FEATURED JOBS
Comments (0)During Marine Corps Officer Candidate School at Quantico, Virginia, our platoon was marching under the careful watch of our platoon sergeant, a pretty routine activity. “Left, Right, Left… Left, Right, Left,” he called. Something caught his eye and he angrily yelled out, “Get in step, Marine.” One of the guys in our platoon wasn’t in step with the rest of us. The sergeant yelled at him again, but to no avail. I could tell the sergeant was getting angrier by the moment, and this wasn’t going to be good for any of us in the platoon. “I wish that guy would get in step,” I thought. “Come on, already! Get in step or we’ll all be in trouble,” I kept thinking. Moments later I realized I was the one who had been out of step all along. I had been so sure I was right, only to realize that I should have looked to myself first as the problem.
I’ve been reminded of this episode many times since when my hubris left me thinking other people were the problem when I was out-of-step. This kind of thinking is present in many conflicts. In one of today’s great conflicts, the Israel/Palestine conflict, some people are out-of-step and don’t realize it.
The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Middle East Committee has drafted a report on the Israel/Palestine conflict that has some Jewish groups claiming anti-Semitism. Rabbis across the country have been mobilized to speak to their Presbyterian pastor colleagues to denounce the report and its anti-Semitic bent. Something is not right here. On the one hand, we have incredibly caring Jewish organizations devoted to social justice and peace calling Presbyterians anti-Semitic. On the other hand, we have peace-loving Presbyterians devoted to social justice who treasure their good relationships with Jewish people and who are the farthest thing from anti-Semitic. Someone is completely out-of-step and doesn’t realize it.
Presbyterian mission workers on the ground in Palestine have seen the violence and mistreatment Palestinians now face and have called for change. Jewish people, such as Anna Baltzer, have documented the apartheid conditions and have denounced the way Palestinians are treated, too. But American Jewish leaders see these issues in a larger context that makes them realize that such treatment— though regrettable— is justified and necessary.
Let me explain that context. I grew up wholly within the Jewish community, a world in which we Jews saw ourselves under attack from evil Arab people bent on “throwing us into the sea.” We were proud of our moral standards. In the shadow of the Holocaust, we came to a barren Palestine, made it bloom, and in the process made Arabs jealous of our success. We were taught that Arabs started all the wars against us, that they are terrorists, and that in creating Israel we begged Palestinians to stay but they fled to further the killing of Jews. In this context, people understand that all the killing Israel does, as well as the siege of Gaza, is the fault of Palestinians.
Jews who still see the world through this lens are out of touch with reality. Palestine was home to hundreds of thousands of Christian and Muslim Arab men, women and children prior to the creation of Israel. Creating a Jewish state where these people were already living—living in peace with their Jewish Arab neighbors— could not be achieved without getting rid of the native population. Arabs did not start all the wars against Israel, Jewish terrorists groups assassinated people and introduced the bombing of buses and civilian markets, and the Jewish armed forces (the Haganah) expelled entire villages of Christian and Muslim families from their homes. Any doubt about this has been dispelled by Israeli historians who have documented the expulsions and the war plans (Haganah Plan D) that explicitly called for expulsions of men, women and children, destruction of their villages, and the mining of the debris. Presbyterian missionaries on the ground who have met with both Israeli Jews and Muslim and Christian Palestinians have seen that Palestinians aren’t driven by hatred of Jews but by the mistreatment they have suffered at the hands of Israel.
The Jewish State was created at the expense of Christian and Muslim families already living in Palestine. Knowing this, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Middle East Committee report bends over backward to be supportive of Israel while calling for an end to the mistreatment of non-Jewish families in Palestine. The Committee is in step with our shared Jewish, Christian and Muslim values. Hopefully American Jewish organizations will soon recognize that their support for violence and mistreatment of Palestinians has been horribly misplaced.
Dr. Steven Feldman is author of “Compartments: How the Brightest, Best Trained,” and “Most Caring People Can Make Judgments That are Completely and Utterly Wrong”. Both are available at Amazon.com and BN.com). He also is author of “A Jewish American’s Evolving View of Israel,” published by the American Council for Judaism and “A Doctor’s Prescription for Peace with Justice,” published by Americans for Middle East Understanding.