Not Understanding Zion

The big contentious issue for this year...at least as it's being construed by the conservative and progressive wings in the Presbyterian Church (USA)...goes beyond our usual howling about human sexuality. This year, we're also fighting about the whole Israel/Palestine thing.

On the one hand, you have the leftists in the church, who seem so eager to show solidarity with the oppressed that they'll swallow anything that comes out of the mouths of Palestinians. This includes providing tacit endorsement to statements that equivocate about the morality of suicide bombing and that deny that the Jews who now reside in Israel are actually real Jews.

On the other side, you have the right-wingers who seem to think that Israel can do no wrong, being the Chosen People and all. Fences smack in the middle of communities? Keeps the rabble out. Draconian security? It's necessary. Destroying the houses of the families of those who cause trouble? That'll show 'em. Heck, this is the land that God gave 'em, so they've got a right to do whatever they darn well please. It's right there in the Bible!

Discernment is not really a well developed spiritual skill-set among partisans.

My own struggle with the issue is complex. I have no patience for folks who articulate hatred for Jews. Period. Meaning much of the rhetoric used by Palestinians just makes me angry. Israel as a secular state...meaning, a parlimentary democracy that is comprised primarily of folks who are of Jewish heritage and who speak Hebrew...doesn't trouble me at all.

But when I start thinking about modern day Israel as the theological Zion, as the place of God's promise for the Jewish people, things come apart a bit. Honestly, it doesn't connect with my understanding of the Kingdom in any way, shape, or form. It's a Christian bias, I know, even if it is squarely rooted in Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. But the idea of Zion as a place, as a particular patch of land in a particular corner of our little world, that idea is completely alien to my theology.

The idea of Jerusalem as Zion hasn't, quite frankly, had any substantive foundation in the faith since the Babylonians trounced Judah. Jerusalem and the geophysical space we call Israel just aren't the same as Zion. When the prophets speak of Zion, they speak of a utopian reality, a state of being in which not only are the Jewish people living without fear of oppression, but everyone else who recognizes God's intended purpose for us is as well.

That state of being is not limited to a hunk of semi-arable land in the Near East. Way I see it, it manifests itself in any place where the Jewish people...and we Gentiles, too...can live free from fear, oppression, and want. From my own admittedly odd perspective , I see Zion more strongly expressing itself in New York City than I do in the Middle East.

The Inviolability of Israel

American politics is littered with third rails, topics or subjects that can't be broached or addressed in any meaningful way without frying the individual in question.

BZZZZZAP.

I think that was recent nominee for a senior intelligence position.

That highly electrified rail is the complex relationship between the United States and Israel.

On the one hand, Israel is a parliamentary democracy. It's an essentially free state in a region that is defined by monarchies, despots, and repressive theocracies. It has every right to exist, and exist in peace. It is also a reliable and natural ally for our constitutional democracy.

On the other hand, Israel is a nation state, with all of the flaws and foibles that exist in such entities. It is not perfect, any more than the United States...or any of us individually...is perfect.

After it's most recent election, Israel now is governed by what may prove to be an unusually truculent coalition of nationalists and ultra-nationalists. Given the ongoing provocations by Hamas, the results of the recent election were predictable. Human beings who perceive themselves as under attack will always seek hardliners to protect them, and Israelis are no exception.

Their new foreign minister, for instance, is an ultraconservative supporter of the expansion of settlements, who views any suggestion of negotiations with Israel's opponents as evidence of treason. He supports the institution of mandatory loyalty oaths for Israelis, to the point at which he's at odds with some of the ultra-orthodox, who view this as a violation of Torah. Their new prime minister is a hard core hawk, and one of the architects of the ill-conceived wars in Lebanon in the 1980s. Take this cadre of leaders, add in the militants on the other side of the equation who need conflict to justify their existence, and the odds are good that things will at some point get messy. Or rather, messier.

The challenge, of course, is that many folks have a great deal of difficulty "supporting Israel" if that support requires every Israeli action to be a priori correct. In the United States, those views are largely held by American conservative Christians, whose attitudes towards Israel are governed by a strangely warped biblicism. Using a few verses of scripture picked out of context, suddenly even speaking a word of concern about Israel becomes forbidden. Israel is God's Country! You can't say anything bad about the Land of the Promise! At least, not until after Jesus comes back, at which point they'll all either bow down before him or go to hell.

This is particularly strange given where the Bible stands on the subject. Pretty much the entire prophetic literature is filled with invective against Israel and Judah. God is endlessly pissed off at the stubbornness of His Chosen People, and does a fair amount of kicking their butts. That doesn't break the covenant, mind you. He still loves 'em. But when they step away from covenant and/or become tools of injustice, they are not above being held to account. As far as God is concerned, Zion is not inviolable.

The challenge, of course, is how to articulate a concern for justice without seeming to threaten the integrity of that often embattled democratic state. Progressives and liberals in the U.S. generally do a pretty crappy job of this, falling into rhetoric that only alienates them from the very folks they're trying to influence. My own denomination has managed to do a pretty clumsy job of it, alternating between open dialogue and destructive invective.

Not sure the way out of this one...but it's a serious conundrum.