On my last trip to Israel and the Palestinian Territories in 2017, something became clear to me: to understand the nature of the conflict you have to go beyond the historical facts themselves, you need to understand the stories you read about and this means that the same event is perceived in a completely different way, depending on which side you are on.
In this sense, the year 1948, for example, if understood from the Israeli point of view, would be the war of independence, which resulted in the death of 1% of the Jewish population of Israel at that time, but consolidated the movement of self-determination of the Jewish people, establishing in their land a country capable of protecting it after centuries of persecution and attempted genocide, for which the main culprits of the conflict would be the Arab countries, which did not accept the Resolution of the UN General Assembly. 181 of November 30, 1947, which provided for the creation of a Jewish and Arab state.
- At the same time.
- From a Palestinian point of view.
- It was the nakba period.
- The “tragedy.
- “Israel’s independence is still remembered today as one of the causes that led to the forced displacement of 600.
- 000 to 750.
- 000 Palestinians between 1947 and 1950.
- As the famous historian Benny Morris points out.
- The fact is perceived by the Arabs as an extension of European imperialism against the peoples of the Middle East and has been interpreted in light of the ancient anti-Semitism present in the Islamic world.
As a Zionist, I confess to recognizing that the first story is the most accurate reading of the facts; However, I try not to ignore the Palestinian perspective and its national symbols. As the Israeli writer Amos Oz has said, in many ways this is a conflict between “law and law. “This perception seems to me to be consistent with the Christianity I profess, according to which, although there are absolute truths, because of our limitations as human beings, we are not always able to fully identify ourselves, and that is why stories end up being so important?Just as the New Testament is clear that all mankind is sinful and therefore guilty, as a whole, of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, for centuries the Jews were persecuted, accused of being solely responsible for this act of divine sovereignty.
Christian anti-Semitism is one of humanity’s greatest contradictions, as the Christian faith itself descends from Judaism and most, if not all, of the writers of the New Testament were Jews, like Jesus himself. The Apostle Paul, in his letter to the Romans, he repeatedly clarifies the importance of the Jewish people and categorically states that even Jews who reject the message of Christianity continue to be loved by God by the election of Abraham and other patriarchs, yet, from the Middle Ages, through the Protestant Reformation, to the Present Day, many Christians have been swept away by false accounts that Abraham’s physical descendants committed the unforgivable sin of ” deicidio,” the murder of the Son of God, and that’s why they’re not reliable people.
This grave theological error caused great suffering to the Jews; many were tortured and killed by the Inquisition in Europe and forced to convert to Christianity; during the Protestant Reformation it was not very different; Martin Luther’s anti-Semitic writings were so virulent that they were widely used by German shepherds to justify Nazism. As much as there has been great progress in Judeo-Christian relations in recent years, especially after the Holocaust, and with the advent of so-called “Christian Zionism,” the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has revived new anti-Semitic narratives within Christianity, particularly in the most progressive theological circles.
It is an attempt to alter the biblical historical narrative, especially of the Old Testament, to attack certain foundations of Zionism and justify certain Palestinian nationalist movements, which is often the case through a reinterpretation of God’s promises to Abraham in the book of Genesis. use of postmodern and poststructuralist hermeneutics, there are theologians who argue that these promises were never intended exclusively for the Jewish people, but for humanity as a whole, which through Jesus would one day be restored; therefore, the Jews would never have been a special nation before God. In addition to this reformulation of biblical texts, another strategy is to minimize the fact that Jews are an indigenous people of the Middle East.
A Palestinian Christian friend born in the Gaza Strip, for example, told me that during his childhood, attending classes in Hamas-controlled schools, it became known that Jews had never lived in the area where the State of Israel is today, and that Solomon The temple was never built, as it was a mere Zionist invention. It was only when he moved to the West Bank as a teenager that he had access to an Arab Bible of the Old Testament and was surprised to see what the scriptures said about the Jewish people.
Aware of this, many Arab historians have tried to attack the historicality and veracity of the veteran’s will, and while this is virtually impossible given the current archaeological discoveries in Israel, it is a discourse that is gaining momentum, even in international organizations, such as the UNESCO-approved Resolution that denies the existence of historical links between Judaism and the so-called Temple Mount , where the Western Wall and al-Aqsa Mosque are now located in Jerusalem.
For most conservative evangelicals, all of this may seem absurd; However, I think few people realize the subtle ways in which this story has entered us. The clearest example is the maps found at the end of many Protestant Bibles. It’s common to have titles, like “Palestine in the Time of Jesus. “”However, this expression is completely anachronistic, since at the time Jesus lived, the area was still known as “Judea and Samaria”, so the denomination of “Palestine”. Romans only in 70 AD, as a means of humiliating the Jewish people by referring to their historical enemies, the Philistines.
A more extreme case of this attempt to “palestine”?The biblical account is a new translation of the Bible into Danish, which omits any reference to the term “Israel”, using only “Jews” or “land of the Jews”. According to the Biblical Society of Denmark, the decision aims to prevent people from establishing associations between Bible Israel and the current Jewish state. While this concern seems legitimate, it is in fact based on the same assumptions used by those trying to delegitimate the existence of Israel as a nation, which is at least worrying in the face of the growth of anti-Semitism in the world.
I know that the question of the future of the nation of Israel is a complex theme in Christian theology and that not all my brethren in the faith can see the same biblical motives as me in justifying Christian Zionism. However, I believe that this is an issue that goes far beyond political preferences or differences in theological systems; on the contrary, to deny the role of the Jews in the history of redemption and their territorial connection to the Middle East is to deny the very foundations of our faith, especially that of biblical inerrance.
Therefore, there is no problem in recognizing the suffering of the Palestinian people and sympathetic to some of their political causes, but there are problems that are far more important than a simple narrative war, especially for Christians, and above all with regard to Our relations with the Jewish people. History can be interpreted differently, but there are facts that can never be denied or forgotten. One is the reality that Jews are a people of the land of the Bible.