Israel's policies are feeding the cancer of
anti-semitism

It is a lie that to reject Zionism as it is practised
today is to be the inheritor of Hitler's racism

Paul Oestreicher
Monday February 20, 2006
The Guardian

The chief rabbi, Sir Jonathan Sacks, is right. His
reaction to the Anglican synod's call for sanctions
against Israel is understandable. Hatred of Judaism -
now commonly called anti-semitism - is a virus that
has infected Christendom for two millennia. It
continues to stalk the world despite its most virulent
outbreak in Nazi Germany. It should not be left
untreated. For too many it remains the unlearned
lesson of the Holocaust. It should haunt decent
Christians for generations to come.
The German pope knows that particularly well and is on
the battle lines against it. On this issue, nothing
divides him from the Archbishop of Canterbury and most
other church leaders. If, as some now think, today's
Jews are the Muslims - hatred transferred - that
simply means there is a battle to maintain our common
humanity on more than one front. All collective
hatreds poison the body politic.

I say this as the child of a German Jewish-born father
who escaped in time. His mother did not. I say it as a
half-Jewish German child chased around a British
playground in the second world war and taunted with
"he's not just a German, he's a Jew". A double insult.
But I say this too as a Christian priest who shares
the historic guilt of all the churches. All Christians
share a bloody inheritance.

If I feel all that in my guts and know it in my head,
I cannot stand by and watch the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict - one of the world's most dangerous outbreaks
of collective hatred - as a dispassionate onlooker. I
cannot listen calmly when an Iranian president talks
of wiping out Israel. Jewish fears go deep. They are
not irrational. But I cannot listen calmly either when
a great many citizens of Israel think and speak of
Palestinians in the way a great many Germans thought
and spoke about Jews when I was one of them and had to
flee.

If the Christian in me has good reason to be ashamed,
so now does the Jew in me. I passionately believe that
Israel has the right, and its people have the right,
to live in peace and in secure borders. But I know too
that modern Israel was born in terror and made
possible in its present Zionist form by killing and a
measure of ethnic cleansing. That is history. Tell me
of a nation with an innocent history. But the Zionism
at the heart of Israeli politics is about the present
and the future. It makes me fear for the soul of
Israel today and the survival of its children
tomorrow.

The Israel characterised by the words of Golda Meir
that "there was no such thing as Palestinians ... they
did not exist" is an Israel that is inevitably
surrounded by enemies and that can only survive
militarily and economically as a client state of the
world's only superpower, for now. Nor can its nuclear
monopoly in the Middle East last for ever. Peace
cannot be made by building a wall on Palestinian land
that makes the life of the miserably conquered more
miserable still. A Palestinian bantustan will be a
source of unrest and violence for ever.

I say all this despairing of the Israel I love. Its
people are my people. The Palestinians are my
neighbours. I wish they had stronger and better
leaders. I wish their despairing young people had not
been driven to violence. Just as I understand Jewish
fears, I understand their despair. Only an Israel that
understands that too can change it. And there are Jews
in Israel and in the diaspora who know it. Most of
them, out of a fear of being thought disloyal, are
afraid to say what they know to be true. The state of
Israel has become a cruel occupying power.
Occupations, when they are resisted, are never
benevolent. They morally corrupt the occupier. The
brave body of Israeli conscientious objectors are the
true inheritors of the prophets of Israel. They are
the true patriots. What nation has ever loved its
prophets?

But the main objective of my writing today, is to nail
the lie that to reject Zionism as it practised today
is in effect to be anti-semitic, to be an inheritor of
Hitler's racism. That argument, with the Holocaust in
the background, is nothing other than moral blackmail.
It is highly effective. It condemns many to silence
who fear to be thought anti-semitic. They are often
the very opposite. They are often people whose heart
bleeds at Israel's betrayal of its true heritage.

I began with the recognition that the cancer of
anti-semitism has not been cured. Tragically, Israel's
policies feed it - and when world Jewry defends
Israeli policies right or wrong, then anger turns not
only against Israel, but against all Jews. I wish it
were mere rhetoric to say that Israeli politics today
make a holocaust the day after tomorrow credible. If
the whole Muslim world hates Israel, that is no idle
speculation. To count on Arab disunity and Muslim
sectarian conflict and a permanent American shield is
no recipe for long-term security.

There are Israelis who know all that, and there are
Jews around the world who know it. In Britain, Jews
for Justice for Palestinians organises to give
Jewishness a human face. Tell them they are
anti-semites and they will laugh bitterly, for the
charge hurts deeply and is a lie. Prophets such as Uri
Avnery give all this eloquent expression, but are
heard by only a few. The media are afraid of a lobby
that is quite prepared to do them serious damage.

Yes, of course, there are many who express their
solidarity with the Palestinian people. Some are
Christians. They deserve respect. If, whether wisely
or not, they call for sanctions, that does not make
them Jew-haters - not in theory and not in practice.
My concern, however, is to express solidarity with the
Israel that is not represented by its leaders or
popular opinion. Once, in the days of Hitler, there
was another Germany represented by those in
concentration camps alongside Jews and Gypsies, the
martyrs who are celebrated today. There is such an
Israel too. Its voices are still free to speak, though
often reviled and misunderstood. That Israel has my
solidarity, as all Jews have my love and prayers.

· Paul Oestreicher was a member of the Church of
England's general synod and director of the Centre for
International Reconciliation, Coventry Cathedral; he
is now a chaplain at the University of Sussex

paul_oestreicher@yahoo.co.uk