WHAT CHRISTIANS DON'T KNOW ABOUT ISRAEL

WHAT CHRISTIANS DON'T KNOW ABOUT ISRAEL
By Grace Halsell

American Jews sympathetic to Israel dominate key positions in all areas of
our government where decisions are made regarding the Middle East. This
being the case, is there any hope of ever changing U.S. policy? President
Bill Clinton as well as most members of Congress supported Israel - and they
know why. U.S. Jews sympathetic to Israel donate lavishly to their
campaign coffers. The answer to achieving an even-handed Middle East policy
might lie elsewhere - among those who support Israel but don't really know
why. This group is the vast majority of Americans. They are well-meaning,
fair-minded Christians who feel bonded to Israel - and Zionism - often from
atavistic feelings, in some cases dating from childhood. I am one of those.
I grew up listening to stories of a mystical, allegorical, spiritual
Israel. This was before a modern political entity with the same name
appeared on our maps. I attended Sunday School and watched an instructor
draw down window-type shades to show maps of the Holy Land. I imbibed
stories of a Good and Chosen people who fought against their Bad "un Chosen"
enemies.

In my early 20s, I began traveling the world, earning my living as a writer.
I came to the subject of the Middle East rather late in my career. I was
sadly lacking in knowledge regarding the area. About all I knew was what I
had learned in Sunday School. And typical of many U.S. Christians, I somehow
considered a modern state created in 1948 as a homeland for Jews persecuted
under the Nazis as a replica of the spiritual, mystical Israel I heard about
as a child. When in 1979 I initially went to Jerusalem, I planned to write
about the three great monotheistic religions and leave out politics. "Not
write about politics?" scoffed one Palestinian, smoking a water pipe in the
Old Walled City. "We eat politics, morning, noon and night!" As I would
learn, the politics is about land, and the co-claimants to that land: the
indigenous Palestinians who have lived there for 2,000 years and the Jews
who started arriving in large numbers after the Second World War. By living
among Israeli Jews as well as Palestinian Christians and Muslims, I saw,
heard, smelled, experienced the police state tactics Israelis use against
Palestinians. My research led to a book entitled Journey to Jerusalem. My
journey not only was enlightening to me as regards Israel, but also I came
to a deeper, and sadder, understanding of my own country. I say sadder
understanding because I began to see that, in Middle East politics, we the
people are not making the decisions, but rather that supporters of Israel
are doing so. And typical of most Americans, I tended to think the U.S.
media was "free" to print news impartially.
"It shouldn't be published. It's anti-Israel."

In the late 1970s, when I first went to Jerusalem, I was unaware that
editors could and would classify "news" depending on who was doing what to
whom. On my initial visit to Israel-Palestine, I had interviewed dozens of
young Palestinian men. About one in four related stories of torture. Israeli
police had come in the night, dragged them from their beds and placed hoods
over their heads. Then in jails the Israelis had kept them in isolation,
besieged them with loud, incessant noises, hung them upside down and had
sadistically mutilated their genitals. I had not read such stories in the
U.S. media. Wasn't it news? Obviously, I naively thought, U.S. editors
simply didn't know it was happening.

On a trip to Washington, DC, I hand-delivered a letter to Frank Mankiewicz,
then head of the public radio station WETA. I explained I had taped
interviews with Palestinians who had been brutally tortured. And I'd make
them available to him. I got no reply. I made several phone calls.
Eventually I was put through to a public relations person, a Ms. Cohen, who
said my letter had been lost. I wrote again. In time I began to realize
what I hadn't known: had it been Jews who were strung up and tortured, it
would be news. But interviews with tortured Arabs were "lost" at WETA. The
process of getting my book Journey to Jerusalem published also was a
learning experience. Bill Griffin, who signed a contract with me on behalf
of MacMillan Publishing Company, was a former Roman Catholic priest. He
assured me that no one other than himself would edit the book. As I
researched the book, making several trips to Israel and Palestine, I met
frequently with Griffin, showing him sample chapters. "Terrific," he said of
my material.

The day the book was scheduled to be published, I went to visit MacMillan's.
Checking in at a reception desk, I spotted Griffin across a room, cleaning
out his desk. His secretary Margie came to greet me. In tears, she
whispered for me to meet her in the ladies room. When we were alone, she
confided, "He's been fired." She indicated it was because he had signed a
contract for a book that was sympathetic to Palestinians. Griffin, she
said, had no time to see me.

Later, I met with another MacMillan official, William Curry. "I was told to
take your manuscript to the Israeli Embassy, to let them read it for
mistakes," he told me. "They were not pleased. They asked me, 'You are not
going to publish this book, are you?' I asked, 'Were there mistakes?' 'Not
mistakes as such. But it shouldn't be published. It's anti-Israel.'"

Somehow, despite obstacles to prevent it, the presses had started rolling.
After its publication in 1980, I was invited to speak in a number of
churches. Christians generally reacted with disbelief. Back then, there was
little or no coverage of Israeli land confiscation, demolition of
Palestinian homes, wan ton arrests and torture of Palestinian civilians.
Speaking of these injustices, I invariably heard the same question, "How
come I didn't know this?" Or someone might ask, "But I haven't read about
that in my newspaper." To these church audiences, I related my own learning
experience, that of seeing hordes of U.S. correspondents covering a
relatively tiny state. I pointed out that I had not seen so many reporters
in world capitals such as Beijing, Moscow, London, Tokyo, Paris. Why did a
small state with a population of only four million warrant more reporters
than China, with a billion people?

I also linked this query with my findings that The New York Times , The Wall
Street Journal, The Washington Post - and most of our nation's print media -
are owned and/or controlled by Jews supportive of Israel. It was for this
reason, I deduced, that they sent so many reporters to cover Israel - and to
do so largely from the Israeli point of view.

My learning experiences also included coming to realize how easily I could
lose a Jewish friend if I criticized the Jewish state. I could with impunity
criticize France, England, Russia, even the United States, and any aspect
of life in America. But not the Jewish state. I lost more Jewish friends
than one after the publication of Journey to Jerusalem - all sad losses for
me and one, perhaps, saddest of all.

In the 1960s and 1970s, before going to the Middle East, I had written about
the plight of blacks in a book entitled "Soul Sister", and the plight of
American Indians in a book entitled "Bessie Yellowhair", and the problems
endured by undocumented workers crossing from Mexico in "The Illegals".
These books had come to the attention of the "mother" of The New York
Times, Mrs. Arthur Hays Sulzberger. Her father had started the newspaper,
then her husband ran it, and in the years that I knew her, her son was the
publisher. She invited me to her fashionable apartment on Fifth Avenue for
lunches and dinner parties. And, on many occasions, I was a weekend guest at
her Greenwich, Conn. home. She was liberal-minded and praised my efforts to
speak for the underdog, even going so far in one letter to say, "You are the
most remarkable woman I ever knew." I had little concept that from being
buoyed so high I could be dropped so suddenly when I discovered - from her
point of view - the "wrong" underdog.

As it happened, I was a weekend guest in her spacious Connecticut home when
she read bound galleys of Journey to Jerusalem. As I was leaving, she handed
the galleys back with a saddened look: "My dear, have you forgotten the
Holocaust?" She felt that what happened in Nazi Germany to Jews several
decades earlier should silence any criticism of the Jewish state. She could
focus on a holocaust of Jews while negating a modern day holocaust of
Palestinians. Iphigene Sulzberger had not only invited me to her home to
meet her famous friends but, also at her suggestion, The Times had
requested articles. I wrote op-ed articles on various subjects including
American blacks, American Indians as well as undocumented workers. Since
Mrs. Sulzberger and other Jewish officials at the Times highly praised my
efforts to help these groups of oppressed peoples. The dichotomy became
apparent : most "liberal" U.S.Jews stand on the side of all poor and
oppressed peoples save one - the Palestinians. How handily these liberal
Jewish opinion-molders tend to diminish the Palestinians, to make them
invisible, or to categorize them all as "terrorists." I realized, quite
painfully, that our friendship was ending.

Interestingly, Iphigene Sulzberger had talked to me a great deal about her
father, Adolph S. Ochs. She told me that he was not one of the early
Zionists. He had not favored the creation of a Jewish state. Yet,
increasingly, American Jews have fallen victim to Zionism, a nationalistic
movement that passes for many as a religion. While the ethical instructions
of all great religions - including the teachings of Moses, Muhammad and
Christ - stress that all human beings are equal, militant Zionists take the
position that the killing of a non-Jew does not count.

Over five decades now, Zionists have killed Palestinians with impunity. And
in the 1996 shelling of a U.N. base in Qana, Lebanon, the Israelis killed
more than 100 civilians sheltered there. As an Israeli journalist, Arieh
Shavit, explains of the massacre, "We believe with absolute certitude that
right now, with the White House in our hands, the Senate in our hands and
The New York Times in our hands, the lives of others do not count the same
way as our own." Israelis today, explains the anti-Zionist Jew Israel
Shahak, "are not basing their religion on the ethics of justice. They do not
accept the Old Testament as it is written. Rather, religious Jews turn to
the Talmud. For them, the Talmudic Jewish laws become 'the Bible'. And the
Talmud teaches that a Jew can kill a non- Jew with impunity."

In the teachings of Christ, there was a break from such Talmudic teachings.
He sought to heal the wounded, to comfort the downtrodden. The danger, of
course, for U.S. Christians is that having made an icon of Israel, we fall
into a trap of condoning whatever Israel does - even wanton murder - as
orchestrated by God.

Yet, I am not alone in suggesting that the churches in the United States
represent the last major organized support for Palestinian rights. This
imperative is due in part to our historic links to the Land of Christ and
in part to the moral issues involved with having our tax dollars fund
Israeli-government-approved violations of human rights.

While Israel and its dedicated U.S. Jewish supporters know they have the
president and most of Congress in their hands, they worry about grassroots
America - the well-meaning Christians who care for justice. Thus far, most
Christians were unaware of what it was they didn't know about Israel. They
were indoctrinated by U.S. supporters of Israel in their own country and
when they traveled to the Land of Christ most all did so under Israeli
sponsorship. That being the case, it was unlikely a Christian ever met a
Palestinian or learned what caused the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

This is gradually changing, however. And this change disturbs the Israelis.
As an example, delegates attending a Christian Sabeel conference in
Bethlehem earlier this year said they were harassed by Israeli security at
the Tel Aviv airport. "They asked us," said one delegate, "'Why did you use
a Palestinian travel agency? Why didn't you use an Israeli agency?'" The
interrogation was so extensive and hostile that Sabeel leaders called a
special session to brief the delegates on how to handle the harassment.
Obviously, said one delegate, "The Israelis have a policy to discourage us
from visiting the Holy Land except under their sponsorship. They don't want
Christians to start learning all they have never known about Israel."

Washington, DC-based writer Grace Halsell is the author of 14 books,
including Journey to Jerusalem and Prophecy and Politics.