Purely Commentary
Non-Proselytizing Approach to Zionist Idea
Pastoral Bible Institute and its magazine,
the Herald of Christ's Kingdom, on several
occasions emphasized Israel's historic rights
to the Holy Land, the inerasable proof in-
herent in prophecy and the unending links
between the Jewish people and its ancient
homeland.
Emphasizing anew its concern in the
matter and its deep-rooted convictions, the
Pastoral Bible Institute has just announced
the distribution of a pamphlet, "Israel and
the Middle East," in which, the announce-
ment of its publication states, "is an at-
tempt to relate current developments in the
Middle East to Bible prophecy." The an-
nouncement declares:"The booklet is non-
proselytizing. Not only is the name of Jesus
not mentioned; the booklet makes reference
exclusively to the Old Testament."
Simultaneously, in its September-October
Issue, the Herald of Christ's Kingdom called
an article, signed by P. L. Read, one of the
magazine's editors, "Israel Today." It was
prefaced by this quotation from Zachariah
8:7,8:
"Thus saith the Lord of hosts: Behold,
I will save my people from the east
_country, and from the west country;
And I will bring them, and they shall
dwell in the midst of Jerusalem; and they
shall be my people, and I will be their
God, in truth and in righteousness."
Read's essay touches upon historical
data that annoys Israel's enemies who con-
tend that the Israelis are seeking territorial
expansion. The fact is that Israel would
have been content with the little that was
alloted under the partition plan in 1948, but
an Arab-inspirted war, with the threat to
deny to Israel even the minute territory,
resulted in Israel's acquiring borders that
were vital to the state's existence. This,
too, was the result of the Six-Day War. The
probem now is of territorial adjustment.
something that is attainable if the Arab
potentates will only consent to sit with Is-
rael and to discuss the Middle East situa-
tion reasonable.
Read's views have much significance
and we quote his "Israel Today" article:
In the July-August issue of The
Herald, we noted that one of the ways
of explaining the prophecies of a Res-
toration is to represent them as having
had their fulfillment at the restoration
from Babylon.
On page 57 of that Herald issue, we
submitted three of the reasons which
compel us to reject this interpretation.
Those three reasons were:
(1) The Restoration promised was
to include the entire twelve tribes, re-
united in one kingdom.
(2) After the Restoration predicted,
Israel is to enjoy, not only national in-
dependence, but national supremecy.
(3) The Restoration promised is to
be a "second" restoration. Its extent is
to be worldwide. It is to be followed
by no further dispersions, and is, there-
fore to be permanent.
Below we submit two additional
reasons.
(1) The prophecies of a Restoration
were reiterated after the restoration from
Babylon.
One such reiteration is that from
Zechariah, given at the head of this
article. In this connection, attention is
drawn to the instructive comment from
the pen of Dr. A. W. Kac, on page 41
of his Rebirth of the State of Israel:
The significance of this prophecy
lies in the fact that it was written by
Zechariah, one of the three prophets
who lived in Palestine following the
termination of Babylonian Exile. Baby-
lon is not even mentioned here. This
prediction of a return from the East
and the West, coming as it did after
the ingathering of the Babylonian Exile
had already taken place, certainly im-
plies another Restoration."
(2) The extent of the land promised
has not yet been possessed.
Even today, Palestine may truthfully
be said to be "The Land of Promise,"
having never yet been possessed in all
its promised length and bredth. In
the January-February Herald, in an
article by A. 0. Hudson, attention was
drawn to four title deeds and the state-
ment was made (page 10) that "the
territory . . . includes not only con-
temporary Israel but the whole of the
state of Jordan and parts of Egypt,
Arabia, Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq. There
must obviously be a considerable poli-
tical adjustment of frontiers to be ef-
fected bfeore the Holy Land assumes
the shape foreseen in the Pentateuch."
Sometimes the Land of Promise is
spoken of as extending "from Dan to
Beersheba." However, John Wilkin-
son, in Israel My Glory, tells us that
"this comprises only about twenty-
eight or thirty thousand square miles."
Dr. Alx Keith, author of Evidences of
Prophecy, has given us the results of
his personal investigations and measure-
ments in his book called The Land of
Israel, according to which the extent
of the promised land is 300,000 square
miles.
Now this as John Wilkinson has
observed in Israel My Glory, "is twice
and a half as large as Great Britian
and Ireland together. . . . Now it is
admitted that all of the promised land
was under tribute to both David and
Solomon, but not actually possessed.
Israel must have in possession every
inch of land God has promised, but
Israel has possessed only about one
tenth of what God has promised; we
therefore naturally infer a future res-
toration of Israel."
* s
To many, like those of the Pastoral Bible
Institute, the old lines, boundaries dating
back to King David's time, must eventually
be honored. But this is not the Israeli am-
bition. The incentive among Israelis is for a
lasting, peace, for neighborly amity. Ap-
parently even now borders are adjustable.
But to adjust and to come to terms those
who are in the Middle East must be on
speaking terms. The Arabs will have to
learn it sooner or later, and we pray for
the earliest possibilites for such conditions.
But because there is the lasting antagon-
ism, the enmity that leads those who seek
Israel's destruction to claim that Israel
doesn't have any rights at all in the Middle
American Jewish Committee's New Image in World of Challenge
There is an intriguing story of vast advancement in the activities of the American
Jewish Committee during the past three decades. They will be observable at the im-
portant meetings of the national executive committee of the organization taking place
here this weekend.
AJCommittee had been during the early years of its existence a rather conservative
movement. While it was not anti-Zionist, it certainly was the non-Zionist front among
the opponents of the political movement that aimed at Jewish statehood in the land
of Israel.
Conditions began to change with Louis Marshall's partnership with Dr. Chaim
Weizmann in the Jewish Agency for Palestine, in 1929. Mr. Marshall died in Switzer-
land while these negotiations for joint efforts in support of Jewish colonization in the
Holy Land were in progress between the Zionist and non-Zionist elements. For a time
there was a lull in pro-Zionist activities. But in San Francisco, in 1945, during the
formation of the United Nations organization, there was a resumption of efforts.
In the past decade, the new leadership of the American Jewish Committee has been
most effective in labors in support of Israel; in defense of the rights of oppressed Jews
behind the Iron Curtain and in Moslem countries; in opposition to anti-Semitic and pro-
Arab propaganda in this country and whatever the committee's efforts could bring
results.
There is a score of evidential reasons for acclaim of the AJCommittee's labors
through the recent years, its work in the fields of research, its accumulation of data on
major issues affecting world Jewish communities.
Even the former opponents of the AJCommittee, who, like this commentator, had
been associates with the American Jewish Congress since the formation of the AJCon-
gress by Mr. Justice Louis D. Brandeis, Pinhas Routtenberg and their associates, now
un-grudgingly commend the AJCommittee for tasks well done. The Detroit meetings
are timely as approaches to advanced labors in the defense of Jewish rights and the
democratic way of life wherever it can be inrtoduced and enforced. We greet the
leadership from the AJCommittee at their meetings her ewith best wishes for success
in their deliberations.
2—Friday, October 24, 1969
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
Christian Theologians Review Israel's
Role, Emphasize Prophetic Heritage of
the People of Israle to the Land of Israel
By Philip
Slomovitz
East, it is important that the Christian be in a major article in the Reconstructionist
known. The Herald of Christ's Kingdom ("Arabs and Jews: From Dilemma to Prob-
keeps stating it. Another non-Jewish atti- lem," October 6, 1967), has expressed the
tude was expressed recently in an article, belief that time Israeli government has not
"The Middle East Conflict: A Christian done enough for its Arab citizens. Zionism
Perspective," that appeared in Worldview, has fundamentally represented an attempt
a monthly published by the Council on Re- to insure Jewish survival (and what is
ligion and International Affairs. The author wrong with wanting to survive?) through
of the article is John T. Pawlikowski, the concept of a nation-state. Now there is
O.S.M. Father Pawlikowski teaches ethics nothing sacred about the nation-state con-
and history at the Catholic Theological cept. I certainly stand with those who see
Union in Chicago. His article giving the the need for a movement towards a more
global form of government. But realistically,
Christian perspective follows:
Leo Tolstoy once remarked that "certain
questions are put to mankind, not that
711C11 should answer them, but that they
should go on trying." The highly com-
plex Middle East situation in which we
must deal with the rights of Jews and
Arabs against the background of a power
struggle between a Russia and an Amer-
ica with nuclear weapons often seems to be
one of those questions. I do not here
propose to offer any final answer. But I
will try to state clearly what I conceive
to be some misconceptions blocking a
solution.
A political solution which does not con-
sider the question of the rights of the
local people is:not morally justified. But
neither is a solution which appeals to
moral principals but lacks political and
historical sophistication. To begin to eval-
uate the Middle East situation from a
moral point of view, I believe the following
considerations are essential.
1. As a Catholic, I am seriously dis-
turbed by the continued lack of recogni-
tion of the state of Israel by the Vatican.
This is a source of some irritation to the
Israeli government, and rightly so. I an
not at all convinced the Vatican should
be involved in the diplomatic game of
recognizing governments. But it so hap-
pens that it now is and there is no im-
mediate change in the forseeable future.
And the recent visit of Prsident Nixon to
the Pope underlines the Vatican's continued
importance. I strongly suspect that the
traditional theology of Christianity which
relegated Jews to a life of perpetual
wandering for the death of the Messiah,
played an important role in the original
decision not to recognize Israel. This was
the reply given by Cardinal Merry de Val,
then secretary of state, to Theodor Herzl,
the founder of modern political Zionism,
when Herzl came to the Vatican to speak
about a Jewish national homeland. There
is still residue of this theological anti-
Semitism present in the Vatican according
to Father Cornelius Rijk,.head of the Vat-
ican Secretariat for Catholic-Jewish Rela-
tions. But the principal reason given for
non-recognition today is fear of reprisal
by Arab governments against their minority
Catholic population. The fear may be real.
Yet I' feel that the justice of the larger
situation demands that the Vatican take
a risk and abandon its narrow internal
Catholic concern. Some may ask what value
papal recognition would have at present
given the current esteem of papal pro-
nouncements in many quarters of Cathol-
icism. I feel the principal value would lie
in increased pressure on the thirteen or
so other so-called Catholic nations (princi-
pally Latin nations) that have refused to
recognize Israel because of the Vatican
attitude. This lack of recognition frequently
constitutes a difficult problem for Israel
at the United Nations where she must some-
times deal with the Security Council, a
majority of whose members do not rec-
ognize her. Vatican recognition would also
remove the lingering impression that there
is something immoral about the very exis-
tence of the state of Israel.
2. Christians must become much clearer
in their notion of the recent history of
the Middle East and of Zionism in parti-
cular before making any moral judgements
on the current situation. The American
Christian majority has, on the whole, been
deprived of any real knowledge of modern
Middle Eastern history because of the pre-
occupation of our educational system with
American and Western European history.
This situation should be corrected. Many
Americans have learned that Zionism is a
dirty word, that it is synonymous with mili-
tarism and expansionism. Zionism is any-
thing but a rigid univocal concept. Once it
is granted that a Jewish national homeland
is vital to Jewish survival, Zionism takes
on different meanings for different Jews.
This has been the case from the very be-
ginning of modern Zionism. Herzl's views
were not fully shared by Ahad-ha-Am, Mar-
tin Buber or Labor Zionism. And there is
hardly complete agreement in Israel or in
the diaspora on what Israel's policy should
be today. An Israeli such as Jack J. Cohen,
that day is not yet with us. How many
Americans are willing at present to relin-
quish some of their sovereignty to a world
or regional government? Until we are will-
ing to do this, I fail to see how one can
suggest, as some Christian writers have,
that the Israeli preoccupation with nation.
hood is somewhat philosophically and polit-
ically old hat. Let us not fall into the trap
of judging Israel by some form of political
eschatology.
3. Christians must begin to take a realis-
tic attitude towards the Israel-United Na-
tions issue. Christian writers have often
given the impression that Israel should
place her fate fully in the hands of the
United Nations. For Israel to act otherwise
would be somehow immoral. I am a strong
supporter of the U.N. and firmly hope that
one day it might become even more im-
portant than at present. But U.N. diplomats
are hardly disinterested humanists. The
dominant factor is still power and a quid
pro quo mentality. And in terms of political
clout at the U.N., time Arabs have power.
Israeli cynicism about the U.N. in the pier
ent crisis is not totally unjustified.
4. The demographic changes resulting
from the U.N. settlements of time British
Palestinian Mandate need to be placed in
proper perspective. Time impression is often
given that Israelis are living on stolen land
which the Western nations granted her as
a guilt offering for time genocide of the
Nazi period. Some deniographic changes
were inevitable in a rational solution of
the mandate issue, changes that affected
both Jews and Arabs. It should be remem-
bered that Jews had been occupying a con-
siderable part of the territory that is now
Israel for years before 1948, having pur-
chased the land through special funds set
up by Zionist leaders. And there has been
a continual Jewish settlenment in time area
from biblical times. Prior to the British
Mandate, the area mans in the hands of the
Turks. The UN partition plan of 1948
called for the creation of an Arab and a
Jewish homeland in Palestine. It -was the
Arabs who rejected the plan. This Arab
refusal has been primarily respormSiblt for
the tremendous suffering endured by the
Palestinian refugees for twenty years.
Here is another vital distinction that one
must make when dealing with rights in the
Middle East. It is not Jordan or Egypt or
Syria or Iraq that have suffered injustice
in Palestine. Only the Palestinians can
make such a claim. And their problems are
due much more to the actions of their Arab
neighbors and to Russia than to Israeli
policy. If the U.N. partition had been ac-
cepted, I am sure the Palestinians (who are
in many ways the most creative and edu-
cated of the Arab peoples) could have a
well-developed national homeland. Instead.,
their rightful homeland is in the haftds of
Jordan (a fact which Palestinian commando
leaders have acknowledged recently in
statements appearing in the Christian Sci-
ence Monitor) and they have been treated
at best as second-class citizens in other Arab
countries which have used the hate-Israel
slogan to cover up internal problems. This
is especially true for the U.A.R., Syria and
Iraq. Jordan has been caught in the middle
of a political squeeze. Left to itself, Jordan
would have made peace with Israel long
ago. I do not believe there can be a morally
justified settlement of the Middle East
problem without the creation of a Palestin-
ian national homeland along the lines of
the 1948 plan, joined perhaps in some sort
of economic union with Israel and Jordan.
And the states have to be politically sepa•
rate. The current Palestinian proposal for
a single Jewish-Palestinian state is unreal-
istic at present.
The major world powers ought to help
the growth of the new Palestinian state in
any way they can, either directly or through
an agency such as the World Bank. Even
from a strictly political viewpoint the Pal-
estinians, through the recent organizational
mergers, are strong enough to prevent any
effective peace in the area if they fail to
receive some form of national identity.
5. Christian writers on occasion have
criticized Israeli actions in such a way that
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