| Armageddon Up Their Sleeves: When Liberal Dialogue Fails, Watch Out For the Christian Zionists |
| Matthew Hamilton | |
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Imagine this: It’s October 2002 and 10,000 supporters of the Christian Coalition are gathered at a pro-Israel rally in Washington, D.C. They cheer and wave tiny blue and white Israeli flags as Benny Elon takes the stage. Rabbi Elon is a member of the Knesset (Israel’s parliament) and represents the far-right Moledet Party, which advocates continued ethnic cleansing through the “transfer” of Palestinians to bordering Arab nation-states. Now Elon is addressing an audience of American Protestant fundamentalist Christians, so he speaks their language: “Let’s turn to the Bible, which says very clearly…we have to resettle them, to relocate them, and to have a Jewish state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean.”1 Once more the old colonial formula emerges: a Biblical justification for ethnic cleansing. This is a frighteningly common scene these days in the heart of American Empire, as right wing Israeli and U.S. Zionists ally themselves with a growing contingent of pro-Israel Protestant fundamentalists. As I will show here, Zionism is a colonial ideology that has outlived the colonial era; it is tarnished with racism in the eyes of people the world over. In the face of widespread criticism and opposition, liberal and secular forms of Zionism are attempting now to justify Israel’s existence by calling for dialogue, tolerance, and the peace process. At the same time though, many Israeli leaders will not allow themselves to become blinded by the false liberal optimism they project in public. The state of Israel is keeping its options open. It continues to amass weapons and entertain strategies of apartheid. As it does so, it seeks new forms of ideological justification for these actions. In this process, it has forged an unholy alliance with Christian Zionists, many of them straight up anti-Semites who support Israel simply because they see it to be a staging point for the Battle of Armageddon and the final triumph of Christianity. This is one more sad case of bad faith in the U.S.A., where interfaith understanding is so often built by beating up on a common enemy. Jews and Protestants are putting aside their historical differences in order to join together in the general racist warfare against Muslims, advocating ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian population. I am a Christian struggling to fight oppression in all of its forms by building interfaith solidarity around the principles of democracy and anti-racism. To contribute to this struggle, I will outline various forms of Zionism as well as Christian anti-Semitism at play in the U.S. I will identify the confluences between them, with the hope of providing a useful tool for those who wish to challenge this alliance and build in its place a truly liberating interfaith coalition. This piece is primarily a political analysis of how Christian Zionism functions today in supportive tension with liberal justifications for Israel’s existence. It is not primarily a theological critique of Christian Zionism, though such critiques are available from numerous Christians. Needless to say, many Christians, of all denominations and theological commitments, are horrified by the Christian Zionists and their attempt to forge Bibles into swords (or IDF nerve gas and hydrogen bombs). What is Christian Zionism and who should be worried about it? Political Zionism is a philosophy that states that the identity, destiny, and heritage of the Jewish people are synonymous with a defense of the state and ruling class of Israel. Zionism is not the same thing as Judaism or Jewish ethnicity; it may claim to be, but this claim has been challenged by many Jews and non-Jews alike. Moreover, there are non-Jewish Zionists, including many secular bureaucrats in the State Department who support Israel for political reasons, as well as many Christians who support Israel for theological reasons. It is important to make clear from the outset that the modern state of Israel is not the same thing as the Israel of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. The former was destroyed in the 1st century A.D. by Roman imperialism though for many it lives on as a spiritual reality or a symbol of hope. The later version—the modern state of Israel—is a nation-state created under the auspices of British imperialism in 1948 with the expulsion of thousands of indigenous Palestinians from their villages. Zionism is the philosophy that justified the creation of this colonial settler state. It is a largely secular nationalist ideology that has been around since the 19th century. Modern Israel has more in common with the 20th century states of Britain, France, Germany, or the U.S. than it does with the ancient Israelite League or the Israelite state under the monarchy of King David in Biblical times. Strictly speaking, the modern state of Israel has no greater claim to sanctity or holiness than the modern states of Britain or the U.S.; all three, however, have used the idea that they are God’s Chosen People to justify the sinful occupation of other people’s lands. From the beginning, the modern state of Israel has been supported by a subset of Protestant Christians who see the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine to be part of a cosmic path to the apocalypse. Though modern Israel is a secular state, many fundamentalists see it as somehow fulfilling and carrying out God’s plan for the end of human history. They view the success of Israel’s Zionism as a prophetic marker pointing to the impending return of Jesus to rule absolutely from Jerusalem. This theology, commonly called Christian Zionism, has spread throughout the U.S. in the late 20th century. It is expanding with the political upsurge of fundamentalist Protestantism and the mass popularization of apocalyptic or “premillenarian” theologies. These visions interpret contemporary events, including the wars and contradictions of U.S. Empire and its challengers, as signposts ushering in the final battle of Armageddon, a nuclear war likely in our lifetime. The success of the best-selling “Left Behind” series shows the widespread appeal of this end-times theology. The alliance of right wing pro-Israel forces and apocalyptic Protestants is capable of galvanizing grassroots support in the U.S. for a neo-crusade to cleanse Muslims from the Holy Land. The Christian Zionists bring the Bible and the state of Israel brings its “Defense” forces (IDF) with their attack helicopters, tanks, and, God forbid, nuclear bombs. Interfaith-minded people trying to build solidarity with Muslims in the Middle East should be prepared to challenge this deadly coalition. Catholic and Orthodox Christians should also be on their guard. The Israel-Palestine conflict is often painted as a religious war between Jews and Muslims, ignoring the 400,000 Palestinian Christians (6.7% of the Palestinian population) who have their roots in Catholic and Orthodox Middle Eastern churches dating back to Christianity's birth in Palestine. These Christians participate fully in Palestinian society, and have been active in the Intifada.2 Their frequent erasure from the discussion of Israel-Palestine is fine with many anti-Catholic Christian Zionists who don't see the members of these ancient churches as "Christians" since they have not been "born again" in an evangelical Protestant fashion. Like Muslims and all other non-Christians, they are slated for either conversion or cleansing when the Holy Land is purified by the Battle of Armageddon. More immediately, they are targeted for missionary activity by American Protestants who are sending evangelists all over the Middle East, drawing away some of the remaining members of distinctive and ancient Arab Christian communities. This confluence of anti-Muslim and anti-Catholic/anti-Orthodox ideologies must be challenged. Finally, confronting Christian Zionism is also a necessary aspect of solidarity with everyday Jewish people worldwide who have been sold out by the Zionist movement. Conservative Jewish Zionists who promote an alliance between Israel and the U.S. Christian Right often turn a blind eye to the widespread anti-Semitism preached by Christian Zionists, many of whom believe that when Armageddon comes, Jews will be forced to either convert or die. How Zionism has adapted to its challengers, and why it turns toward the Christian Right Since the creation of the state of Israel, Zionism in the U.S. has been supported by two main constituencies: the first is the largely secular U.S. ruling class (the State Department and their U.N. lackeys) who, whatever their feelings may be about Jewish people, have an interest in propping up Israel as their Empire’s lead aircraft carrier in the Middle East. The second is the majority of the American Jewish community who seek solidarity with a Jewish nation-state in historic Palestine. Zionism was born and thrived in an era of explicit European colonialism and racial thought when, as hard as it is to believe, it was even more appropriate to consider Arab peoples expendable in the march of progress and civilization. The Jewish colony in Palestine was seen as a civilizing project under the larger framework of bringing European enlightenment to the so-called savages. This system, which promoted the superiority of European culture over and against the supposed barbarism of people of color, can fairly be called institutionalized “white supremacy.” Since the early 20th century, white supremacy was challenged by anti-colonial and anti-racist movements worldwide. These movements were successful enough to bring down formal colonialism in most places (Israel is a lingering exception) and to challenge public racist discourse. However, white supremacy and empire were able to adapt themselves and remain strong by co-opting the cultural logic of many of these national liberation movements, creating a multiracial, multiethnic, and interfaith “Rainbow Coalition” of bureaucratic rulers who facilitate de facto empire and institutionalized racism in our day by appealing to phony ideals of multiculturalism and pluralism only to cover up the same old system that continues to dehumanize people of color. Zionism also pursued a Rainbow strategy. It had to, as Arab and Black workers from Johannesburg to Detroit began to challenge openly racist ideologies. In the U.S. for example, the Black Power movement began to build solidarity with Arab peoples, including the Palestinians. The struggle against institutionalized racism in the U.S.A. was linked not only to the anti-Apartheid movement in South Africa but also to the Palestinian struggle against Israeli apartheid. In response, Zionism shifted to co-opt its challengers and made accommodations within its increasingly varied coalition, encouraging a process of "dialogue" and “diversity” mirroring diplomatic efforts towards the Peace Process in Israel-Palestine. In the last era, this strategy was represented by the likes of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Abraham Joshua Heschel, and Bayard Rustin. Today, people like Michael Lerner and Cornel West claim this legacy in order to prop up Zionism. Palestine Solidarity Review has published critiques of their efforts.3 These “dialogues” show that Zionism as a form of white supremacy has faced many challenges from below and has had to adapt itself to a new world. Other colonial settler regimes from Algeria to South Africa fell, leaving Israel isolated in a precarious historical position. As the Palestinian Intifadas and international solidarity movements arose, the world began to see the sputtering contradictions within Zionist thought. It is no longer appropriate to call Palestine “a land without a people for a people without a land”—a formulation of Manifest Destiny that was originally crafted by Lord Shaftesbury, an early Christian Zionist in Britain. It is no longer appropriate to call the Palestinians savages, since an international movement has emerged in solidarity with their struggle for self-government. Sure, ruling class support for Zionism in the U.S. is still strong—after all, American official society needs Israel as a staging ground for its ambitious plan to “democratize” the Middle East. Nevertheless, the Zionist consensus among everyday Americans is beginning to show its fractures. Palestine solidarity movements have cropped up in campuses, towns, and churches across the country. Our generation’s younger Jews in the U.S., Israel, and worldwide, are beginning to feel ambivalent and are discovering that democracy and Zionism have always been incompatible, especially in a land that may soon have an Arab majority. As such, the Israeli state has three options available to it if it wishes to survive. On the one hand, it can jettison any attempts to give itself ideological cover and can rely simply on a military solution, imposed through torture and brute force, neglecting the political backlash this may elicit from democratic-minded people. This has been Israel’s strategy in Gaza and the West Bank since the rise of the second Intifada. On the other hand, Israel can attempt to jettison the Arab population of Gaza and part of the West Bank into reservations or Bantustans to seal off the final borders of the Jewish state and call that a peace process, gaining international legal recognition for the Jim Crow-style segregation that exists now on both sides of the wall. This has been the strategy pursued by the Labor party in Israel, liberal Zionists in the U.S., and the U.S. State Department. Recently, it has also been the strategy of Ariel Sharon with his withdrawal of settlements from the Gaza Strip. In any case, attempts to secure Israel’s borders and to seal off Palestinian reservations amount to little more than a roadmap to legalized apartheid dressed up as a peace process. Thirdly, Israel can attempt to make alliances with the Christian Right in the U.S. to dress up the first option (military brute force and total occupation) with the ideological veneer of Biblical authority. Benny Elon, the aforementioned right wing Israeli politician was recently expelled from Sharon's cabinet because he opposed Sharon's plan to disengage from Gaza. He inadvertently proves our point about the ideological bankruptcy of secular liberal Zionism in his endorsement of the Christian Right: "[The Evangelical Christians] understand what is the meaning of the Biblical heartland and they understand the risk and the danger [of giving it up]," Elon said. In critiquing the peace process, he argued that if there is no justification for Jewish colonial settlers to live in Biblical places in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, like Shiloh and Beth El, then there is no justification for Jewish people to live in Israeli cities within the "green line" like Tel Aviv. "[Christian Zionists] understand naturally things that many Israelis are not aware [of] and that's because of the privilege of the knowledge of the Bible," Elon said. Israeli Zionism is at base a colonial project and all colonial projects are unjustified land grabs. Elon recognizes that the most effective ideological cover for such a land grab is a Biblical one. He suggests that the best way for Christians to help Israel is to pressure their governments to support Israel's right to all its "biblical lands."4 While the first strategy (naked brute force) is pursued among Washington think tanks like the Project for a New American Century, the second strategy (“dialogue” and “peace”) is being pushed actively on liberal college campuses through groups like Tikkun and is being pursued now in the Middle East by the U.S. State Department under Condoleezza Rice. The third strategy (alliances with Christian Zionism) has been unfolding in mega-churches, nondenominational grassroots Bible churches, and congregations all across the country, with heavy support from the Israeli government. To the extent that the first two options flounder, the third will likely be emphasized. Parallel Strategies Such has been the case in recent decades, when Israel has sought to cover up its acts of brute aggression with Biblical justifications. After the 1967 Israeli conquest of Gaza and the West Bank with its ruthless treatment of Palestinian civilians, world opinion began to shift against Israel, reflected in demands for the 1975 U.N. denouncement of Zionism as a form of racism. As anti-racist minded people began to turn on Israel, Zionists began looking for new allies. They initiated the third strategy when they found growing support among Christian Zionists in the U.S. These fundamentalists read the unfolding military success and the solidification of apartheid on the ground in Israel-Palestine not as a racist horror but rather as an optimistic sign of the roadmap to Armageddon. They were particularly inspired by Israel’s capture of all of Jerusalem. As L. Nelson Bell (Billy Graham’s father-in-law) put it, “That for the first time in more than 2,000 years Jerusalem is now in the hands of the Jews gives the students of the Bible a thrill and a renewed faith in the accuracy and validity of the Bible.”5 The liberals attempted to construct the Oslo peace negotiations to deal with the aftermath of this conquest and, more recently, they initiated the failed Road Map to Peace to quell the Intifada. Meanwhile, this coalition of right wing Zionists and Christian preachers further solidified itself. It worked to derail the “peace process” by supporting increased settlements and uncompromising U.S. support for an expansionist Jewish state in all of “Greater Israel.” Evangelical leaders have worked to mobilize their grassroots constituencies in support of open Judeo-Christian supremacy and ethnic cleansing, framed as a cosmic battle against Islam (particularly against Muslim holy sites in Palestine such as the Dome of the Rock mosque). Jerry Falwell, the noted evangelist, went on record saying: “to stand against Israel is to stand against God.”6 Through the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem, established by the Israeli State to reach out to evangelicals, many Christian Zionist leaders have worked in solidarity with the right wing nationalist Likkud party in Israel to expand Jewish-only neighborhoods in the West Bank and Gaza. When Benjamin Netanyahu of Likkud came to power in 1996, he convened the Israel Christian Advocacy Council, which brought 17 U.S. fundamentalist leaders to Israel to discuss the Mid-East conflict. The U.S. preachers signed a pledge stating that “America will never, never desert Israel,” that they would support Israeli settlements in the West Bank, Gaza, and the Golan Heights, and that they would support a unified Jerusalem under Israeli control. Each of these pledges was underscored by Biblical references and appeals to evangelical Christian theology. Pat Robertson, Ralph Reed, and Jerry Falwell returned to the U.S. to launch campaigns around these politics, countering the strategy of the Clinton peace process as well as mainline Protestant and Roman Catholic churches that were advocating a “shared Jerusalem” and a two-state solution.7 After Israel’s 2002 massacres in the Jenin refugee camp, international outcry from the grassroots pressured Bush to encourage Sharon to withdraw his troops from the West Bank. In response, Jerry Falwell and other Christian Zionists used their media outlets and mobilized their constituencies to send tens of thousands of emails, letters, and phone calls to Bush demanding that he not “divide the Holy Land.” After that, Bush remained silent on the issue. This anecdote illustrates the tension between the pragmatic-secular side of the Republican Party that is actually pursuing liberal “solutions” to the problems of governing a brutal empire and the more strident religious right that has helped Bush win elections by providing him with grassroots support. While Bush’s foreign policy may not agree with that of the Christian Zionists, he needs to make certain concessions to them in order to play his populist game. The Israeli government knows this, and as such they do not have to take Bush’s criticisms seriously. Jerry Falwell said it well: “The Bible Belt is Israel’s safety net in the U.S.”8 This tension between the Christian Right and the mainline foreign policy of the Republican Party plays out in terms of pro-Israel fundraising efforts among grassroots churches. John Hagee, pastor of Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, said in 1997 that his church donated over $1 million to Israel to help settle Jews from the former Soviet Union into the West Bank and Jerusalem. He declared that, “We feel like the coming of Soviet Jews to Israel is a fulfillment of Biblical prophecy…I am a Bible scholar and a theologian, and from my perspective the law of God transcends the laws of the United States Government and the U.S. State Department.”9 While I agree that the law of God certainly transcends the laws of the U.S. state, I find it hard to believe that the law of God could ever sanction the expulsion of people of color from their land to make room for European settlers. But when it comes to Israel, Hagee and many other preachers worship a false God who is a white racist with a penchant for destruction. The irony here is that these Christian Zionists, like many Palestine Solidarity activists, are organizing grassroots challenges to the U.S. state’s foreign policy in the name of a higher power. The liberal/Rainbow Coalition strategy of dialogue, diversity, and negotiation has actually been the main strategy of the U.S. state and ruling class not only under Bill Clinton but also under the Bush Administration (represented most recently by Condoleezza Rice). The U.S. is calling for a two-state solution, a dismantlement of some settlements, and a continuation of the “peace process.” This leaves many Christian Zionists who want a Jewish state in all of “Greater Israel” challenging the U.S. government. In much of our Palestine solidarity organizing, my colleagues and I pursue what we call a “direct people-to-people foreign policy from below,” bypassing the U.S. and Israeli states; our calls for divestment from Israel signal the establishment of an independent foreign and economic policy sanctioning the Israeli state and delegitimizing the U.S. State Department. Ironically, some of the Christian Zionists also pursue a foreign policy independent of the U.S. state. They are even undermining the Israeli state they seek to support by challenging Sharon's disengagement plan, going against a 70% majority support for the Gaza withdrawal. Predictably enough, powerful players in the Israeli lobby like the Zionist Organization of America are working in Congress to pass legislation criminalizing Palestine solidarity activists that call for divestment, claiming we are breaking U.S. trade laws. These politicians do not believe that everyday citizens should have the right to do our own economic planning and ethical decision-making about international affairs. We should not be allowed to legislate our own foreign policy autonomous from the U.S. state. However, the same Zionist watchdogs conveniently turn the other way when Christian Zionists go against the State Department and pursue the expansion of settlements that have been deemed illegal. Moreover, U.S. officials seem willing to turn their back on Christian Zionists who overtly funnel their money to terrorist organizations intent upon destroying the Dome of the Rock and rebuilding the ancient Jerusalem temple. As Grace Halsell documents, “Christian fundamentalists who donate generously to the Jewish terrorists include oil and gas tycoon Terry Reisenhoover…Mission to America chairman Dr. Hilton Sutton and Dr. James DeLoach, pastor of Houston’s Second Baptist church who visited me in my Washington, D.C., apartment and boasted that he and others had formed a Jerusalem Temple Foundation specifically to aid those intent on destroying the mosque and building a temple. He said they sent $50,000 for the legal defense of Jewish terrorists who were convicted of plotting to destroy the Dome of the Rock.”10 In an era where everyday Muslim people can face serious repression if they donate to an Islamic charity that might be siphoning money under the table to Hamas, wealthy and powerful Christians seem to be able to get away with making anti-Muslim terrorist “charity” into a faith-based initiative. The fact that governments who officially speak of the Peace Process will allow such terrorism to build up simply goes to show how the various strategies enlisted to prop up a failing Zionist project are different faces of the same imperial beast. It is important to keep in mind that the peace process has always been a sham, and the greatest testament to this fact is that while negotiations proceeded during Oslo, Israel continued to expand armed Jewish-only settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. The U.S. state has never been committed to dismantling settlements or the rest of the apparatus of apartheid in Palestine, hence U.S. politicians are willing to unofficially allow Christian Zionists to undermine the peace process. Populist Republican politicians like Bush are also willing to turn the other cheek when fundamentalists subvert their foreign policy because they need to court the Christian Right as their primary grassroots base. By supporting settlements, Christian Zionists are giving white supremacy the ideological cover it needs to survive today by applying a thick Biblical gloss. As such, the State of Israel recognizes them as a key strategic asset. In 1981, Israel thanked Jerry Falwell for his support for the Jewish state. They gave him the Jabotinsky Award, named, appropriately, for a Zionist hero who also happened to be an open fascist.11 Falwell also received a Learjet from Israel for his private travels. Christian Zionism and Anti-Semitism Anyone familiar with Palestine solidarity activism will find this last bit of information quite odd. Many will ask: But isn’t Jerry Falwell an open anti-Semite? Why would a Jewish nationalist state, which stakes its claim to existence on its ability to fight global anti-Semitism, give a Learjet to an American demagogue who teaches and practices that Jews are evil Christ killers? This is a very good question. After all, in his book Listen America!, Falwell accused Jews of being “spiritually blind and desperately in need of their Messiah and Savior.” He also told an evangelism conference in Tennessee that the Anti-Christ was alive and ready to emerge in this generation as—you guessed it—a Jew.12 Pat Robertson, another famous American evangelist who ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 1988, received the “State of Israel Friendship Award” from the Zionist Organization of America. Yet in addition to preaching support for the state of Israel as an apocalyptic sign, Robertson also preaches that world Jewry will either be destroyed or converted when Jesus comes to rule Israel and the world from Jerusalem during the final battle of Armageddon. Robertson’s 1991 bestseller The New World Order relies on fascist myths about Jewish bankers and radicals controlling the world that sound chillingly like the classic anti-Semitic text The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.13 In general, the Christian Zionists’ millenarian vision supports both the cleansing of Muslims from the Holy Land and the existence of a Jewish State in all of historic Palestine (or, as some claim, all “Biblical Lands” including most of the Middle East). Zionists obviously like the expansionist and Jewish nationalist overtones of this vision. Perhaps this causes them to conveniently overlook the fact that most Christian Zionists believe that the existence of the state of Israel will spark a “final solution” Battle of Armageddon that will ultimately cause the forced conversion or the annihilation of all Jews when Jesus reigns over the world from Israel as an absolute dictator. For example, bestselling author Hal Lindsey foretells that “the valley from Galilee to Eilat will flow with blood and 144,000 Jews will bow down before Jesus and be saved.” The rest of Judaism, he says, will perish alongside all non-born-again Christians in “the mother of all Holocausts.”14 I have asked why Zionists, who claim Israel’s right to exist based on its ability to fight global anti-Semitism, ally themselves with such anti-Jewish bigots. Liberal Zionists might respond to this question by saying that they themselves do not; only “right wing” groups like the Zionist Organization of America or the Likkud Party in Israel give awards to Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell. Groups like Tikkun or the Union of Progressive Zionists might argue that this right wing alliance does not represent them. So perhaps we should ask a better question: why do liberal Zionist organizations in the U.S. spend so much time slandering Palestine solidarity activists as anti-Semites while they remain conspicuously silent when it comes to challenging the open and recognizable anti-Semitism of the Christian Zionist Right? Why do liberal Zionists show up and counter-protest Palestine solidarity rallies and get in our faces and spit at us rather than organizing their own rallies against the real anti-Semites? Why are anti-Zionist groups, like the one I organize with that call for a unified democratic Palestine in which Arabs, Jews, Muslims, and Christians can live side by side as equals, suddenly perceived as a greater threat to the liberal Jewish community in the U.S. than the openly anti-Semitic Christian Zionists of the Right? I spent many years in liberal religious circles challenging the Religious Right, trying to build interfaith solidarity, pursuing Jewish-Christian dialogue, and fighting anti-Semitism within the Christian community. I even spoke at a Hillel event against the movie "The Passion of the Christ." However, the minute I opened my mouth and said the word “Palestine” and called for a democratic and anti-racist vision in the Middle East, all of this was quickly forgotten by my former friends in Hillel and Tikkun. I had committed the unpardonable sin of taking up Palestine solidarity activism, the cause that one dare not speak of on a liberal college campus. As a result, I was slandered constantly and labeled a “Christian anti-Semite” by the very same people who used to be my allies in the fight against Christian bigotry. Meanwhile, the real Christian anti-Semites, those who preach the destruction of world Jewry, were left unchallenged. Of course, all of this becomes much less bizarre if we are clear on the fact that liberals, Zionist or otherwise, do not generally challenge empire and white supremacy and have historically failed to stand up to fascism and anti-Semitism. Their own struggle is, at best, for a softer and gentler version of empire and racism. Democrats in the “anti-war movement” will critique Bush’s overt imperialist posturing only to call for a more effective form of colonialism in Iraq, facilitated by U.N. multilateralism. Tikkun and other liberal Zionist organizations will critique Sharon only to point out that segregation through a U.N. sanctioned peace process would be much better in the long run for the colonial settlers in historic Palestine. (At present, of course, the kinder and gentler walk hand in hand with Sharon, who yesterday was said to be an embarrassment but who is now talking "peace.") As such, these liberals will critique the excesses of the Israeli Right or the Christian Right in the U.S. but at the end of the day they are a loyal opposition. At the end of the day, empire is close enough to their hearts for them to allow the Right to resort to the more effective and brutal solutions in its back pocket. At the end of the day, the anti-imperialists rallying outside the hall of official society are far more dangerous to these liberals than their “enemies” down the right wing of that hall. For example, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) claims that its mission is to help crack down on right wing extremist groups of Neo-Nazis and anti-Semites, yet it seems to spend just as much time helping the U.S. state criminalize grassroots anti-racist groups such as Anti-Racist Action formations, the very groups that are the most effective and consistent challengers of street-level anti-Semitism, fascism, and other forms of white supremacist extremism. You see the ADL fighting Palestine solidarity groups and turning a blind eye toward extremist and anti-Semitic Christian Zionists. Intent upon breaking up effective, directly democratic solidarity between Jews and people of color in the fight against white supremacy and bigotry of all forms, the Zionist-Evangelical alliance poses an alternative phony solidarity from above designed to serve the interests of the American ruling class. That’s why in 1982, then-director of the ADL Nathan Perlmutter and his wife Ruth Perlmutter co-authored The Real Anti-Semitism in America, arguing for a stronger evangelical-Jewish alliance. They tried to make the case that anti-Israel sentiment was a greater threat to American Jews than the anti-Semitism of the Christian Right. In other words, in practice it is not actual anti-Semitism that offends pro-Israeli groups, but rather criticism of the state of Israel. It is clear from all of this that people committed to democracy and anti-racism need to challenge both liberal and conservative Zionists, which means taking on the Christian Right as well as the liberal Zionists who refuse to do this themselves and spend their time attacking anti-racists instead. If we are on liberal college campuses, we certainly need to challenge progressives who want to pursue “dialogue” and “peace” on the terms of the colonizer—my article in the Fall 2004 issue of this journal outlines a critique of liberal Zionist approaches to “interfaith” dialogue.15 We must continue to struggle against the primary forms of Zionist oppression—the open, unapologetic brute force of the Israeli Defense Forces and the liberal logic of dialogue and negotiation of the phony "Peace Process." At the same time, however, we must recognize that these strategies of negotiation and dialogue are backed up by a second line of offense, the hard-line coalition of pro-settlers and Christian Zionists who are intent upon conquering and subjugating all "Biblical lands." In doing this, we can point out the philosophical bankruptcy of Zionism and condemn its attempts to bless and absolve the Christian Right of its anti-Semitism. In reality, the turn to Biblical language and Christian Zionism is the last refuge of scoundrels in an era whose colonialism has outlived its prior justifications. The secular logic of bringing "progress" and "modernity" to the supposedly savage Arabs is still employed, but has elicited a heavy backlash. As such, religion is employed as a back pocket strategy. Thus, if U.S. and Israeli rulers want to enlist support among the American grassroots these days for the expansion of the Zionist colony in Palestine, they will find the most fruitful ground among Christian Zionists. These millenialists consider the apocalyptic fervor of the moment to have reached such Biblical proportions that concerns for democracy and anti-racism can be easily jettisoned. Jesus taught us to hope for the future and to pursue God’s justice; these so-called Christians worship instead a false God who wills imperial chauvinism against human dignity and the fruition of history. That is why Daniel Pipes, the noted American Zionist, argues that, “put positively: other than the Israeli Defense Forces, America’s Christian Zionists may be the Jewish state’s ultimate strategic asset.”16 Notes 1. Daniel Levitas. "A Marriage Made For Heaven." Reform Judaism Magazine. Summer 2003
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