American Churches are Speaking Out on Palestine and Israel

By Canon Michael Hamilton

It is said that the mills of God's justice grind slowly, but their outcome is sure. Oppressive rule has temporal limits whether it is enforced by the whims of a leader or when a political party, acting democratically under the guise of national security, persecutes a people under its control. Such governments fall because of their internal moral and political contradictions.

The injustices of Prime Minister Shamir's administration, its tragic treatment of the Palestinians, are well documented. It is but a matter of time until events grind their painful way to some kind of disaster for Israel. Israel has put its military security above moral considerations in framing its policies, and that, unhappily, is a prescription for self destruction. It trades nuclear secrets with apartheid South Africa and spies on the United States. Most important of all, it ignores the civil rights of the inhabitants of the West Bank and Gaza, who have suffered under 20 years of military occupation.

Political conflicts, however, can only be resolved justly on a political level. Negotiation, not oppression, is required. To put the matter concretely: Israel cannot resolve its relationship to the Palestinians by breaking their bones and imprisoning thousands without trial. And, as the PLO has discovered, terrorism is not an effective tactic either. Terrorism and oppression are both alien to American values and we should not support their perpetrators politically or financially.

Shamir has also misjudged what belongs to Israel's security. Israel will achieve peace with its Arab neighbors, not by trying to avoid recognizing the Palestinians as a political entity, but rather by granting them their right to independence. Such a move would bring an end to the intifada and remove the grievance that galls the pride of all Arabs. It would bring Israel into conformity with international opinion, international law and UN resolutions. Israel has had to defend itself in wars with surrounding Arab nations, is still threatened by them and will be vulnerable for years to come.

Americans should, and I believe will, continue to provide military help for the defense of Israel. However, an independent Palestine would enhance Israel's security for it would remove a chief reason for Arab hostility to Israel. To argue, as some Israeli leaders do, that a tiny Palestinian state, willing to accept all kinds of international security checks on its borders, would be a threat to the immensely powerful, nuclear armed state of Israel is paranoia writ large.

We Western Christians must accept much of the blame for that paranoia. It was at our hands, and by our ancestors, that the Jewish people were persecuted. It was the Christian West, not Muslim Arabs, that gave birth to the Holocaust. Hence we must be especially considerate of Jewish fears of war and anti-Semitism. It is out of concern for the welfare of Israel, out of the belief that it should recover the ideals of its own founders, out of hope that it will not forsake its Biblical heritage, that we speak.

An increasing number of institutions are so speaking. When the United Methodist Church, the Presbyterian Church (USA), the Episcopal Church, the United Church of Christ, the American Friends, Mennonites, the Church of the Brethren and the Roman Catholic Church (in the statement of the US Catholic Conference of Bishops) make roughly the same recommendations—support for the security of the state of Israel, Palestinian self-determination that could lead to sovereignty or an independent entity, the establishment of political and human rights and the cessation of terrorism and violence—it is likely that they are on the right track. This unusual convergence of denominational judgments on a major and pressing issue has happened previously twice in my lifetime—in the struggle for civil rights and in the call to bring our forces back from Vietnam. In both instances the churches were in the vanguard of public opinion; in both cases the nation and government followed.

The churches speak now, not from ivory towers, but from many years of hands-on experience of running schools, hospitals and aid programs in the Middle East. In addition, hundred of recent visitors to Israel and the West Bank have talked with Israeli and Palestinian leaders, have seen the victims of Israeli army brutality and listened to Jewish citizens of Israel express their fears. They have returned to the United States and are shocked by congressional representatives and senators who are not expressing their minds about Israeli government policies for fear of loss of financial support or criticism from pro-Israel lobbies.

As the knowledge of the realities of these issues spreads, we can expect the American public to be aroused. There is already indication that this is happening. On Nov. 15 some 400 members of Christian churches, joined by some Jews and Muslims, called on 247 congressional offices to discuss their churches' statements. Much larger numbers will be coming from around the nation in months to come. It's time for peace, time for Israelis to negotiate the independence of the Palestinian people and time for the United States to exert its crucial influence to that effect.

Canon Michael Hamilton is chairman of the Washington Diocese of the Episcopal Church Peace Committee.