Religion and the Middle East

By The Rev. L. Humphrey Walz

Christian Century Editor in Jerusalem

In two successive weekly issues¹ Christian Century editor James W. Wall has published lengthy editorials on some of his observations during his most recent sojourn in Jerusalem. He quotes one seasoned journalist's judgment that the biggest problem facing Israel today is "religion, plain and simple."

Wall senses special danger in the eagerness of secular Jews to accept political and financial support from Christian fundamentalists such as those directing the "International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem," who consider the existence and future destruction of Israel as inseperable from Christ's return. The implications of such fundamentalist doctrines should be as repugnant to Israeli Jews as they are to native Palestinian Christians, he notes.

Concerning Islamic and Jewish fundamentalism, he writes: "Muslim fundamentalist fervor in the Middle East led to the assassination of Anwar Sadat in Egypt and Khomeini's takeover in Iran. Jewish fundamentalism, which takes the form of radical orthodoxy, has begun to show more than piety, and the public here is deeply worried about acts of violence in the name of religion."

In Jerusalem Wall also interviewed the Rev. John McKnight, Australian pastor to Mordechai Vanunu, the 32-year-old Israeli nuclear technician who apparently was seized by Israel's Mossad after he revealed to London's Sunday Times Israel's secret to build-up of atomic weaponry. (See Jane Hunter's coverage of Vanunu's revelations and disappearance from London in the December 1986 issue of the Washington Report.)

During a prolonged stay in Sydney, Australia, after leaving Israel "Vanunu regularly attended (McKnight's) worship services and discussions about the meaning of the Christian faith," Wall writes. "Many of the discussions centered on the dangers of nuclear holocaust. During one such discussion the importance of sacrifice for Jesus was considered, and Vanunu spoke up. He explained that he had been working in a nuclear facility and that his conscience now called on him to make public the secrets." Oscar Guerero, a parish employee, made contact with the Times which flew Vanunu to London from whence he disappeared. In November the Israeli Government said it was holding Vanunu without charge in an unspecified location and stories seeking to discredit Vanunu as a leftist eccentric began surfacing in the Israeli press.

"With financial support from his church, (McKnight) flew first to London and then to Jerusalem looking for the lost sheep" who, Wall writes, "had made his story public 'for good and noble reasons'". Whether Vanunu will ever have a chance to give the world his own explanation of those reasons in uncertain. "In this country," Wall writes from Jerusalem, "such an act (disclosing government secrets) is not likely to go unpunished. And his conversion to the Christian faith will not be in his favor at his trial—assuming that one is finally conducted."

More on Holocaust and Peace

Reactions to my November column on "Holocaust and Middle East Peace" have been from varied perspectives, but none more contrasting than these two samples:

Edwin Wright, born in Iran to US-missionary parents and now a nonagenarian veteran himself of missionary and US military, diplomatic and academic service in the Middle East, wrote from Wooster, Ohio, quoting US Zionist activist Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver's 1946 letter to David Ben Gurion lamenting the Hitler Holocaust as the worst disaster in all Jewish history. Still, Silver added, the Holocaust could be used "to impose the will of the Jewish community on the US administration" and to "Zionize America." Just what Silver may have meant by "the" Jewish community or its presumed corporate "will" is unclear. However, as one charged with spiritual leadership, he seemed unaware that such manipulative political use of tragedy was repugnant to the best in the Hebrew ethical/moral heritage.

Approaching my article from a different stance, executive presbyter H. Richard Siciliano wrote from Denver that Gentile Holocaust victims numbered only in the thousands. My larger figures, he believes, diminish the enormity of Jewish sufferings. He seems, however, not to have checked the Jewish authorities I cited but did not quote. Historian Max Dimont, for instance, had stated: "We usually hear of the 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis, but seldom of the 7 million Christian civilians exterminated." (Cleveland Jewish News, March 31, 1972). Such recognition of shared martyrdom should, I believe, add a sense of immediacy to my quotation of Dr. Bohdan Wytwycky: "If the Holocaust teaches anything, it teaches that we must join hands in moral undertaking." Such recognition, I believe, will enhance the prospects of peace in the land where the Prince of Peace blessed the peacemakers.

¹ "Israelis Accept Fundamentalist Allies" (November 12); "Nuclear Arms and the Missing Man" (November 19).

The Rev. L. Humphrey Walz, D.D., retired associate of the Presbyterian Synod of the Northeast and founding editor of The Link, is active in Christian-Jewish and Christian-Muslim dialogues.