go through it? The re-gathering of a people to their homeland after two millennia, the revival of a long dead language: these are pretty impressive as signs and portents go. Israel as we see it today may not be the ultimate goal of the Lord of History. But He seems to find it to be, at the very least, a useful step along the way. There seems to be more "approval" than mere "permission" going on here.
Furthermore, with respect to the habit of mind of looking forward to the "refining by tribulation" of others while one is confident of one's own place at the table of the King, consider Romans 11:
17 If some of the branches have been broken off, and you, though a wild olive shoot, have been grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing sap from the olive root, 18 do not boast over those branches. If you do, consider this: You do not support the root, but the root supports you. 19 You will say then, "Branches were broken off so that I could be grafted in." 20 Granted. But they were broken off because of unbelief, and you stand by faith. DO NOT BE ARROGANT, BUT BE AFRAID. 21 For if God did not spare the natural branches, he will not spare you either.
22 Consider therefore the kindness and sternness of God: sternness to those who fell, but kindness to you, PROVIDED THAT YOU CONTINUE IN HIS KINDNESS. Otherwise, you also will be cut off. 23 And if they do not persist in unbelief, they will be grafted in, for God is able to graft them in again. 24 After all, if you were cut out of an olive tree that is wild by nature, and contrary to nature were grafted into a cultivated olive tree, how much more readily will these, the natural branches, be grafted into their own olive tree!
Do not judge the "brutal, ungodlike expulsion and subjugation of the Palestineans", by the "denizens" of Israel who are surrounded and outnumbered by their enemies 50 to 1, lest you be judged for the harsh history of your own people (and no matter who they may be, they do have such a history). Be thankful for the grace that is given to you, and humble in judging the state of the grace given to others. The last part of Romans 11:
33 Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!
How unsearchable his judgments,
and his paths beyond tracing out!
34 "Who has known the mind of the Lord?
Or who has been his counselor?"
35 "Who has ever given to God,
that God should repay him?"
36 For from him and through him and to him are all things.
To him be the glory forever! Amen.
The success of the Maccabees was partial and very human, but it does not appear to have been any less a working of divine will in history. As Church of the East member says "God is the Lord of History, and his predictions concerning events still future will surely come to pass." But if there were no human frailty and hardness in every heart in understanding His predictions, Judaism and Christianity would not be separate religions today. God is the Lord of History, but His will is worked out via human vanity and presumption as much as through the purposeful actions of saints and prophets who know what they are doing.
As for evidence that the Zionist project has divine sanction: Imagine someone who desires to go through a locked door, and, after much futile effort and frustration trying to force it open, spends the rest of the day leaning against it. If the door suddenly opens and this fellow falls through the threshold, would it not be reasonable for him to assume that he was finally meant to go through it? The re-gathering of a people to their homeland after two millennia, the revival of a long dead language: these are pretty impressive as signs and portents go. Israel as we see it today may not be the ultimate goal of the Lord of History. But He seems to find it to be, at the very least, a useful step along the way. There seems to be more "approval" than mere "permission" going on here.
Furthermore, with respect to the habit of mind of looking forward to the "refining by tribulation" of others while one is confident of one's own place at the table of the King, consider Romans 11:
17 If some of the branches have been broken off, and you, though a wild olive shoot, have been grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing sap from the olive root, 18 do not boast over those branches. If you do, consider this: You do not support the root, but the root supports you. 19 You will say then, "Branches were broken off so that I could be grafted in." 20 Granted. But they were broken off because of unbelief, and you stand by faith. DO NOT BE ARROGANT, BUT BE AFRAID. 21 For if God did not spare the natural branches, he will not spare you either.
22 Consider therefore the kindness and sternness of God: sternness to those who fell, but kindness to you, PROVIDED THAT YOU CONTINUE IN HIS KINDNESS. Otherwise, you also will be cut off. 23 And if they do not persist in unbelief, they will be grafted in, for God is able to graft them in again. 24 After all, if you were cut out of an olive tree that is wild by nature, and contrary to nature were grafted into a cultivated olive tree, how much more readily will these, the natural branches, be grafted into their own olive tree!
Do not judge the "brutal, ungodlike expulsion and subjugation of the Palestineans", by the "denizens" of Israel who are surrounded and outnumbered by their enemies 50 to 1, lest you be judged for the harsh history of your own people (and no matter who they may be, they do have such a history). Be thankful for the grace that is given to you, and humble in judging the state of the grace given to others. The last part of Romans 11:
33 Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!
How unsearchable his judgments,
and his paths beyond tracing out!
34 "Who has known the mind of the Lord?
Or who has been his counselor?"
35 "Who has ever given to God,
that God should repay him?"
36 For from him and through him and to him are all things.
To him be the glory forever! Amen.
6.18.2009 | 9:03pm
John Iaco says:
The "Christian" support on this blog for racism, terrorism, torture, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and self/nation worship, a.k.a., Zionism, is sickening, absolutely sickening. Rome has never supported Zionism and never will. The idea that if one condemns the manifestly wicked actions of the state of Israel one will be condemned by God is blasphemous and sacrilegious--it makes the Phariseeism that Jesus condemned look like holiness. This is nothing but Judaized Christianity, which has always been condemned by the Church, ever since the council of Jerusalem. Those doing wickedness can only get away with it when those in the best position to make the wickedness known, those who believe in Jesus Christ, are made to believe that the wickedness is goodness. And this is the worst wickedness of them all, to seduce Christians into supporting evil in the light of their own theology!
6.19.2009 | 7:05am
Douglas Bilodeau says:
Hmmm. Let's see how the shoe looks on the other foot:
"The 'Jewish' support on this blog for racism, terrorism, torture, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and self/nation worship, a.k.a., Roman Catholicism, is sickening, absolutely sickening. Judaism has never supported Popery and never will. The idea that if one condemns the manifestly wicked actions of the Church of Rome one will be condemned by God is blasphemous and sacrilegious--it makes the Idolatry that Moses condemned look like holiness. This is nothing but Romanized Judaism, which has always been condemned by the Sages of the Talmud, ever since the council of Jamnia. Those doing wickedness can only get away with it when those in the best position to make the wickedness known, those who believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, are made to believe that the wickedness is goodness. And this is the worst wickedness of them all, to seduce Jews into supporting evil in the light of their own theology!"
If the shoe pinches, don't wear it. If you think a friendly dialog between Christians (of many sorts) and Jews (with their own variety) is a "BAD THING", save yourself the apoplexy and go read some other web page. Maybe one of those sites with lots of helpful news about the Zionist War for World Domination. There is no shortage of them.
"The 'Jewish' support on this blog for racism, terrorism, torture, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and self/nation worship, a.k.a., Roman Catholicism, is sickening, absolutely sickening. Judaism has never supported Popery and never will. The idea that if one condemns the manifestly wicked actions of the Church of Rome one will be condemned by God is blasphemous and sacrilegious--it makes the Idolatry that Moses condemned look like holiness. This is nothing but Romanized Judaism, which has always been condemned by the Sages of the Talmud, ever since the council of Jamnia. Those doing wickedness can only get away with it when those in the best position to make the wickedness known, those who believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, are made to believe that the wickedness is goodness. And this is the worst wickedness of them all, to seduce Jews into supporting evil in the light of their own theology!"
If the shoe pinches, don't wear it. If you think a friendly dialog between Christians (of many sorts) and Jews (with their own variety) is a "BAD THING", save yourself the apoplexy and go read some other web page. Maybe one of those sites with lots of helpful news about the Zionist War for World Domination. There is no shortage of them.
6.19.2009 | 11:21am
John Iaco says:
Sorry, the shoe doesn't fit. As long as Zionists try to takeover the culture of America for their anti-Christian and anti-human wickedness, real American Catholics will be there to fight it. If First Things wants to be Zionist, it can't also claim to be open to Catholicism, because the two are irreconcilable. It was a bit better with Fr. Neuhaus in charge, but hiring Goldman was a big spiritual mistake and shows where First Things intends to go. Goldman wants to make all of us Zionists, while keeping us thinking we are still Christians. This has been the tactic of Judaizers ever since the early Church. First Things should just become a Jewish journal--of course it won't, for it's more effective for seduction to adopt a Christian veneer.
The difference between Catholicism and Talmudic Zionism is that the Church condemns racism and oppression. The Talmud endorses these towards the goyim and thus Israel treats the Palestinians as deserving of inhuman treatment. We can see that America has adopted this Judaic racism in the Abu Ghraib horror. Judaism has been an idolatrous religion ever since Christ, for in rejecting Him it had no other choice but to self-divinize. This self-divinization is all over the Talmud, and especially the Kaballah, where Rabbinic commentary trumps the Old Testament. The Rabbis become God on earth. Judaism and Zionism are, by definition, anti-logos, as E. Michael Jones has demonstrated.
"Friendly" dialogue means, to you and Goldman, friendly towards Zionism, which attitude would be a mortal sin for any Catholic to adopt. It means nothing less than that Catholics are to be seduced by Zionism.. It's like having "dialogue" with Obama. He has no intention of converting, only of converting you to godless liberalism without you even knowing it, as he did quite well in Notre Dame.
The difference between Catholicism and Talmudic Zionism is that the Church condemns racism and oppression. The Talmud endorses these towards the goyim and thus Israel treats the Palestinians as deserving of inhuman treatment. We can see that America has adopted this Judaic racism in the Abu Ghraib horror. Judaism has been an idolatrous religion ever since Christ, for in rejecting Him it had no other choice but to self-divinize. This self-divinization is all over the Talmud, and especially the Kaballah, where Rabbinic commentary trumps the Old Testament. The Rabbis become God on earth. Judaism and Zionism are, by definition, anti-logos, as E. Michael Jones has demonstrated.
"Friendly" dialogue means, to you and Goldman, friendly towards Zionism, which attitude would be a mortal sin for any Catholic to adopt. It means nothing less than that Catholics are to be seduced by Zionism.. It's like having "dialogue" with Obama. He has no intention of converting, only of converting you to godless liberalism without you even knowing it, as he did quite well in Notre Dame.
6.19.2009 | 2:38pm
Douglas Bilodeau says:
John Iaco,
I am a Christian but not Roman Catholic. In fact, I come from a tradition which in past centuries has reviled the Roman Catholic Church as idolatrous and the Pope himself to be the Antichrist, among the milder and less sensational accusations. I do not maintain or endorse those opinions. I do not want to resume the Wars of the Reformation. I think there is the possibility of coexistence among Protestants, Catholics, and Jews. (Possibly even Muslims – that is up to the Muslim communities to decide in what way their faith permits them to live cooperatively with other religions.)
Obviously I cannot speak for Rome, nor can I speak for the editors of First Things. I do read the following on their masthead:
"FIRST THINGS is published by The Institute on Religion and Public Life, an interreligious, nonpartisan research and education institute whose purpose is to advance a religiously informed public philosophy for the ordering of society."
The words interreligious and nonpartisan imply that those involved with this publication believe that such dialog and coexistence as I have referred to is possible and is a good thing, and perhaps even necessary "for the ordering of society." Your opinions clearly indicate that you do not see any benefit in cooperation with Jews, and I expect not with Protestants as well, at least not those Protestants affirming either reformed or dispensational theology.
Jews likely to be willing to participate in good faith in a forum such as this one are bound to be Zionist to some degree at least. Those who are anti-Zionist would almost certainly be either anti-religious or against interfaith dialog, or would profess a version of Judaism indistinguishable from the liberalism you abhor. For what it's worth, I don’t think Israel has done anything in defense of its existence any more blameworthy than other nations do routinely. For example, look into the actions of the French military forces and police when their vital interests are threatened. (I have spoken with French Muslims who had a great deal to say on this issue.) The Palestinians have been treated far worse by the Egyptians and Jordanians than by the Israelis. I am sure you will think I am wrong, but there it is.
You evidently look upon Catholics who participate in this forum in harmony with its intentions to be apostate or heretical. I am sure Rev. Ian Paisley would think the same of the Protestants here. The editors could not have envisioned or intended a cheery ecumenical gathering of such people as Rev. Dr. Paisley, Rabbi Meir Kahane, and Fr. Marcel Lefebvre. It could not happen. You have perhaps seen First Things in the past as a purely conservative Catholic publication which promotes views to your liking on issues of interest to you. Apparently it is not. I expect you have a very different view of the proper "ordering of society" than most of the participants and readers here, one which needs and expects no help from Protestants and Jews, except perhaps (to use some of your words) to be seduced into converting to your Church without even knowing it. Or even willing it. For such a thing to happen, you must either look to divine intervention (hoping that God is indeed on your side) or to a Reconquista Crusade.
I am a Christian but not Roman Catholic. In fact, I come from a tradition which in past centuries has reviled the Roman Catholic Church as idolatrous and the Pope himself to be the Antichrist, among the milder and less sensational accusations. I do not maintain or endorse those opinions. I do not want to resume the Wars of the Reformation. I think there is the possibility of coexistence among Protestants, Catholics, and Jews. (Possibly even Muslims – that is up to the Muslim communities to decide in what way their faith permits them to live cooperatively with other religions.)
Obviously I cannot speak for Rome, nor can I speak for the editors of First Things. I do read the following on their masthead:
"FIRST THINGS is published by The Institute on Religion and Public Life, an interreligious, nonpartisan research and education institute whose purpose is to advance a religiously informed public philosophy for the ordering of society."
The words interreligious and nonpartisan imply that those involved with this publication believe that such dialog and coexistence as I have referred to is possible and is a good thing, and perhaps even necessary "for the ordering of society." Your opinions clearly indicate that you do not see any benefit in cooperation with Jews, and I expect not with Protestants as well, at least not those Protestants affirming either reformed or dispensational theology.
Jews likely to be willing to participate in good faith in a forum such as this one are bound to be Zionist to some degree at least. Those who are anti-Zionist would almost certainly be either anti-religious or against interfaith dialog, or would profess a version of Judaism indistinguishable from the liberalism you abhor. For what it's worth, I don’t think Israel has done anything in defense of its existence any more blameworthy than other nations do routinely. For example, look into the actions of the French military forces and police when their vital interests are threatened. (I have spoken with French Muslims who had a great deal to say on this issue.) The Palestinians have been treated far worse by the Egyptians and Jordanians than by the Israelis. I am sure you will think I am wrong, but there it is.
You evidently look upon Catholics who participate in this forum in harmony with its intentions to be apostate or heretical. I am sure Rev. Ian Paisley would think the same of the Protestants here. The editors could not have envisioned or intended a cheery ecumenical gathering of such people as Rev. Dr. Paisley, Rabbi Meir Kahane, and Fr. Marcel Lefebvre. It could not happen. You have perhaps seen First Things in the past as a purely conservative Catholic publication which promotes views to your liking on issues of interest to you. Apparently it is not. I expect you have a very different view of the proper "ordering of society" than most of the participants and readers here, one which needs and expects no help from Protestants and Jews, except perhaps (to use some of your words) to be seduced into converting to your Church without even knowing it. Or even willing it. For such a thing to happen, you must either look to divine intervention (hoping that God is indeed on your side) or to a Reconquista Crusade.
6.19.2009 | 7:04pm
John Iaco says:
Publishing articles by Goldman that try to convince Catholics to support an immoral, racist regime by making them feel supernaturally guilty if they do not is, obviously, not "dialogue," as I have already said; it's cunning sophistry and seduction. Why do you support this? The fact that you will never see an anti-Zionist article in First Things, or even one that is agnostic on the issue, but only anti-anti-Zionist articles, is proof of ideological fanaticism, not a dialogical approach. You can support that if you wish, but you'll have to answer to God for it. And to poo-poo the brutal violence of Israel (they were targeting women and children in the recent Gaza attacks with "everybody does it" is despicable for a Christian to do. Injustice is injustice. Unjust war is as evil as abortion. It's murder bothways. Perhaps your particular Christian denomination teaches you to rationalize such evil this way, but authentic Catholicism does not. I invite you to become a member of Christ's true mystical body.
6.19.2009 | 11:58pm
Douglas Bilodeau says:
The kind of deeds that you say are evil are indeed evil. I do not excuse Israel its sins because "everybody does it". If I point out that "everybody does it", it is only to wonder why you seem so particularly concerned when those responsible are Jewish, and for that matter why you seem to believe every accusation made against Israel. The world is not lacking in accusations against every community, accusations just and unjust. Why shouldn't we disband Turkey, China or Spain, all nations which have committed vast crimes at some point in the formation of their national identities (as what nation has not)? How can we stand to look favorably on their cultures? Or to speak civilly with their citizens and defenders? How can God forgive us if we do so? Are we not accomplices after the fact?
Much of the world is plagued with the most horrific violence, including that little piece of the Middle East where the Jews and the Palestinian Arabs live. There are atrocities without number going on in every part of the world. They don't begin when the reporters turn on their cameras, and they don't end when the chroniclers go home. There is violence, for good or ill, in every policeman's handgun, and in every judge's gavel. Every government maintains itself in power by force. There must also be some sort of social consensus if the government is to be a civilized one. But if anyone considers himself to be unstained by the sins of maintaining civil order, he is mistaken. There is no one righteous, not one. I am myself a wretched sinner, and I have no claim to mercy. If I am redeemed by grace, it is an unmerited gift, which I accept with tears of shame. I hope to please and glorify God, but anything I have accomplished from my own talents alone is pathetic and weak.
When I began, after 9/11, to begin to pay closer attention to what was going on in the world, trying to understand what had happened and what was likely to happen and what we ought to do, I researched for weeks in anguish and I read many conflicting points of view. The focus of debate was two-fold, namely the nature of Islam and the nature of Zionism. I actually wanted at first to see Israel as guilty as its enemies claimed. It would have made everything simpler and the future would have looked less grim. It seemed that either Israel was the vilest nation on earth, or it was the most unjustly accused. [How strange that this should be so of such a small and apparently insignificant nation!] After much reflection, I had to conclude the latter. There was no cunning seducer whispering in my ear, and I had not yet read any of Mr. Goldman's writing. I admit that coming to that conclusion has influenced my outlook on the world in many ways. Yes, I sympathize with the Jews. I am also not at all unsympathetic towards the Arabs. I began to try to learn a little Arabic early in my life, decades before I made the same sort of attempt with Hebrew. There was a time I read the Koran with admiration. But I could not help but notice that the unrelenting condemnation of the Jewish state was tainted with ignorance and with ancient hatreds.
You are right that there is a limit to the range of opinion expressed in First Things. Every civil dialog must begin with some shared presuppositions. Between some points of view, dialog is impossible. That was one of the main points of my last post. If a disparate group of people share such presuppositions, they are quite likely to appear to be guilty of "ideological fanaticism" to those who think differently. This disputation we have carried on does not stand upon enough common ground to build any kind of mutual understanding.
Perhaps you cannot see how grotesquely hypocritical your arguments sound in the ears of many Jews and Protestants. I dare not be more specific, because I do not want to offend others. There is nothing more I can say. You may have the last word.
Much of the world is plagued with the most horrific violence, including that little piece of the Middle East where the Jews and the Palestinian Arabs live. There are atrocities without number going on in every part of the world. They don't begin when the reporters turn on their cameras, and they don't end when the chroniclers go home. There is violence, for good or ill, in every policeman's handgun, and in every judge's gavel. Every government maintains itself in power by force. There must also be some sort of social consensus if the government is to be a civilized one. But if anyone considers himself to be unstained by the sins of maintaining civil order, he is mistaken. There is no one righteous, not one. I am myself a wretched sinner, and I have no claim to mercy. If I am redeemed by grace, it is an unmerited gift, which I accept with tears of shame. I hope to please and glorify God, but anything I have accomplished from my own talents alone is pathetic and weak.
When I began, after 9/11, to begin to pay closer attention to what was going on in the world, trying to understand what had happened and what was likely to happen and what we ought to do, I researched for weeks in anguish and I read many conflicting points of view. The focus of debate was two-fold, namely the nature of Islam and the nature of Zionism. I actually wanted at first to see Israel as guilty as its enemies claimed. It would have made everything simpler and the future would have looked less grim. It seemed that either Israel was the vilest nation on earth, or it was the most unjustly accused. [How strange that this should be so of such a small and apparently insignificant nation!] After much reflection, I had to conclude the latter. There was no cunning seducer whispering in my ear, and I had not yet read any of Mr. Goldman's writing. I admit that coming to that conclusion has influenced my outlook on the world in many ways. Yes, I sympathize with the Jews. I am also not at all unsympathetic towards the Arabs. I began to try to learn a little Arabic early in my life, decades before I made the same sort of attempt with Hebrew. There was a time I read the Koran with admiration. But I could not help but notice that the unrelenting condemnation of the Jewish state was tainted with ignorance and with ancient hatreds.
You are right that there is a limit to the range of opinion expressed in First Things. Every civil dialog must begin with some shared presuppositions. Between some points of view, dialog is impossible. That was one of the main points of my last post. If a disparate group of people share such presuppositions, they are quite likely to appear to be guilty of "ideological fanaticism" to those who think differently. This disputation we have carried on does not stand upon enough common ground to build any kind of mutual understanding.
Perhaps you cannot see how grotesquely hypocritical your arguments sound in the ears of many Jews and Protestants. I dare not be more specific, because I do not want to offend others. There is nothing more I can say. You may have the last word.
6.20.2009 | 12:55pm
John Iaco says:
It is sure proof that one is dealing with a fanatic upon revealing his fanaticism, or even casting some doubt on the veracity of his words, the response of his defenders it to automatically accuse the revealer or caster of doubt of fanaticism himself. It's automatic. Robotic. It must be fanaticism to question Goldman. It can't possibly be that Goldman is a seducing ideologue. I'd defend Goldman's view like I would defend the Gospel. Somehow the fanatic is able to induce this air-tight defense mechanism in his followers. Once it's implanted, it's impossible without a miracle of grace to extract it.
The last word is this: Take a step back and consider the possibility that you are under a spell that conflicts with the light of Grace. This article may help break the spell: http://www.culturewars.com/2006/Conversion.htm
The last word is this: Take a step back and consider the possibility that you are under a spell that conflicts with the light of Grace. This article may help break the spell: http://www.culturewars.com/2006/Conversion.htm
6.21.2009 | 10:41am
Douglas Bilodeau says:
Thank you, John Iaco. As promised, I will make no reply. You have greatly clarified the question. Clearly I was the wrong person all along to have been discussing these things with you, and I apologize for wasting your time and causing you needless aggravation. As a Protestant, I have no right to declare what constitutes genuine Catholicism or genuine Judaism, much less how the two are related.
To all other readers of First Things: "Tolle lege".
To all other readers of First Things: "Tolle lege".
6.21.2009 | 8:11pm
John Iaco says:
Jewish History,
Jewish Religion:
The Weight of Three Thousand Years
by Professor Israel Shahak (Israel Shahak (Hebrew: , April 28, 1933 July 2, 2001) was a Polish-born Israeli Professor of Chemistry at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, the former president of the Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights, and an outspoken critic of the Israeli government. ).
Read Online here: http://tcrnews2.com/Shahak.html
Jewish Religion:
The Weight of Three Thousand Years
by Professor Israel Shahak (Israel Shahak (Hebrew: , April 28, 1933 July 2, 2001) was a Polish-born Israeli Professor of Chemistry at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, the former president of the Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights, and an outspoken critic of the Israeli government. ).
Read Online here: http://tcrnews2.com/Shahak.html
6.22.2009 | 7:03pm
Dear Mr Bilodeau,
Thank you for your careful reading of my previous messages, and for your carefully thought out reply.
The revolt of the Maccabees differs diametrically from the project of Zionism. The former represents an heroic defense of God's honor against a reprehensible defilement of His Holy temple on the part of deeply pious Jews. It also represents an armed resistance of a defensive nature against an oppressive Hellenizing occupying force that was contemptuous of the God of Israel and the kind of culture under which this God willed that His chosen people should live. Moreover, both the defilement and subsequent cleansing of the temple were prophetically vouchsafed to the prophet Daniel, a record of which has come down to us in Daniel 8. All these things imply that the Maccabaean revolt was in fact fundamentally pleasing to God, notwithstanding flaws and imperfections of human origin associated therewith.
By contrast, secular Zionism represents a clear repudiation not only of God's revealed purposes for the Jews - purposes which are ultimately manifestly Messianic in character - but of God himself. Such a basic attitude cannot be anything other than profoundly displeasing to God, and a political movement founded upon such an attitude necessarily entails moral and spiritual attitudes that are antithetical to God's nature. Appealing to the fervent piety and heroic witness of the Maccabaean episode in Jewish history does nothing to justify a later movement that is avowedly apostate - either in moral or spiritual terms.
Regarding the signs you refer to of God's favorable views of the results of Zionism, just because a project succeeds, and does so with ease, does not make it the right thing to do morally, nor does it render it pleasing in God's eyes. The proof of divine favor must rest on arguments that are moral and spiritual in nature. However, traditional Orthodox Judaism has traditionally identified moral and spiritual grounds for arguing that Zionism is regarded with DISFAVOR by God. This tradition continued well into the period when Zionism was already meeting with considerable success. Yet, Orthodox Judaism correctly did not regard this success as overturning its traditional rejection of Zionism on moral and spiritual grounds. Orthodox Judaism broadly speaking did finally capitulate to the Zionist temptation in the wake of the Holocaust, but I would maintain, along with contemporary Orthodox fringe groups, that this represents a moral and spiritual compromise that is displeasing to God.
As far as your accusation that I am standing in arrogant judgment for labeling Israeli treatment of the Palestineans as "brutal and arrogant," and for suggesting that the nation of Israel faces a future period of severe testing and refinement, I reply as follows. First, the brutality and arrogance of which I speak began at the time that secular Zionism disavowed God's wish that His Chosen people await their messiah in patient prayer and suffering, and chose instead to go it alone by reestablishing a Jewish homeland on their own terms. Brutality against Palestinians was an integral aspect of this project from the very beginning; it is thus misleading to depict the current situation as one where Israel is justly defending itself against illegitimate Palestinian incursions.
Secondly, the mere fact that I accuse another party of brutality and arrogance does not ipso facto render me guilty of standing in arrogant judgment over them. If this were true, then any critic of the Nazis would ipso facto stand convicted of standing in arrogant judgment over them for their treatment of the Jews on the same grounds. My accusation is rather grounded in a fair-minded appraisal of the historical record involving the activities of Zionists going back to the late 19th century. To deflect attention from this historical record in order to launch a personal attack against me is an instance of the ad hominem fallacy.
Thirdly, neither does the fact that I predict a period of severe refinement ipso facto render me guilty of arrogant judgment. I advance this prediction, rather, on the basis of what seems to me to be clearly indicated in biblical prophecies recorded in such places as Daniel 9, Daniel 12, Zechariah 12, Zechariah 14, and Ezekiel 23 (or perhaps the passage I have in mind is in Ezekiel 24 - I cannot remember offhand). Moreover, I do not exempt myself by any means from the general spiritual truth that sinners stand in need of a refining fire to be worthy of dwelling in God's presence. Quite the contrary, in fact.
Thank you for your careful reading of my previous messages, and for your carefully thought out reply.
The revolt of the Maccabees differs diametrically from the project of Zionism. The former represents an heroic defense of God's honor against a reprehensible defilement of His Holy temple on the part of deeply pious Jews. It also represents an armed resistance of a defensive nature against an oppressive Hellenizing occupying force that was contemptuous of the God of Israel and the kind of culture under which this God willed that His chosen people should live. Moreover, both the defilement and subsequent cleansing of the temple were prophetically vouchsafed to the prophet Daniel, a record of which has come down to us in Daniel 8. All these things imply that the Maccabaean revolt was in fact fundamentally pleasing to God, notwithstanding flaws and imperfections of human origin associated therewith.
By contrast, secular Zionism represents a clear repudiation not only of God's revealed purposes for the Jews - purposes which are ultimately manifestly Messianic in character - but of God himself. Such a basic attitude cannot be anything other than profoundly displeasing to God, and a political movement founded upon such an attitude necessarily entails moral and spiritual attitudes that are antithetical to God's nature. Appealing to the fervent piety and heroic witness of the Maccabaean episode in Jewish history does nothing to justify a later movement that is avowedly apostate - either in moral or spiritual terms.
Regarding the signs you refer to of God's favorable views of the results of Zionism, just because a project succeeds, and does so with ease, does not make it the right thing to do morally, nor does it render it pleasing in God's eyes. The proof of divine favor must rest on arguments that are moral and spiritual in nature. However, traditional Orthodox Judaism has traditionally identified moral and spiritual grounds for arguing that Zionism is regarded with DISFAVOR by God. This tradition continued well into the period when Zionism was already meeting with considerable success. Yet, Orthodox Judaism correctly did not regard this success as overturning its traditional rejection of Zionism on moral and spiritual grounds. Orthodox Judaism broadly speaking did finally capitulate to the Zionist temptation in the wake of the Holocaust, but I would maintain, along with contemporary Orthodox fringe groups, that this represents a moral and spiritual compromise that is displeasing to God.
As far as your accusation that I am standing in arrogant judgment for labeling Israeli treatment of the Palestineans as "brutal and arrogant," and for suggesting that the nation of Israel faces a future period of severe testing and refinement, I reply as follows. First, the brutality and arrogance of which I speak began at the time that secular Zionism disavowed God's wish that His Chosen people await their messiah in patient prayer and suffering, and chose instead to go it alone by reestablishing a Jewish homeland on their own terms. Brutality against Palestinians was an integral aspect of this project from the very beginning; it is thus misleading to depict the current situation as one where Israel is justly defending itself against illegitimate Palestinian incursions.
Secondly, the mere fact that I accuse another party of brutality and arrogance does not ipso facto render me guilty of standing in arrogant judgment over them. If this were true, then any critic of the Nazis would ipso facto stand convicted of standing in arrogant judgment over them for their treatment of the Jews on the same grounds. My accusation is rather grounded in a fair-minded appraisal of the historical record involving the activities of Zionists going back to the late 19th century. To deflect attention from this historical record in order to launch a personal attack against me is an instance of the ad hominem fallacy.
Thirdly, neither does the fact that I predict a period of severe refinement ipso facto render me guilty of arrogant judgment. I advance this prediction, rather, on the basis of what seems to me to be clearly indicated in biblical prophecies recorded in such places as Daniel 9, Daniel 12, Zechariah 12, Zechariah 14, and Ezekiel 23 (or perhaps the passage I have in mind is in Ezekiel 24 - I cannot remember offhand). Moreover, I do not exempt myself by any means from the general spiritual truth that sinners stand in need of a refining fire to be worthy of dwelling in God's presence. Quite the contrary, in fact.
6.24.2009 | 10:19pm
Douglas Bilodeau says:
Dear Church of the East member,
I do apologize for any ad hominem content in my previous remarks regarding your posts. I did not mean to attack you personally. I wrote hastily, and was partly motivated by having read something a few months ago in which the author claimed that the purpose of the Jews in the world today is to call attention to injustices by being among the first to suffer from them, passively. I don't recall the author or the location. He may have been Jewish himself.
The Jewish response "never again" to the holocaust was not just a resolve that the world should not permit genocide to occur; it was also a rejection of the previously passive role of the Jews in world conflicts. Whether justified or not by ethics or by religious warrant, that is at least a humanly understandable reaction to what was suffered. Patience in the face of persecution is a virtue. But I believe there does come a point when even violent resistance to tyranny is a virtue. In the long run, such resistance is essential to produce a tolerably humane civilization. If enacted in a spirit of humility and recognition of our own sinfulness, I believe such resistance is not only permitted by God, but is required as a positive duty. In any case, if there seemed to be any heat in my argument on this point, it was not meant to be directed at you, but was a remnant of my reaction to another author some time ago.
I do not claim you are arrogant in any way. If I said or implied so in the past, I now deny the charge. I believe your analysis of Zionism may not be fair and reasonable, but I will not try to argue with you. Such things depend upon so many deeply set beliefs and habits of mind which cannot be swept away with a few words.
Discussions concerning Israel and Zionism can become confusing, because they can be regarded from the point of view of secular ideas of justice, and also from the point of view of religious belief and expectation. I agree that I should have been more careful in separating these aspects of the problem. The example of the Maccabees was not ideal. I suppose what I meant to say is that from the point of view of an outsider who did not share Jewish beliefs of the time, the actions of the Maccabees may have appeared extreme and unjust, just as those of Israel do to many people today. Perhaps that does not really shed much light on the current situation in Israel/Palestine, where secular and religious motivations are also mixed, but in a very different way.
I am not a dispensationalist. I am in fact cautious about interpreting and applying the words of ancient prophets to the events of today or about forming an overly specific eschatology. I do believe that the prophets spoke the truth, and that in some cases we can discern their meaning, but in other cases there is a history of controversy, because God's purposes are not yet fully revealed in every detail. Some things will be revealed by God's action in history, and some will not be revealed until the last days. Therefore I do not argue for support for Israel on this basis. I may have an irrational emotional bias in Israel's favor when I see (occasionally, perhaps, and not as a rule) a love of the God of Abraham, Moses and David among Jewish people in the land once promised, similar to that of the faithful Israelites (often outnumbered by lapsed idolaters) in the days of the first temple. Such emotions are not an argument, and may be misleading me. But on the other hand, as a practical matter in life, we often take such emotions as a tentative basis for positions for which we find a more rational foundation later.
One of the great problems faced now by the Jewish people is to understand and interpret all over again, in the light of the existence of Israel as a nation among nations, the same questions which were analyzed in such depth by the early sages after the fall of the second temple. They may eventually come to the same conclusion you have, that a State of Israel in the world as it is today does not serve their purposes or God's. Or they may resolve the divide between the secular culture out of which the nation arose and the increasing religious population, perhaps giving rise to a very different Israeli culture and some different attitudes concerning the religious rule of life. In any case, this is something only the Jewish people can determine for themselves. Likewise, only the Muslims can determine whether and how they can come to live with a nation of unsubdued Jews in their midst.
The shock and agony of the violence of the ongoing civil conflict is horrific for both sides. But how do we measure and compare one horror to another. If a missile meant to kill one ruthless militant leader also kills a dozen innocent civilians, can we weigh that against gunmen stopping the car of a mother with her five children and shooting them all at close range, even the infant strapped into its car seat? Sadly, this is a world in which we often have to perform this grim calculus of atrocity. Often there is no answer, and often events force our hand and compel us to take action without any certainty concerning justice and truth.
In the future I will leave these controversies to others who are controversialists by nature. For myself, I am saddened by the great distances I have found between one person's view of the world and another's. I am now more than fully occupied in trying to understand as best I can what my Christian faith means to me, and to the place and people among whom I live.
I do apologize for any ad hominem content in my previous remarks regarding your posts. I did not mean to attack you personally. I wrote hastily, and was partly motivated by having read something a few months ago in which the author claimed that the purpose of the Jews in the world today is to call attention to injustices by being among the first to suffer from them, passively. I don't recall the author or the location. He may have been Jewish himself.
The Jewish response "never again" to the holocaust was not just a resolve that the world should not permit genocide to occur; it was also a rejection of the previously passive role of the Jews in world conflicts. Whether justified or not by ethics or by religious warrant, that is at least a humanly understandable reaction to what was suffered. Patience in the face of persecution is a virtue. But I believe there does come a point when even violent resistance to tyranny is a virtue. In the long run, such resistance is essential to produce a tolerably humane civilization. If enacted in a spirit of humility and recognition of our own sinfulness, I believe such resistance is not only permitted by God, but is required as a positive duty. In any case, if there seemed to be any heat in my argument on this point, it was not meant to be directed at you, but was a remnant of my reaction to another author some time ago.
I do not claim you are arrogant in any way. If I said or implied so in the past, I now deny the charge. I believe your analysis of Zionism may not be fair and reasonable, but I will not try to argue with you. Such things depend upon so many deeply set beliefs and habits of mind which cannot be swept away with a few words.
Discussions concerning Israel and Zionism can become confusing, because they can be regarded from the point of view of secular ideas of justice, and also from the point of view of religious belief and expectation. I agree that I should have been more careful in separating these aspects of the problem. The example of the Maccabees was not ideal. I suppose what I meant to say is that from the point of view of an outsider who did not share Jewish beliefs of the time, the actions of the Maccabees may have appeared extreme and unjust, just as those of Israel do to many people today. Perhaps that does not really shed much light on the current situation in Israel/Palestine, where secular and religious motivations are also mixed, but in a very different way.
I am not a dispensationalist. I am in fact cautious about interpreting and applying the words of ancient prophets to the events of today or about forming an overly specific eschatology. I do believe that the prophets spoke the truth, and that in some cases we can discern their meaning, but in other cases there is a history of controversy, because God's purposes are not yet fully revealed in every detail. Some things will be revealed by God's action in history, and some will not be revealed until the last days. Therefore I do not argue for support for Israel on this basis. I may have an irrational emotional bias in Israel's favor when I see (occasionally, perhaps, and not as a rule) a love of the God of Abraham, Moses and David among Jewish people in the land once promised, similar to that of the faithful Israelites (often outnumbered by lapsed idolaters) in the days of the first temple. Such emotions are not an argument, and may be misleading me. But on the other hand, as a practical matter in life, we often take such emotions as a tentative basis for positions for which we find a more rational foundation later.
One of the great problems faced now by the Jewish people is to understand and interpret all over again, in the light of the existence of Israel as a nation among nations, the same questions which were analyzed in such depth by the early sages after the fall of the second temple. They may eventually come to the same conclusion you have, that a State of Israel in the world as it is today does not serve their purposes or God's. Or they may resolve the divide between the secular culture out of which the nation arose and the increasing religious population, perhaps giving rise to a very different Israeli culture and some different attitudes concerning the religious rule of life. In any case, this is something only the Jewish people can determine for themselves. Likewise, only the Muslims can determine whether and how they can come to live with a nation of unsubdued Jews in their midst.
The shock and agony of the violence of the ongoing civil conflict is horrific for both sides. But how do we measure and compare one horror to another. If a missile meant to kill one ruthless militant leader also kills a dozen innocent civilians, can we weigh that against gunmen stopping the car of a mother with her five children and shooting them all at close range, even the infant strapped into its car seat? Sadly, this is a world in which we often have to perform this grim calculus of atrocity. Often there is no answer, and often events force our hand and compel us to take action without any certainty concerning justice and truth.
In the future I will leave these controversies to others who are controversialists by nature. For myself, I am saddened by the great distances I have found between one person's view of the world and another's. I am now more than fully occupied in trying to understand as best I can what my Christian faith means to me, and to the place and people among whom I live.
6.26.2009 | 3:41pm
the Angelus says:
Well said, Mr. Bilodeau, in your rejoinder to Mr. Iaco’s triumphal excesses!
The late and much beloved editor of First Things, Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, stated it succinctly in one of his last contributions to this journal:
“Tribalism has no place in this discussion. As John Paul II reminded Catholics in his 1990 encyclical Redemptoris Missio, being a Catholic is not reason for proprietorial pride but for profound gratitude for a grace received, all undeserved on our part. Moreover, a Catholic who does not earnestly want to recognize and rejoice in the gifts of grace to be found in other Christian communities will almost certainly be more hindrance than help in this discussion.”
“The second and related stipulation is that we are not comparing an ideal depiction of the state of Catholicism with less flattering depictions of other communities—or vice versa. It is not a matter of what we like or dislike in this community or that. I have decided views on certain Orthodox and Protestant virtues that Catholics might well emulate. As Malloy writes, in reflecting on the uniqueness of the Catholic Church “one can affirm both the essential fullness of the ecclesial reality of the Catholic Church and the concrete poverty and woundedness of her lived life, together with her practical need of the expressive ecclesial riches found outside her visible boundaries.” Not only can one affirm both, one must affirm both.
Excerpted from “The One True Church”, First Things, April 2009
The late and much beloved editor of First Things, Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, stated it succinctly in one of his last contributions to this journal:
“Tribalism has no place in this discussion. As John Paul II reminded Catholics in his 1990 encyclical Redemptoris Missio, being a Catholic is not reason for proprietorial pride but for profound gratitude for a grace received, all undeserved on our part. Moreover, a Catholic who does not earnestly want to recognize and rejoice in the gifts of grace to be found in other Christian communities will almost certainly be more hindrance than help in this discussion.”
“The second and related stipulation is that we are not comparing an ideal depiction of the state of Catholicism with less flattering depictions of other communities—or vice versa. It is not a matter of what we like or dislike in this community or that. I have decided views on certain Orthodox and Protestant virtues that Catholics might well emulate. As Malloy writes, in reflecting on the uniqueness of the Catholic Church “one can affirm both the essential fullness of the ecclesial reality of the Catholic Church and the concrete poverty and woundedness of her lived life, together with her practical need of the expressive ecclesial riches found outside her visible boundaries.” Not only can one affirm both, one must affirm both.
Excerpted from “The One True Church”, First Things, April 2009
- We are all Israelis now! -