Jerusalem: a Jewish city

Editorial

This summer, the United Church of Canada – this country’s largest Protestant denomination – will debate and presumably vote on a proposed boycott of goods from Israeli settlements, including East Jerusalem.

The discussion is part of an endless process by a church with a lengthy history of tacking to anti-Israel positions. This latest report, which was commissioned by the church’s leadership and released days ago, obliquely compares Israel’s treatment of Palestinians with the Holocaust. The authors insist that legitimate criticism of Israel is not antisemitism and that they condemn instances of antisemitism. Of course, they have to say that, don’t they?

What motivates the United Church’s obsession with Israel is unclear and, given the church’s deracination from traditional Christian theology, it has probably less to do with the ancient theological Jew-bashing of the deicide variety than it does with an oversimplification of the David-Goliath motif.

The United Church is one of Christianity’s most liberal streams, having entertained over the years some intriguing debates within its democratic structures about the divinity of Jesus and many other erstwhile sacred cows, to mix faith metaphors. But, the United Church was born of and is still exemplified by the “social gospel,” which emphasizes the religious imperative to improve the world today and not put all eggs in an eternal basket – a very Jewish idea, in many respects. However, examples have shown again and again in recent years that a simplistic perpetrator-victim narrative can distort historical reality, and this is what has happened in the case of the United Church versus Israel.

Church officials pride themselves on visiting Israel and “Palestine,” but even a firsthand experience is deceptive in the absence of a correct historical narrative. One can see firsthand the sometimes appalling conditions of the Palestinians, but it is wilful blindness to ignore the larger realities of Arab complicity in Palestinian statelessness, the Palestinian leadership’s perpetuation of self-defeating intransigence, and the overarching reality of continued genocidal incitement and complete rejection of the right of Jewish self-determination. These are issues that must be addressed before a lasting peace can be achieved, and the United Church, along with so many of Israel’s Western critics, do nothing to address them and, therefore, do nothing to advance peace. In fact, by rewarding Palestinian intransigence and rejectionism, they advance the cause of violence and continued instability. The anti-Israel activists of the West are ready on a point of principle to fight for Palestine to the last Palestinian.

But the obscene misrepresentation of the Holocaust experience eclipsed another aspect of the United Church’s report. It explicitly includes East Jerusalem as among the “settlements” it would seek to boycott. East Jerusalem, which includes the remnants of the holy Temple, is a Jewish settlement, of course – and has been for 3,000 years. Since the state of Israel gained control over the entire city in 1967, the sanctity of Muslim and Christian connections to the city have been protected and respected. By contrast, the interval of Jordanian control over East Jerusalem was marked by desecrations and the barring of Jewish worshippers from holy sites where Jews have prayed for millennia.

Jerusalem is a Jewish city – the Jewish city. Yet, the standard by which Western critics often condemn Israel’s very existence – “the Palestinians were there first” – is abandoned in the case of Jerusalem, which was founded by Jews, built by Jews and has an unbroken history of residency by Jews.

Even the standard of international law, waved enthusiastically every time it suits Israel’s adversaries, is ignored when it benefits Israel, as in the case of the legitimacy of territory gained in a defensive war. Global opinion says Israel should return any spoils of war, as if successive attacks on Israel by genocidal neighbors are merely some sort of friendly round of canasta, as if the results would not have been definitive and irreversible had Israel’s enemies won in 1967.

Now, the world consensus is that Israel accede essentially to whatever the Palestinian leadership demands, as if that is the least Israel could do, all historical context and inherent dangers to Israel’s safety ignored.

Mahmoud Abbas, the “moderate” Fatah leader, has declared meanwhile that not one Jew will reside in a sovereign Palestine, a shocking statement that seems to have raised not an eyebrow among his overseas apologists. Compared with the citizenship and rights – imperfect though they may be – of Arab Israelis, the moral chasm between the two sides is stunning. Yet, entire movements dedicated to labeling every Israeli shortcoming a war crime remain absolutely silent on the atrocities of the Palestinian leadership, certain that utopia will dawn once a Jew-free Palestine is established.

The idea purveyed by the United Church and countless other activist groups that the Jewish people must abandon the holiest part of the Jewish city of Jerusalem is unjust and immoral on bases historical, theological and legal. But the idea should be rejected by fair-minded people, if for no other reason, than the state of Israel is the only body that can be trusted to protect the people and the holy sites under its jurisdiction, regardless of religion.

Yom Yerushalayim sameach.

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