THE PROMISED LAND

INTRODUCTION

This essay was submitted to a contest organized by the Unitarian Universalist Organization in 2012. One of the requirements was to relate the Israeli-Palestinian issue to the similar American history of settler colonialism.  The essay won the first price, and subsequently Rabbi Lerner’s online Tikkun magazine published it.

It is hardly necessary to state that the situation described in the essay has found no peaceful solution. If anything, the further development of Jewish settlement on Palestinian land, and the horrific bombing of Gaza, now best described as an open-air concentration camp, causes the essay, sadly, to be as actual as ten years ago.

                                         THE PROMISED LAND

Long ago, God spoke to Moses. He commanded him to take his people, who were in bondage in Egypt, and lead them away to a different land – a land of liberty – the Promised Land. But in return, they were to obey God’s Laws. This was their covenant.

There is no archeological evidence to support this story – but that doesn’t matter. The power is in the story itself. The story springs from our longing to leave behind a state of oppression and injustice, and to start out anew. This powerful story has been an inspiration to many. Black spirituals are replete with Biblical language. And the Pilgrims, persecuted by the Anglican Church and the autocratic kings and queens of England, sought to abandon the old world to create a new world as God had intended.

Nourished by this same tradition is the modern idea of Zionism.  The children of Israel were scattered throughout the world, and persecuted. And they came near to total extinction during the Holocaust. So, they remembered the Covenant. They remembered the land of their ancestors, and they longed to come home after 2000 years of wandering among strangers. And now this longing for a place of justice and safety was expressed in a new language, the popular nineteenth century language of nationalism – which Theodore Herzl, the founder of Zionismm, adopted.

But what I have characterized as an inspired longing for new beginnings has a dark side. Another name for the “discovery” of new lands is conquest. And whether sanctioned by Yahweh or the prophet Mohammed or the Pope, conquest means the subjugation of the weak by the strong. But we don’t like to put it that bluntly. The Romans called it pax romana, the British called it “the white man’s burden” and the French called it “mission civilisatrice.”

The goal of the Pilgrims was to build a New Jerusalem. President Reagan called America “The Shining City on the Hill.” Call it manifest destiny, call it civilization, the Pilgrims – and other European colonists – brought their beliefs and institutions to the savage shores of the Americas. There savage peoples roamed the forests and plains, running naked or covered in animal skins. These savages lived in primitive huts, with primitive tools, and primitive habits: They did not know the Word of God. And because they were savages, and didn’t even understand the basic concept of property, their land could be appropriated by people who understood it very well. And because they were not organized in formal states and had only bows and arrows to oppose their conquerors, they had no say in the laws of the New World.

You may object to my repeated use or the word “savage” and “primitive.” Professor Robert Williams Jr. of the Law School of the University of Arizona documents that this view of the conquered by the conquerors is a perennial fact of history. And in the United States, this combination of religious and colonial collusion has been formalized into law. It is called the Doctrine of Discovery. It establishes “dominion” of the Christians over the Indian “heathens” and was so ruled by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1824. So now when international mining companies wish to drill for oil or dig for uranium on Native American lands, they have the law on their side.

So, living as we do among Native-American “reservations,” what exactly do we know about them? It is hard to step away from our own affairs to contemplate the painful legacy of the past. And yet our Unitarian Universalist principles tell us that we must, even as we enjoy our own position of obvious advantage and the many fruits of “civilization.” 

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And if we are tempted to turn away from the injustice happening on our own doorstep, how much more difficult is it to confront the tension-wrought situation in Israel and Palestine? A group of interfaith Tucsonans (four Muslims, four Jews, one Christian Methodist, and one Unitarian Universalist – myself) traveled to Israel and Palestine last November to test all the second-hand reports against personal experience.

The Zionist idea I referred to earlier had become flesh, so to speak, in the foundation of the state of Israel in 1948. The notion of “a land without people for people without a land” conquered the minds and hearts of Europeans and Americans, who harbored guilt feelings for their millennial persecution of the Jews. Of course, the British who occupied Palestine at the time knew very well that it was not “a land without people.” Nor did the Palestinians run around naked or clad in animal skins.

The land had been part of the “fertile crescent” and an astonishing number of people had claimed possession of it, from the Sumerians and Egyptians to the Romans and Arabs and Crusaders and Turks and, finally, the British.  At the same time the locals fought each other as well. The Bible speaks of Canaanites and Philistines and Arameans and Israelites and Samaritans. Tribal and cultural-religious contests over nation building are a familiar fact of history and are still in progress throughout the world today. So now Israelis and Palestinians are facing each other over a land to which both claim ownership.

At least one element in their troubles would appear to have been put to rest: The British left and no empire claims overlordship of the territory. Well, whether the United States qualifies as an empire or not, its involvement in the region is defining: We clearly take sides. We offer Israel unconditional support in subsidies and armaments. And whenever issues of international law or human rights about Israeli policies are raised in the United Nations, we always exercise our veto power in the Security Council in Israel’s favor.

Both internal and strategic considerations drive this policy. There are powerful lobbies at play. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is well organized and well-funded. Christians United for Israel (CUI), spearheaded by televangelist John Hagee, has also developed a powerful network. These groups are active in the media and promote the persuasive argument that Israel and the U.S. share common values. The Torah is the Old Testament of our own foundational religion, and Israel is a democracy like ours. The Arabs, on the other hand, are Muslims: We don’t, after all, teach the Koran in Sunday schools. And the traumatic events of September 11 swept all Arabs and Muslims together to face our declaration of global war on terror.

The strategic considerations are also problematic. The Cold War and Soviet presence in some of the countries of the Middle East caused Israel to become an indispensable ally in the region. On the other hand, our dependence on Saudi oil causes them to be an equally indispensable ally.

What of the Palestinians in these international contests? They may as well be running naked with bows and arrows because no one really cares about them. There is no powerful Arab lobby in the United States: Not all Muslims are Arabs and not all Arabs are Muslims. A significant proportion of Palestinians, after all, is Christian. But they are not exactly looking forward to the End of Times. And when Syria and Jordan and Egypt invaded Israel in 1948, this resulted in Palestine being divided among the three of them. Then Israel attacked Egypt and Syria in 1967, with Jordan entering the conflict later. The war lasted 7 days and resulted in the occupation of the West Bank and parts of Egyptian Sinai and the Syrian Golan Heights. In 1973 Egypt and Syria attacked Israel to regain these territories. But ensuing treaties did not address the Israeli occupation of Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Left to their own devices, the Palestinians resisted with uprisings.  The First Intifada lasted from 1987 to 1993, and the Second Intifada occurred in 2000, escalading the cycle of violence on both sides of the conflict: Stones and suicide attacks against tanks and bulldozers. None of the many peace efforts brokered by the United States stopped the continuing development of “facts on the ground” – namely Israeli settlements in the West Bank  

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We traveled the length and breadth of Israel and the various zones of occupation. We were warned to “act like tourists” and not to use the word “Palestine” or the word “peace.” We were stopped at all the check points and everywhere we went, there was The Wall. 

The city of Hebron offered a microcosm of on-going conflict. Its Ibrahim Mosque houses the Tomb of the Patriarchs, which is venerated by all three Abrahamic faiths. The American Israeli settler Baruch Goldstein entered this Mosque in 1994 and killed 29 Muslim worshipers. Old Hebron is now strictly divided and heavily guarded. We walked through the old market, which was covered over by a net because Israeli children, whose school is built on an abutting rise, throw garbage down on it. There was an empty street, with all its shops closed by the Israeli authorities. We visited one Palestinian home, whose inhabitants were too poor to leave. The water tank on their roof top was shot full of holes. On a neighboring rooftop, which had been reclaimed by an Israeli family, there stood a little guard house with an armed Israeli soldier in front of it.

Our last visit in Hebron was a Jewish Museum. Its principal exhibit displayed in vivid detail the massacre of 67 indigenous Jews during the Palestinian uprising of 1929. A visiting group of school children was instructed in that story. Our peacenik Israeli guide told us that the display omitted the fact that the attack had come from outsiders and that over a hundred Jews were saved by their Palestinian neighbors.

During our trip we spoke to Israelis and Palestinians everywhere. We met Palestinians on the verge of eviction in East Jerusalem. We met a young woman who identified herself as Mizrahi. Her family had come from Morocco, and she felt that her cultural tradition was not respected by the European Ashkenazi tradition of her fellow Israeli Jews.  We met Palestinian Christians in Bethlehem who practice the ancient tradition of mediation called Sulha. We met Sufi Muslims in Nazareth who use their own spiritual ways to work for peace. We saw Israeli Ethiopians in Jerusalem, Sudanese refugees in Tel Aviv, and Bedouin tribesmen in the Negev. The latter bear arms for the Israeli military but may not stay on their ancestral lands.

We did not, admittedly, have occasion to meet any Palestinian officials, representing either Fatah or HAMAS. Instead, we were hosted in Palestinian peace centers and women’s cooperatives. We spent the night under the roof of a Palestinian olive grove farmer in the village of Duma. His ancestors had taken care of olive trees since time immemorial, and he planned to do the same. The prize-winning documentary, Five Broken Cameras, records five years of non-violent resistance in the village of Bi’lin.

We also met Israelis dedicated to peace and justice. We spoke to Rabbis for Human Rights who oppose demolitions in Jerusalem and the destruction of olive groves in the West Bank. We met a member of the Jerusalem City Council who struggles to obtain funds for the neglected schools and healthcare centers of East Jerusalem, where the Palestinians live. We met with people at the Gush Shalom Center in Tel Aviv. The current political environment does not make their work easy, but they struggle on. 

We also visited several Israeli settlements. But before reporting on our conversations with the settlers, I need to say something about the ancient religious aura of Jerusalem and the rest of “the holy land.” To enter the Holy Sepulcher which encloses Golgotha, the mountain where Jesus is said to have been crucified and which was founded by Emperor Constantine in the fourth century, or to gaze at the magnificent Dome of the Rock, or to watch Orthodox Jews praying so fervently at the West Wall – is to see people’s longing, in touching these old stones, to touch the immaterial.

You will note, however, that the Christians and the Muslims have grand monuments to represent their faiths in Jerusalem and elsewhere. The Jews, on the other hand, have largely negative symbols: the Wailing Wall represents not the glory, but the destruction of their holy temple. And this leads me back to the Israeli settlers.

Our first meeting was with a young man who occupies a house initially owned by Palestinians in East Jerusalem, and which now displays a towering Israeli flag. He took us to the roof top of this house and made us face one of the great symbols of Islam, the Dome of the Rock.  With much patient and erudite referral to sacred text, he proceeded to “demonstrate” that the Dome of the Rock stood where, according to prophecy, the destroyed Jewish Temple must rise again. The young man did not say in so many words that the Al Aqsa Mosque and the Dome had “to go,” but what other conclusion could we draw?

Our education continued in the settler town of Shilo, out on the West Bank. In contrast to crowded, not-so-clean and very busy Palestinian towns, Shilo is built on a mountain top. Its streets are well paved, the houses are neat and well-spaced, some of them pretty grand, the landscape well maintained, with plenty of room for schools and playgrounds and health clinics. All this is facilitated through government subsidies.

Another young man, who shared with the young man in Jerusalem a kind of inspired eloquence, took us to the temple of Shilo. He explained that it strove to replicate in every detail an ancient temple which had stood on this very mountain top – some 3,000 years ago. So now, to recreate the exact replica of that ancient temple, they had to solve a number of problems. The ancient roof temple had been made of animal skins. Well, after much controversy, they reached a compromise. They did build a real roof, but from the inside they used carpets to make it look like the uneven ceiling of skins. And then there was the issue of lights. There were obviously no electrical lights 3,000 years ago, so they solved that problem by installing just one dim red light. There were more problems. In ancient days there was the practice of animal sacrifice, and there were two poles on either side of the tabernacle, and it was important that the ritually slaughtered animals’ blood flow freely from those poles. The young man assured us that they reached general agreement not to slaughter animals in the temple, but that the two poles were erected as a symbol of those ritual sacrifices.

Do all those ancient imperatives and people’s obvious emotional investment in them obliterate the fact that The Dome of the Rock is sacred to millions of Muslims, or that Shilo and its temple are built on ancient olive groves used to supply the livelihood of surrounding Palestinian villages?

This young man was Chicago born, and our third encounter with settlers was with a woman called Sheri Mandel. She too was American born. She told us how she was raised without much focus on her family’s Jewish antecedents, how she went to an elite college and dated mostly non-Jewish boys. She wrote poetry, joined the feminist movement for a time, and traveled, among other places, to Israel. This proved fateful. It was in Israel that she came to feel that she had finally found her true destination. She married a Rabbi, they moved out into a Settlement in the West Bank, and she gave birth to four children.

And then tragedy struck. Her oldest boy Koby and a friend of his, Josef, failed to come home from school one day.  They were eventually found stoned to death in a cave nearby. This happened during the Second Intifada. Sheri Mandel wrote a book about her plight: The Blessing of a Broken Heart. Sheri is a gifted writer, and her grief comes across more powerfully for being dignified and understated. She and her husband formed a support group for grieving parents. But when we asked her whether her support group welcomed grieving Palestinian parents, she looked surprised. The answer was negative.

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So, what we saw in Palestine is very much like what we know and don’t wish to know right here in our own backyard in urban ghettoes or on Indian reservations or the border with Mexico.  Back in the early days of colonialism, conquest could be sanctioned by pious excuses or simply imposed by force of arms. But we are in the twenty first century now and should be able to recognize that the “promised land” of ancient myth is anachronistic and that “self-determination” is not just about us. We are all “savage” and “civilized” in our own way, and the real Promised Land is our common humanity. If we haven’t learned that from the examples of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., we have learned nothing. And nowadays Rabbi Michael Lerner’s Tikkun Alam path, which means to “mend the world” in Hebrew, is equally inspiring and promising.

Thus, the struggle over the future of Israel and Palestine points right back at us and to our own halls of power. The passion of American Jews for the right of Israel to exist is both understandable and justified. But it doesn’t follow that Israel can violate elementary laws of human rights in the name of security or Biblical prophecy. The Palestinians too deserve our passion for peace and justice and human dignity. 

Our Unitarian Universalist symbol of the lighted chalice harks back to the days when a group of determined UUs organized the rescue of Jews out of Germany. Let it now shine the light on the suffering of the Palestinians.