Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, February 1987, page 17

Religion and the Middle East

By the Rev. L. Humphrey Walz

The Vatican, Israel, and "Holy Zion"

Well before the Holy Land visit by New York Archbishop John Cardinal O'Connor drew national attention to issues surrounding Israel and the Vatican, a recent issue of the Catholic fortnightly Commonweal contained an article entitled "The Vatican, Israel, and 'Holy Zion.'" It was followed by five pages of reader responses, and ripples and counter-ripples have continued ever since.

The article, by Professor Emeritus F.G. Friedman of the University of Munich, subtitled "A Jew Looks at Catholic-Jewish Relations," dealt with on-going Roman Catholic efforts to relate to Jews more sensitively and constructively. At the same time it set an example for enhanced Jewish reciprocity.

Among the controversial issues, the author included diverse approaches to the presence of the State of Israel in the Arab Middle East. Friedman quoted Pope John Paul II's 1984 references to the memories, monuments, and biblical traditions which have stimulated Jewish "longing for a homeland, Holy Zion." Attempts to politicize such statements, however, are alien to Friedman's view. For him, a Jewish state is not necessary for Jewish spiritual or material vitality.

"The present State of Israel," he writes, "shaped as it is after the model of European nation-states at the turn of the century, does not seem to me to do full justice to the comprehensive character of Judaism and Jewish history."

Friedman notes that Jews have had an independent state of their own, at best, for only a fraction of that history. Their greatest leaders—Moses, the prophets in exile, and the greatest Jewish philosophers, mystics, and scientists—all flourished quite apart from any national Jewish territorial base. "Were not most of (Judaism's) greatest prophets critics of rulers?" Friedman asks. And did they not declare the Jews' "real mission" to be to carry to the world (as Vatican II expressed it) "a witness—often heroic—of its fidelity to the only God?" The Israel of today, "like other nation-states,...is embroiled in war against other states,...sacrifices ethics for supposed security," and does little to fulfill that distinctive mission.

To Papal reluctance to establish diplomatic ties with the Jewish state, Friedman gives extensive, supportive analysis. He accepts the propriety of Vatican II's decision that: "the existence of the State of Israel and its political options should be envisaged not in a perspective which is in itself religious, but in reference to the common principles of international law." Friedman also notes that Vatican and Israeli goals differ in ways that make meshing complex if not unnatural. The diplomatic recognition of a state by the Vatican serve primarily the religious interests of Catholics living in that state. However, Israel's "diplomatic representatives abroad mainly promote the security of the state of Israel and the interests of its citizens."

The American Jewish Committee Responds

Staff members of the American Jewish Committee took exception to Friedman's views in their letters to the editor. Judith Banki, AJC's associate national director, declared that "the State of Israel, warts and all, is testimony to the Jewish people's determination to control their own destiny through sovereign control of a piece of land. Yet the great majority of the Arab Middle East has denied Israel's right to that existence and to that sovereignty. The withholding of full and formal recognition of Israel by the Vatican may lend credence to the claim by rejectionist Arab states that Israel's very existence is illegitimate."

Banki's final paragraph, which Friedman felt it necessary to correct in print, included: "I am sickened by Friedman's comparison between Israeli authorities' treatment of Palestinians and the fate of the Jews in the Holocaust....The comparison is obscene." To this Friedman replied that Banki had radically reformulated his statement that: "The fact that a great many Diaspora Jews closed their eyes to the treatment of Palestinians at the hands of Israeli authorities precludes any claim to moral superiority."

AJC's Washington director, Rabbi Andrew Baker, wrote that Friedman was unduly critical of Israel and unduly trusting of Vatican declarations. Statements expressing "the Church's new brotherly spirit" may be welcomed, he said, but "they do not erase the past" or "speak directly to our still common present." Like Banki, he dissociated himself from Friedman's personal views.

Christian and Humanist Responses

Friedman's article elicited positive responses from Christians who expressed their personal determination to strive for realistic dialogue and neighborly cooperation with Jews in their daily lives.

A self-described "secular humanist," Columbia University's Professor Emeritus Robert Gorham Davis acknowledges that:

"We are all in debt to Dr. Friedman for his acute analysis—sympathetic yet realistic—of Vatican-Israeli relations, and for his reminder of how they bear upon the fate not only of the Jews of Israel and the Diaspora, but especially Moslems (he passes over Christians) who live under harsh military rule within Israel's expanded borders."

Richard Lion-Heart, Saladin and Zionism

Kenneth Bailey, who has spent most of his life in Egypt and Lebanon, earned his reputation as a pioneering New Testament scholar by teaching his subject in the light of its original geographic, cultural context—the Middle East—which he knows so well. Now, in a Presbyterian Outlook article on "richard Lion-Heart, Saladin and Zionism" he throws post-Biblical light on how rampant and unconfined have been the possessing attitudes towards the Holy Land—expressed politically, enforced militarily and cloaked in or inspired by piety—through the centuries.

Considering the different meanings—from racism to redemption—which "Zionism" stirs in individual minds, Bailey wisely defines his use of the term as "the religious need to have control of Palestine." It was this "need," in significant measure, he writes, that drove the 11th century Crusaders to undertake the strenuous, risky and costly process of trying to eliminate or subjugate all the inhabitants of the Holy Land.

When the brilliant Arab leader Saladin wrested Jerusalem and much of Eastern Palestine back from Crusaders Richard I (the "Lion-Hearted") of England and Philip II of France, Richard proposed joint control via royal intermarriage. This Saladin rejected bluntly and uncompromisingly:

"Jerusalem belongs to us as much as it does to you, and is more precious in our eyes than in yours, for it was the place of our Prophet's Journey and the place where the angels gathered. Therefore, do not imagine that we will give the city up to you, or that we shall suffer ourselves to be persuaded in this matter..."

Thus Bailey perceives the Crusades as essentially "a conflict of two Zionisms—Islamic and Christian."

Bailey shows how long it took for Christian claims to Palestine to move toward a non-violent, unpoliticized attachment to "the Land" by noting that Christopher Columbus' efforts to discover a route to India were underwritten by imperial desires for enough wealth therefrom to finance a "Christian" recapture of Palestine.

Peering toward the future through these mists of time from the West Bank, where he now lives, Bailey concludes with a plea for Christians, Muslims, and Jews to give up remaining ideas that any of them, to fulfill themselves religiously, must have exclusive control of Palestine politically. How can a sharing of that control be achieved? He does not presume to say, but instead pleads with us, in the words of Psalm 122:6, to "Pray for the peace of Jerusalem."

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