[Peace-discuss] My Response to Jaher, for the record

[David Green]

My Guest Commentary, after Jaher's, submitted 2 or 3
weeks ago,has not yet been published.

New-Gazette: Jan 28, 2005, Guest Commentary

The Presbyterian History of anti-Semitism

Frederic C. Jaher

	As a scholar of American anti-Semitism and
Jewish-Christian relations, I read with interest the
Jan. 21 guest commentary by several local Presbyterian
pastors endorsing the General Assembly of the
Presbyterian Church (USA) decision to explore a
selected disinvestment in corporations engaging in
business with Israel. As a Jew, I read this commentary
with considerable concern and I would like to convey
my opinions.

	Since the General Assembly decision and this
ministerial affirmation purports to be a moral
declaration, it is reasonable to begin with examining
what particular moral leverage their denomination
brings to matters concerning Israel and Jews: What
historical and current Presbyterian perspectives on
Jews and the Jewish state would justify, or possibly
on a less lofty and more realistic basis, explain this
judgment? During the 1930s and World War II, when 6
million Jews were massacred, individual Protestants
did protest the Holocaust. Protestant sects, including
Presbyterians, however, were not noteworthy in
resistance to Nazi anti-Jewish policies. A prominent
Presbyterian, John Foster Dulles, and his law firm
represented German clients and interests before World
War II. At that time the Presbyterian Church USA did
not call for disinvestment in German businesses. (For
an account of Protestants and the persecution of Jews
see Leonard Dinnerstein “Anti-Semitism in America”
Oxford University Press, 1994.)

	Although this record transpired within living memory,
it is, of course, more relevant to investigate present
attitudes. Here the inquiry properly focuses on the
selectivity of the proposed boycott. When 9/11
occurred, the majority of the terrorist assassins came
from Saudi Arabia, a dictatorial nation notorious for
sponsoring anti-Jewish propaganda and, according to
the CIA and other U.S. government agencies and the New
York Times, for financing al-Qaida and other terrorist
organizations. Russia has waged a murderously brutal
war against Chechnya. Yet, for neither country, whose
depredations dwarf the alleged malign behavior of
Israel, have the Presbyterians officially called for
disinvestment.

	Why Israel? The Presbyterian ministers and their
organization assure us that their stance is principles
and has no anti-Semitic implications. Perhaps their
convictions are devoid of any aversion against Jews;
regrettably some of their colleagues cannot claim the
same degree of virtue. Over a period of several years
I have occasionally attended services in a
Presbyterian Church, USA, in another city. Three
times, I witnessed aspersions cast against Jews. One
interim clergyman stated from the pulpit: “The Jews
have the law, but we have God’s grace.” This
attestation of Christian triumphalism with regard to
Judaism ignored the fact that Jews also feel they have
God’s grace. After all, and I know Presbyterians who
would agree, the Jews consider themselves “the Chosen
People.” How the Jews’ behalf, can claim divine
selection without divine grace was a paradox not
examined by this clergyman.

	Another service, preached by the regular minister of
that church, contained the passage where Jesus heals a
man on the Sabbath in a synagogue and the Pharisees
plot to destroy him because he violated Sabbath law
(Mark 3:1-4). In fact, preservation of life is the
highest value in Judaism and takes precedence over any
other law.

	These, however, are incidental aspersion compared
with the Easter service where the minister quoted
Matthew 27:22-23, depicting the Jews demanding
crucifixion and saying, “His blood be on us and our
children.” This is a text frequently used by
anti-Semites to blame the Jews for killing the Messiah
and accuse them of inherited guilt for killing the
Messiah and accuse them of inherited guilt for
Deicide. Other Gospels are less severe on the Jews,
but Matthew was the choice of this pastor.

	My own experience at Presbyterian services and my
evaluation of the official decision for disinvestment
and the rationale offered by local Presbyterian clergy
lead me to make this recommendation: Before you judge
that the House of Israel if out of order, make sure
that your own house is in order.

Frederic C. Jaher is a professor of history at the
University of Illinois. His specialty is U.S. social
and intellectual history and his current field of
research is anti-Semitism in American history and
Christian-Jewish relations.

David Green’s response:

     Frederic Jaher (1/28) evaluates the local
Presbyterian pastors’ endorsement of selective
divestment from corporations engaging in business with
Israel. He presumes the right to judge them as a Jew
among Christians and as a historian among clerics, but
whatever Jaher’s background and credentials, his right
is only to judge whether the pastors are holding
another group to the standard to which they hold
themselves.

     But on a moment’s reflection, whether this is the
case is moot: as American citizens we all massively
support the military dictatorship that Israel has
imposed on occupied Palestine for 37 years: the
illegal settlements, the continued confiscation of
land, the “targeted killings,” the apartheid wall, and
the daily humiliations that are institutionalized only
because our government has chosen to use our tax
dollars and diplomatic power to that violent and
imperialist purpose, against a defeated people in the
process of being destroyed. The pastors are holding
not only Israel and Jews to what is arguably a
standard of basic and obvious morality, but themselves
and their congregants, while providing a much-needed
example for the rest of us in this country, Jewish or
otherwise. This is not about Jews versus Christians,
but Americans violating Palestinians.

	The rest of Jaher’s piece regarding history and
religion is transparently irrelevant and shockingly
infantile. It matters not at this point what response
was made by John Foster Dulles or any other
Presbyterian in this country during the years leading
up to and during the holocaust, when American elites
(including Grandfather Prescott Bush) overwhelmingly
supported and did business with Hitler’s Germany; when
the American leader of Reformed Judaism agreed to
silence himself regarding the holocaust at Roosevelt’s
request; when Zionist leaders in Palestine undermined
an effective boycott of the German economy; and when
the leader of the Jewish community in Hungary—a
Zionist—used his relationship with the Nazis to save
himself and 1,600 of his followers while advising
400,000 Jews to passively and obediently report for
“relocation”—which he well knew meant almost certain
death; he was later assassinated by a Hungarian Jew in
Israel.

     And surely it is disingenuous of Jaher to employ
Dulles for this convenient purpose, when he knows full
well that the neoconservatives he now supports trace
their lineage to those like Dulles and Dean Acheson,
who used the “red menace” to expand the
military-industrial complex and American hegemony in
the postwar era—resulting eventually in our support
for Israel as a virtual American military base in the
oil-rich and strategically vital Middle East. Jaher
does not even seem to understand that because Saudi
Arabia is our ally, Israel is committed to use its
resources to support the corrupt royal family,
whatever the rhetoric displayed for local consumption
on either side. 

     Jaher concludes with a sermon to the pastors
about judging their own house before that of Israel,
but it is he who is unwilling to look in the mirror,
while wielding the overworked and manipulative
accusation of anti-Semitism against those moving
tentatively to challenge American complicity in
blatant injustice; what Israeli sociologist Baruch
Kimmerling calls the “politicide” of the Palestinian
people. Jaher baldly implies that speaking as a Jew
confers moral authority on his words. But none of us
can make such a claim, whether based on the accident
of birth or even the experience of victimization. Nor
can he claim to speak for a majority of Jews, and even
if this were the case, majority is no proof of
morality. In the final analysis, Jaher must make his
argument with facts, logic, and moral consistency,
rather than appealing to his person and status. On
these terms he has failed miserably, while insulting
the intelligence and integrity of others who have made
a far more sincere effort.