World

U.S.-Israel Ties

Religion remains an integral component in that relationship.

Jerusalem

S

everal prominent scholars have
taken issue with Jimmy Carter's
book Palestine: Peace Not
Apartheid, cataloguing its historical
inaccuracies and lamenting its lack of
balance. The journalist Jeffrey Goldberg
also critiqued the book's theological pur-
pose, which, he asserted, was to "convince
American Evangelicals to reconsider their
support for Israel?'
Carter indeed seems to have a religious
problem with the Jewish state. His book
bewails the fact that Israel is not the rein-
carnation of ancient Judea but a modern,
largely temporal democracy.
"I had long taught lessons from the
Hebrew Scriptures:' he recalls telling
Prime Minister Golda Ivleir during his
first tour through the country. "A corn-
mon historical pattern was that Israel was
punished whenever the leaders turned
away from devout worship of God. I asked
if she was concerned about the secular
nature of the Labor government."
He complains about the fact that the
kibbutz synagogue he enters is nearly
empty on the Sabbath and that the Bibles
presented to Israeli soldiers "was one of
the few indications of a religious commit-
ment that I observed during our visit."
But he also reproves contemporary
Israelis for allegedly mistreating the
Samaritans — "the same complaint heard
by Jesus almost two thousand years ear-
lier" — and for pilfering water from the
Jordan River, "where ... Jesus had been
baptized by John the Baptist."
Disturbed by secular Laborites, he is
further unnerved by religiously minded
Israelis who seek to fulfill the biblical
injunction to settle the entire land of
Israel.
There are "two Israels," Carter con-
cludes, one which embodies the "the
ancient culture of the Jewish people,
defined by the Hebrew Scriptures," and
the other in "the occupied Palestinian
territories:' which refuses to "respect the
basic human rights of the citizens."
Whether in its secular and/or observant
manifestations, Israel clearly discomfits
Carter, a man who, even as president,
considered himself in "full-time Christian
service." Yet, in revealing his unease with
the idea of Jewish statehood, Carter sets

America In Middle East Explored

Michael Oren is the author of Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle
East, to be published by Norton on Jan.15. It looks at 300 years of American
history in the Middle East.
Oren shows how the American connection to the Middle East stems not from
the interference of the "Israel lobby" or neo-conservatives, but is a product
of the tremendous connection Americans have always felt for the region, long
before there was a significant Jewish population in the country.

Oren also shows:

•That support for a Jewish national home in the region is also not new but is
something that animated Americans 300 years ago.
•That, since the founding of the U.S., American governments have dealt with
terrorism emanating from the region and Americans tended to take a more
direct approach than that of the Europeans (they tended to want to placate and
appease, even through bribery).
•That terrorism isn't a response either to Israel's presence or to the U.S.
military presence in Iraq, or at least has not been historically.

himself apart from many U.S. presidents
before and after him, as well as from
nearly 400 years of American Christian
thought.

colonists endorsed the notion of restor-
ing Palestine to Jewish control. Elias
Boudinot, president of the Continental
Congress, predicted that the Jews,
"however scattered ... are to be
Historical
recovered by the mighty power
Perspective
of God, and restored to their
Generations of Christians in
beloved ... Palestine." John Adams
this country, representing a
imagined "a hundred thousand
variety of dominations, lay-
Israelites" marching triumphant-
men and clergy alike, have
ly into Palestine. "I really wish
embraced the concept of
the Jews in Judea an independent
renewed Jewish sovereignty
nation:' he wrote.
in Palestine.
Michael B . Oren
During the Revolution, the
The passion was already
association between America's
Sped al
evident in 1620 when
struggle for independence and
Comme ntary
William Bradford alighted
the Jews' struggle for repatria-
on Plymouth Rock and exclaimed, "Come, tion was illustrated by the proposed Great
let us declare the word of God in Zion?'
Seal designed by Thomas Jefferson and
Bradford was a leader of the Puritans, dis- Benjamin Franklin, showing Moses lead-
senting Protestants who, in their search
ing the Children of Israel toward the Holy
for an unsullied religion and the strength
Land.
to resist state oppression, turned to the
Restorationism became a major theme
Old Testament. There, they found a God
in antebellum religious thought and a
who spoke directly to his people, who
mainstay of the Methodist, Baptist and
promised to deliver them from bond-
Presbyterian churches. In his 1844 best-
age and return them to their ancestral
seller, The Valley of the Vision, New
homeland. Appropriating this narrative,
York University Bible scholar George
the Puritans fashioned themselves as
Bush — a forebear of two presidents of
the New Jews and America as their New
the same name — called on the U.S. to
Promised Land. They gave their children
devote its economic and military might
Hebrew names — David, Benjamin,
toward recreating a Jewish polity in
Sarah, Rebecca — and called over 1,000
Palestine.
of their towns after biblical places, includ-
But merely envisioning such a state was
ing Bethlehem, Bethel and, of course, New insufficient for some Americans, who,
Canaan.
in the decades before the Civil War, left
Identifying with the Jews, a great many
home to build colonies in Palestine. Each

of these settlements had the same goal: to
teach the Jews, long disenfranchised from
the land, to farm and so enable them to
establish a modern agrarian society.
In 1863, Abraham Lincoln said that
restoring the Jews to their homeland is a
noble dream shared by many Americans,"
and that the U.S. could work to realize
that goal once the Union prevailed.
Nineteenth-century restorationism
reached its fullest expression in an 1891
petition submitted by Midwestern mag-
nate William Blackstone to President
Benjamin Harrison. The Blackstone
Memorial, as it was called, urged the
president to convene an international
conference to discuss ways of reviving
Jewish dominion in Palestine. Among the
memorial's 400 signatories were some
of America's most preeminent figures,
including John D. Rockefeller, J. Pierpont
Morgan, Charles Scribner and William
McKinley.

((

Modern Times
By the century's turn, those advocating
restored Jewish sovereignty in Palestine
had begun calling themselves Zionists,
though the vast majority of the move-
ment's members remained Christian
rather than Jewish. "It seems to me that
it is entirely proper to start a Zionist
State around Jerusalem," wrote Teddy
Roosevelt, "and [that] the Jews be given
control of Palestine?'
Such sentiments played a crucial role
in gaining international recognition for
Zionist claims to Palestine during World
War I, when the British government
sought American approval for desig-
nating that area as the Jewish national
home. Though his closest counselors
warned him against endorsing the move,
Woodrow Wilson, the son and grandson
of Presbyterian preachers, rejected their
advice. "To think that I, the son of the
manse [parsonage], should be able to help
restore the Holy Land to its people," he
explained.
With Wilson's imprimatur, Britain
issued the declaration that became the
basis of its League of Nations mandate
in Palestine, and as the precursor to the
1947 U.N. Partition Resolution creating
the Jewish state.

U.S.-Israel Ties on page 26

January 11 2007

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