By Michael Anbar
November 3, 2007
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Recently I published a short essay titled "Should Jews fear Christian Zionists?" (Israel Insider, October 26, 2007) in which I pointed out that such a fear is without base. That article calls, however, for some clarification which I try to provide here.
Christian Judeophilic Zionists and Islamic Misojudaic (anti-Semitic) anti-Zionists are two religion-driven political movements impacting today?s world politics. They represent more than 50 million Evangelical Christians and more than 250 million religious militant Muslims worldwide. The common object of the fervent support on one side and the bloody hatred on the other, are less than some 5 million Jewish Zionists, who constitute less than half of all Jews. Why should all these hundreds of millions of non-Jews bother with such a minute group of people -- less than 0.1% of the world's population? What is so special about their ideology of Zionism?
Zionism is the 2500 year-old urge of exiled Jewish people to regain and maintain their sovereignty over their ancient homeland. Based on natural national attachment to a homeland, God?s covenant, granting The Land to the Jewish people in perpetuity, is an essential part of Jewish theology, expressed throughout Biblical writings and Jewish liturgy. This basic covenant with Abraham is enhanced by His repeated pledges to bring all exiled Jews back to their homeland, to "the land of their fathers." Zionism, being an integral part of the Covenant between God and Abraham, is an intrinsic part of Judaism. Non-Zionist Jews are therefore non-believers or Jews who do not understand what Judaism is all about.
Zionism is closely related to messianism. Jews believe that, in fulfilling the Covenant, God will bring the anointed descendant of King David to rule over his free people in the land of their fathers. Waiting for the messiah is part of Jewish faith. Throughout Jewish history there were people who were believed by fellow Jews to be the one. Christianity grew out of such a historical event a short time before the destruction of the Second Temple. This associates the origins of Christianity with Zionism.
Christianity grew around a Jewish leader who was believed by his followers to be the coveted messiah, for which he was crucified by the Romans as "King of the Jews." However, within 30 years Christianity turned into a non-political religious movement focused on personal rather than on national redemption. Early Christian scriptures date back to this period, with the Gospels to follow. Early Christian theology evolved in parallel to Rabbinical Judaism until the fourth Century, when Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire, giving the Church political power.
The politization of the Church enhanced Christian enmity to Judaism, in spite of inclusion of all Jewish scriptures into the Christian Canon and explicit statements in early Christian writings that paid homage to Christianity's Jewish heritage. The Roman Church adopted the Replacement Theology which delegitimized Judaism and which has then spread throughout the Christian world.
I dare to suggest that the politicization of the "universal" Church made it intolerant of the national aspirations inherent in its ancestral national religion. Based on the Replacement Theology, Jews were then persecuted throughout Christendom for generations.
That politization culminated in its becoming an imperial misojudaic institution, with the Holy Roman Empire surviving until the 19th Century. Napoleon, the French nationalist who defied Rome, must have realized the conflict between the imperial Church and Jewish nationality. He opened up the ghettos throughout his empire, emancipating the Jews after some 1500 years of misojudaic oppression. Napoleon, probably the first Christian Zionist, intended to reestablish the Jewish national home but was stymied by the British.
Christian misojudaism continued to linger in post-Napoleonic Europe, culminating in the Holocaust. This Jewish national catastrophe eventually made Rome aware of its historical mistreatment of the Jewish nation, resulting in Nostra Aetate of Pope Paul VI in 1965 (17 years after the establishment of the State of Israel! It still took until 1994 to establish diplomatic relations between the remnant of the Holy Roman Empire and the independent Jewish State).
Notwithstanding European lingering misojudaism, Christian Zionists in Great Britain and America were instrumental in helping to rekindle Jewish political nationality, which culminated in the re-establishment of a sovereign Jewish state in the Land of the Bible.
American Christian Zionism is a direct outcome of the separation between Church and State in this country, which was founded by people who experienced oppression by an institutional Church. The Founding Fathers, who cherished the Bible, recognized Jews as members of the ancient nation that has given birth to Christianity -- they were in fact Christian Zionists. It is no coincidence, therefore, that in spite of political expediencies (there are 1400 million intrinsically misojudaic Muslims and just some 12 million Jews), and despite lingering misojudaism in many Christian counties, the US has remained a strong supporter and ally of the Jewish state.
That American tradition is explicitly expressed by the majority of American Evangelicals who have adopted a new theology to cope with their relationship with the Jewish people. The Theology of Dispensation, originating in Ireland, rejects the 1800 year old Theology of Replacement and recognizes the Covenant of God with the Jewish people, granting them their homeland, as immutable; it is not superseded by Christianity.
The rejection of the Replacement Theology negates the call for Jews to convert to Christianity and treats the two faiths as independent dispensations of God's will. The reestablishment of Jewish sovereignty in their homeland is considered by the Evangelicals as a sign of fulfillment of the Covenant and as an incentive to help the Jewish nation. To express their belief in action, American Evangelicals have recently established the powerful Christian United for Israel (CUFI) organization under the leadership of Pastor John Hagee of Austin, Texas.
The Jewish community, traumatized for generations by violent and tacit Christian misojudaism, is suspicious of this "unexpected" move of American Protestants. Many Jews still think that the Replacement Theology is still here to "get them." But this is not the whole story. Many Jews do not realize that their religion, unlike Christianity, is a national religion that entails redemption of its believers only after the Jewish national redemption, which is expressed as Zionism, has been achieved. Non-Zionist Judaism is therefore a contradiction in terms.
Jews who believe that Jewish ethics, which call for equality, compassion and charity are all that is about Judaism, are grossly mistaken. The same Jewish ethics have been adopted by Christianity already 2000 years ago. Jews whose faith does not include the Jewish national redemption, i.e., Zionism, are actually not true Jews, while Christians who do not recognize the national aspirations of the Jewish people, which gave birth to Christianity, may likewise not be true Christians.
Now, Islamic theology, especially fundamentalist Islam, is incompatible with Zionism. Islamic supremacists do not tolerate any non-Islamic nationality, not to speak of that of the Jews who were the first victims of Mohammad's aggression. Islamic outspoken anti-Zionism, expressed in naming the State of Israel "the Zionist entity" and calling all Israeli Jews "Zionists," is therefore an expected manifestation of intrinsic Islamic misojudaism.
In spite of its historic misojudaism, Islam has tolerated Jews as dhimmis, "protected non-Muslims who accept the political and religious supremacy of Islam and pay ransom for that "protection". However, Zionism, which manifests Jewish political independence, based on the immutable Covenant with their supreme deity, is an anathema to Muslims. This is the ideological reason for the violent animosity of militant Muslims toward Zionism and its materialization in the State of Israel.
Current fundamentalist Muslims refuse even to recognize the 3300 year long history of the Jews in their homeland. They deny the existence of the two Temples in Jerusalem and are diligently trying to destroy any archeological evidence for their being. This anti-Zionist denial is not less malicious than the misojudaic denial of the Holocaust, in which Muslims have had an active role. By hoping to eliminate Zionism, they wish to eradicate Judaism to the core -- past, present and future.
However, the Islamo-fascists may not have realized that to kill Judaism they must first get rid of Christian Zionism. As long as Christian Zionism exists, it will not allow the demise of the Jewish nation. Consequently, Islamo-fascists might change their priorities and instead of trying to eliminate Israel, prefer to go after its protectors, the American Christian Zionists. This is when they will suffer their fatal defeat.
Views expressed by the author do not
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