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• FOCUS Extremism and Intolerance in Israel • Kahane was . proclaims ill sticket'" in Hebron, home to ill population of Israeli set· tiers infamous tor their extremism and anti-Palestinian violence. Such attitudes are not confined to Hebron: ill 2010 poll of Israelis by the Israeli Democracy InstiMe sug- !JI!Sted that -most Israelis 153"1 might agree with the late rabbi and poIitical leader (KahaneL who favored encouraging the emigration of Arabs from Israel.-t Israeli historian Simha Aapan, describing the years following the 1967 Six-Day wac, writes, There always was an orthodox, fundamentalist current in Judaism, characterized by racial prejudice toward noo-Jews in general and Arabs in particular. A substantial portion--perhaps even the overwhelming majoritv--of the religious I1'IOYeI1\eIlts, and ill growing pan of the population in general. came 10 conceive of the West Bank not as the homeland of the Palestinian people but as JUCIea and samana, the birtl'lplace of 1I~ .Iewtsh faith and homeland of the.Jewish people. Many people not only became indiffemlt to the national rights of the Palestinians liYing there, they did (lOt ew:YI see the necessity of gtanting them cMJ righrs.2 New \tlrtereditof and veteran ~ David Remnick presents a current snapshot of religious settler mentality and its relationship to the Istaeli political power structure: Dov liar, the head of an important West Bank rabbinical council. has called Baruc:h GoIdstein---who. in 1994. machine-gunned t.venty.nine Palestinians at the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron--holier than all the martyrs of the Holocaust. - L.ior endorsed a book that discussed when it is right and proper to murder an ARb, and he and a group of kindred rabbis issued a proclamation proscribing Jews from seIing or renting land to non- Jews. Men like IAvigdorlliebefman Ilsrael's Minister of Foreign Affairsl, IElyakiml Levanon (chief rabbi of the Elon Moreh settlement, near Nablusl. and liar are scarcely embittered figures on the irTelevant margins: a harckight base-the settJerj, the ultra--Drthodox, Shas, the National Religious Party---is indispensable to Prime Minister 8enjilfTlin Netanyahu's governing coaIition.3 Zvi Barel, a Middle Eastern affairs analyst for HaiJletz, writes with apparent disgust about The King's Taah, oil book written by two rabbis-Yrtzhak ShapIra and Yosef Etitzur-conneaed to oil yeshiva in Yrtlhar, a 'Nest Bank settlement known for its extremism. Rabbis Shapira and Elitzur, Wei reports, write that "the ban on killing a gentile does not stem from the intrinsic value of his life, which is not essentially legitimate as such.· These are the rabbis of the occupation, the arbiters of Jewish law for those hooligans on the hilltops. They belong to oil different country, one in which the ICWIIS of the State of Israel are deemed worthless.4 Racism and intolerance are in no w~ confi ned to israel's religious extremists and senlers. Many observers who care deeply about ISrael and Judaism exp!'e5S grave concern that a rising tide of radal prejudice and extremism is becoming normalized not only among religious Jews but also among political figures and private dtizf!fl5 within """'prope
6 . Mainline Liberal Protestants and Israel These "new Israelites" [the Puritans] believed God would guide them and had in fact gone before them, preparing their way and granting a divinely ordained entitlement to a land that was, as it happened, already inhabited. ABOUT THIS SECTION MYTHS OF NATIONAL ORIGIN Israeli and American myths of origin are similar and derived from the same biblical sources. Two American Jewish scholars, Todd Gitlin and Liel Leibovitz, have recently described these similarities in their book The Chosen Peoples: America, Israel, and the Ordeals of Divine Election. Americans and Israelis have often thought that their nations were chosen, in perpetuity, to do God's work. This belief in divine election is a potent, living force, one that has guided and shaped both peoples and nations throughout their history and continues to do so to this day."l The roots of American Protestant pro-Zionism lie in the ideology of the early Pilgrims whose beliefs were derived from the story of God's election of the ancient Israelites. On March 29, 1630, a boat carrying British Puritans left Southampton, England, carrying several important leaders including John Winthrop, who would become the first Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The departure sermon was delivered by John Cotton, who referred to their mission as a II divine calling." Cotton's sermon summarized many of the core beliefs that would inspire their perilous journey across the Atlantic. He turned to II Samuel 7:10 for his text:"And I will appoint a place for my people Israel and will plant them, so that they . may live in their own place, and be disturbed no more."He drew a direct parallel between the Puritans' mission and that of ancient Israel in its journey from Sinai to the "Promised Land."For this group of Puritans, their mission and journey was no less important, nor was it any less divinely inspired than that of Moses and the Israelites. TheseJ'lnew Israelites"believed God would guide them and had in fact gone before them, preparing their way and granting a divinely ordained entitlement to a land that was, as it happened, already inhabited. This section is a condensed and edited version of an essay by the Rev. Dr. Donald E. Wagner enti· tied "The Mainline Protestant Churches' Journey with Palestine and Israel" in Wagner and Davis, eds., Zionism and the Quest for justice in the Holy Land. Dr. Wagner, the author of four books on the Israeli·Palestinian conflict, is the National Program Director of Friends of Sabeel·North America. He was a Professor of Middle Eastern Studies and Director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at North Park University from 1995 to 2010, and National Director of the Pales· tine Human Rights Campaign from 1980 to 1989. American Progress (circa 1872), by John Gast, is an allegorical representation of the modernization of the new west. Colum· bla, a personification of the United States, leads civilization westward with American settlers, stringing telegraph wire and holding a schoolbook. The different stages of economic activity of the pioneers are highlighted, especially the changing forms of transportation. Over the years other white colonizers would join the Pilgrims and embrace similar themes of what political scientists call "settler colonialism,"i.e., doctrines of racial superiority, divine entitlement to the land and its resources, and various systems of segregation, slavery, ethnic cleansing. genocide, and other forms of discrimination and violence against people of color and minority ethnic groups. During the wars with European powers and Mexico, and the 19th-century conquest of the frontier, the more the settlers'mission (which came to be identified as national Manifest Destiny) was challenged, the more the cycle of violence increased, often driven by their God-given sense of entitlement and conquest. The slogan "the imperialism of righteousness" was coined to justify the Spanish-American War in 1898. President Woodrow Wilson rallied Congress to support the US entry into World War I by naming it a war to make the world "safe for democracy."During the Cold War (1947-1991) American leaders reiterated year after year the national mission to remain the "leader of the free world," often justifying the 6 • MAINLINE LIBERAL PROTESTANTS AND ISRAEL 37
Page 2 and 3: ,~o~r C'" who" to", w,,,. ""'" pl .
Page 4 and 5: Contents nCTION 1 TOWdrd a New fr~m
Page 6 and 7: I, , I ! Nakln I. tho Arabic word '
Page 8 and 9: \¥hat is Exceptionalism All I~'" A
Page 10 and 11: • fOCUS In pnnClple the U"'t"" N'
Page 12 and 13: I "'i 011 on • "".sonol qUMt !~ a
Page 14 and 15: l(eYOII of 1936.39, cou...,! by ~""
Page 16 and 17: , ::, ,I ~~ rl • FOCU S Constanti
Page 18 and 19: These changes had the effect of era
Page 20 and 21: I II : I Binyamin Netanyahu It is h
Page 22 and 23: thousands of years-and that Palesti
Page 24 and 25: • FOCUS A Tale of Two Villages On
Page 26 and 27: These attacks were not racial or et
Page 28 and 29: Peace through Palestinian sovereign
Page 30 and 31: I I! I ! I :1 II 'I !I 'i 'I II , ,
Page 32 and 33: II 5 . A Jewish Theology of Liberat
Page 34 and 35: eligion has historically been at it
Page 38 and 39: covert or overt overthrow of democr
Page 40 and 41: I Discussion of the fate of Palesti
Page 42 and 43: In Volume 2, which carries the subt
Page 44 and 45: • FOCUS Israel's "Image Problem"
Page 46 and 47: elieve that 1) modem-day Israel is
Page 48 and 49: '11.I.i Ii i 1:1 . FOCUS What Diasp
Page 50 and 51: Just another racist August 2013. As
Page 52 and 53: July 2009. Jewish immigrants to Isr
Page 54 and 55: Mamilla Cemetery contains the tombs
Page 56 and 57: 9 . A Palestinian Christian Postscr
Page 58 and 59: When those of other religiolls fall
Page 60 and 61: • FOCUS "Judaizing" the Land H·
Page 62 and 63: Timeline 1882-1903 First A/iya (35,
Page 64 and 65: A Leader's Guide GET READY • Beca
Page 66 and 67: ;i I I Making Explicit That Which I
Page 68 and 69: 22 Charles Dahan, "The Moroccan-Jew
Page 70 and 71: I: r: 6 Chaim Levinson andYair Etti
Page 72 and 73: 17F1Ippe, op. cit. 18 Ibid. [Pappe
Page 74: Praise for Zionism Unsettled The ur

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