I had an unpleasant social evening the other night and have to accuse myself of being the cause. In fact my host assured me I was the initiator of the trouble, the aggressor, and that all he was doing was insisting on his right to his own opinions and his right to reject mine. And furthermore, he said, he was totally disinterested in what I was talking about.
Of course when you reach that sort of distressing moment at what was supposed to be an amiable private dinner in friends’ house, things are very bad. Almost immediately I saw I was at fault, a view that sober reflection confirmed hours later. And on the spot I began backing out and down and trying to restore peace and civility for all four of us.
I had introduced not one but both of the topics classically forbidden at social events (so I once learned and had ignored in this instance). I had talked of a current situation that involves both religion and politics. I was really after information I thought my host could provide, and I picked almost the worst way and time to get it.
I had asked him about the issue of Christian evangelicals and support for Israel. I guess I got my answer after some fashion, but I still don’t know what it really was, beyond the anger that I had even dared raise the issue in his home.
I started with the distinction among Christians between "the rapture is near" fans, and those who think that is more or less pseudo-biblical baloney. Then I went to the subject of support for Israel in its current rampage.
I simply do not now know whether my host would agree with me that the Israeli attack on the Palestinian lands violates every concept of "civilized warfare" (if there is such a thing); or whether my host’s position like that of many evangelicals (he would probably not find offensive the label "right-wing" Protestant Christian) is apparently the opposite. Or he has no opinion at all. And of course on the social level I had no right to ask or to know. It’s his business, as my view is mine.
I forgive myself (only a little bit) because I do find the whole thing about American attitudes toward the Middle East mess equal parts puzzling and repugnant. As Charley Reese has pointed out, the situation in the Holy Land is not a contest of equals. It is tanks, trained soldiers, superb weaponry, F-16s, and helicopter gunship-all paid for by us U.S. taxpayers with the one-sixth of all our aid to foreign nations that we send to Israel-against civilians and guerillas, a.k.a. terrorists, with rifles and explosives in belts or backpacks for suicide missions.
I seem to recall that Genghis Khan or Tamerlane, or some other one of the terrible folk who have "left a name at which the world grew pale to point a moral or adorn a tale," is famed for having wiped out whole cities, such that hardly even the name of them has come down in history. And one of the (Christian) Crusades pillaged (Christian) Constantinople so that "the streets ran with blood." Contemporary Christians are reminded of this often, and none defend it any longer.
But evidently many Christians defend what is going on in Israel and Palestine today as a sort of "manifest destiny" or a part of God’s plan for the human race. I think not. And frankly I question the probity of people who do acquiesce. It may have been that implication in my remarks that set my host off. (And it may not.)
I have long followed Gary North (a writer of tremendous scope and energy) in his explication of postmillennialism as against premillennialism, dispensationalism, amillennialism, and so on. I have his book, Millennialism and Social Theory, where the whole confusing thing is set out in great detail. I have followed North, that is to say, as much as I am able, although I admit I still have to think hard to tell you how each of these positions differs from the others.
The Latinate terms for eschatological (sorry, another big one) theories came into heavy use fairly recently among Protestants trying to discern the end times. The Catholic position all along has been (I think I’m right, but I walk warily) approximately what is now called amillennialism, that is, we do not know when the Second Coming will be, the Last Judgment and the end of the world, but we should concentrate on being ready for our own personal judgment at our death.
The dispensationalist premillennialist (can anything good come of using such long, ugly words?) believes the "rapture" is immanent, Christ will return suddenly, with a trump, and all good Christians will drive their SUV’s straight to heaven without dying, leaving behind Israel to begin a seven years’ "Great Tribulation." But in order for this to happen, "real soon now," there must be an Israel in existence. And that explains, at least partly, the enormous pressure on the GOP and its standard bearer, Geo. W. Bush, to shore up the government of Israel, send it arms, and not be too pouty when its top man, Sharon, thumbs his nose.
This would be funny except for the blood that is flowing. I refer to the massacre of Jenin, and I quote a sensitive and fair but very tough Israeli (he is that, if I am any judge of writing that hits its mark) Uri Averny, in an article, "Immortal heroes of Jenin," posted on lewrockwell.com April 18, and written originally for the Israeli newspaper Ma’ariv and then picked up by the Guardian (UK):
In the small refugee camp near Jenin, a group of Palestinian fighters from all the organizations gathered for a battle of defense that will be enshrined forever in the hearts of all Arabs. This is the Palestinian Massada, as an Israeli officer called it, alluding to the legendary stand of the remnants of the great Jewish rebellion against Rome in 71 AD.
When the international media cannot be kept out any more and the pictures of horror are published, two possible versions may emerge: Jenin as a story of massacre, a second Sabra and Shatila; and Jenin, the Palestinian Stalingrad, a story of immortal heroism. The second will surely prevail.
Nations are built on myths. I was raised on the myths of Massada and Tel-Chai. They formed the consciousness of the new Hebrew nation. (At Tel-Chai, in 1920, a group of Jewish defenders, led by the one-armed hero Josef Trumpeldor, were killed in an incident with anti-French Syrian fighters.) The myths of Jenin and Arafat’s compound in Ramallah will form the consciousness of the new Palestinian nation.
There speaks a true soldier and patriot, a man who understands, because he has come close to it himself, why people stand up and die rather than succumb. Averny has, I think, nailed it. Sharon is burying Israel, its idealism, its founding myth, the glory of those who built it up. At the same time Sharon is as, Averny says, the founder of a new and greater Palestine.
Averny has the true warrior’s admiration for a brave enemy; he belongs, I say, to the natural class that the old Vedic caste system called Kshatriyas, defenders of the realm. He speaks with authority. Here are his bio lines:
"Uri Averny is co-founder of Israel’s Guah Shalom (Peace Coalition). Born in Germany he emigrated to Palestine in 1933 and joined the Irgun underground movement in 1948. He was a member of an Israeli commando unit and was wounded on the Egyptian front. As a journalist and political activist, he has long been a campaigner for Palestinian rights. . . ."
I salute him as a member of my own generation and a fellow campaigner for peace among men.
April 24, 2002
