Credit where credit is due. Readers of this website will know that I am bitterly dismayed by the attitude of the Church of England towards Israel, and by some of the remarks made by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, about the Middle East. I have also written about the deeply alarming axis between radical Palestinian revisionist theology and a revived replacement theology within the Church of England, which is fuelling not just anti-Israel but anti-Jewish hatred.

All of that still remains the case. Last month, Rowan Williams delivered an address on the subject of Israel at the Sabeel conference in Jerusalem. Now the Sabeel centre is the cradle of Palestinian 'liberation' theology and the poisonous doctrines that twist Scripture to enlist God in the ungodly cause of vilifying Israel and the Jews. Not surprisingly, its conference speakers' list was a roll-call of Jew-haters and Israel-baiters.

It was all the more remarkable, then, that Dr Williams gave the address that he did. For although what he said was, by the standards of any objective observer of the Israel tragedy, at best culpably naive (of which, more anon), by the warped standards of the audience he was addressing some of his remarks took real courage.

For he delivered, in effect, a stern rebuke to the fundamental Sabeel-type doctrine -- which has infected much of the Church -- that the Jewish state is illegitimate and the Jews have forfeited their covenant with God. In any sane universe, it would be extraordinary to have to reaffirm both the legitimacy of a democratic state set up half a century ago, as well as the Biblical status of the Jewish people. But in the dire political context in which Dr Williams was speaking, it was welcome that he reaffirmed these 'realities':

'...the Jewish people considered as bearers of the covenant and witnesses to God's revealed justice, and the state of Israel, a contemporary and secular political reality which is also seen as the homeland for 'Israel under God', the sole place in the world where the Jewish people have guaranteed place.'

It was welcome that he should say this:

'The community of faithful Jewish people committed to justice and wisdom in the world today, as a community consciously living before God, has its rationale in the calling to embody justice and wisdom; to have a homeland in which to exercise the political virtue this involves is an intelligible requirement, especially in the light of a history in which this liberty has been systematically denied for so many centuries by Western Christians. To be hospitable, you must have a home.'

...and this:

'Scripture presents us with many texts about how God chastises his people through the intervention of other nations. Yet it is always clear in the prophets that others should beware of assuming a divine right to chastise on God's behalf. Attacks on the existence and liberty of the Jewish people as such are likely to arise from aggression and hatred. God can use this evil, but does not create it. Thus, in the scriptural context, any attempt in the non-Jewish world to set oneself up as the judge and punisher of God's people is, like any act of self-righteous aggression, to be condemned.'

The significance of saying such things to such an audience should not be underestimated. It was all the more frustrating, therefore, that the main point of Dr Williams's address revealed a continuing inability to articulate the correct moral and political response to Israel's predicament. In theological terms, Dr Williams understands the full dimensions of Israel's tragedy extremely well. It is that it is being forced into actions which compromise its moral purpose:

'...if the land has to be defended by ceaseless struggle which distorts the very fabric of the common life, it ceases to be a 'sacramental' mark of God's calling....Without stable and agreed borders, neither internal stability nor the universal service of external witness to justice can be sustained. The land becomes a prison, not a gift.'

That is very true; it is the trap Israel is in with its continued occupation of the disputed territories. All occupations corrupt. This is why I and many others think that whatever the downside in terms of physical security, it is vital for Israel's continued existence that it withdraws from the bulk of these territories as fast as possible. But the downside is indeed very considerable; and this is where the Archbishop and I part company. He says:

'The state of Israel has had to sustain its existence against enemies who would not grant its right to exist. But the problem increasingly lies less with aggressive neighbours than with a failure to tackle the underlying issues about regional stability. Which is why so many Israeli commentators will say that life in Israel today threatens to become just such a prison, as the spiral of overwhelming violent reaction to the indiscriminate violence of suicide bombings and the consequent desperate anxiety over security creates more and more barriers and walls.'

Yes, Israel is trapped inside such a prison. Yes, living inside barriers and walls is appalling -- and probably ineffectual. But living like this is not Israel's choice. It is being forced to do so because it has no alternative. The war of existence waged against it continuously for the past half century has not, as Dr Williams imagines, ended. It has merely taken Palestinian hostages in a wildly successful propaganda exercise to conceal its true aim. Israel's response to the indiscriminate slaughter being perpetrated against it is not, as Dr Williams would have it, 'overwhelming violent'. Given that Israel's truly overwhelming might has never been unleashed, its response is notable for its overwhelming restraint -- as can be seen from an attrition rate to the Israel Defence Force during its house-to-house operations that would never be tolerated by any other country. Yes, causing suffering to the innocent is appalling -- which is why so many in Israel, and so many Jews round the world are so deeply conflicted about Israel's policies. But such suffering is not caused deliberately. Nor is the following true:

'Fear and instability erode law; which is why indiscriminate slaughter, the suicide bombs, are so terrible for the soul of Israel (as well as the soul of Palestine), pushing it further towards a defensiveness that sits light to national and international law and inexorably undermines 'wisdom' in its policy and polity.'

But Israel has not defied national or international law. Internally, it is bound by the decisions of a Supreme Court which is perhaps the most independent-minded and human-rights obsessed in the world. Externally, all its actions -- including the occupation, house demolition, targeted killings and the rest -- are permitted under international law. We may recoil from them, but international law is very clear that where land, houses or people are used to kill the citizens of a state, that state has a right to defend its citizens by doing what it must against such land, houses or people. Israel is engaged in a war of survival; and war is always dirty, brutal and unpleasant. The claim of illegality is simply a lie told over and over again by Arab propagandists -- along with the persistent misrepresentation of UN resolutions -- and unfortunately believed by Dr Williams.

This is why the essence of his argument is so deeply unfair and upsetting. For his fundamental point is that the Jewish state is covenanted to God to behave as a moral example to the rest of the world. Therefore, since it is not adhering to these principles the rest of the world is entitled to call Israel to account for its dereliction of this duty:

'It would be the bitterest irony if the state of Israel were simply encouraged to subvert its own moral essence in order to survive, encouraged and enabled to become not a paradigm for the nations but a nation deeply caught in the same traps of violence and self-interest that affect us all. But if this is not to happen, we need far greater political will in engaging Israel in the most searching and critical reflection on its practice, and involving those, Jewish and Palestinian, who acknowledge what their responsibility in faith and conscience is for the creation of peace.'

To which one must say a number of things. Israel is indeed in moral peril. That is why it must leave the territories. Nevertheless, in behaving with conspicuous self-restraint -- despite the vicious lies, libels, distortions, omissions and fabrications which form the propaganda and media prism through which Dr Williams and countless others view its predicament -- it has indeed tried to uphold, in circumstances which sorely test it, those Jewish moral precepts to which Dr Williams draws attention.

The implicit suggestion that if Israel fails in this endeavour it negates the basis on which God entrusted the land to the Jews and therefore compromises its legitimacy is to conflate theology with politics. Israel was not created to realise God's commandments. It was created because the world accepted that, after what it had done to the Jews, they needed a national refuge from it; and that refuge should obviously be in their ancient homeland. It was not created to be a nation unlike any other nation, but a nation like any other nation. In other words, its existence was not to be made conditional upon its behaviour, any more than is that of any other state.

That behaviour is not perfect, by any means. But in the circumstances, it is by any fair-minded, objective yardstick generally moral and heroic. Using Israel's own moral predicament as a stick with which to beat it can become, in the hands of outsiders, an excuse to hold it to account for standards which in the circumstances cannot reasonably be met, and therefore -- wittingly or unwittingly -- plays into the hands of those who wish Israel to be exterminated.

Dr Williams does not want that to happen. He declares himself to be an unequivocal supporter of Israel's existence. More than that, he showed in his Sabeel speech to be engaged in an anguished process of trying to reconcile that support with a concern to uphold moral principles and respect for the rights of all. His impulse is generous and should be supported and encouraged. But just as he suggests that friends of Israel have a duty to point out to it the mistakes it is making, so friends of the Church have a duty to point out to it the mistakes it is making. Those mistakes are tragically shared by many others -- amongst them a number of influential Jews and Iraelis, no less -- who for various different reasons have swallowed the Big Lie about Israel, which by definition they cannot recognise. Until and unless men of God are recalled to the political truth about the Middle East, there is scant hope that anyone else will follow.

Posted by melanie at May 31, 2004