The Cultural and Religious Context
he
19th century
English poet and critic Matthew Arnold once observed that
culture gives us a picture of how our world should be and
then compels us to go out and “make it prevail.” Westerners
have been doing just that for at least 500 years, and as a
consequence there is scarcely a place on the globe that does
not show some impact of this effort. And how have we
undertaken to make our culture prevail? Traditionally, we
have pursued a policy of imperialism that is supported by a
number of assumptions and assertions which, alas, reflect
the egomania of the Western cultural paradigm. For
instance, there is the prevailing bipolar perception that
the world is divided in two. On one side is a progressive
and technologically advanced West. On the other side is a
backward East in need of guidance. Then follows the
assertion that modernity as expressed in Western style
economic and political institutions is a prerequisite for
societal success. Finally, there is an underlying
assumption that the spread of Western civilization is
inevitable and beneficial. In other words, imperialism is
an altruistic endeavor. As Rudyard Kipling put it in his
1899 poem, addressed to the American people on the eve of
the Spanish-American War, “Take up the white man’s burden.
Send forth the best ye breed....to serve your captive’s
needs.”
The
West’s self-glorifying assertions are not restricted to the
material. There is yet another persistently assumed aspect
to our capacity to “meet its captives’ needs,” and this is
the belief that the West possesses the superior religion of
Christianity. Here the altruistic mission to breech the
bipolar divide by bringing the backward East the blessings
of good government and the hardware of progress is melded
with the proselytizing zeal of Protestant evangelical
fundamentalism. No where can this be seen more readily then
in that part of the Middle East known as the “Holy Land” or
Palestine.
America Takes
the Lead
It has
been American devotees of the Holy Land who have most
ardently melded religion and the notion of benevolent imperialism. And, they have done so with a characteristic
self-righteousness that connects American manifest destiny
with God Almighty. Listen to the Reverend John Codman
addressing supporters of American missionaries Palestine and
Greater Syria in 1836. “How can we better testify our
appreciation of [America’s] free institutions, than by
laboring to plant them in other lands? For where the Gospel
goes in its purity and power, there will follow in its train
the blessings of civilization, and good government....Coming
himself from a land of freedom, he [the American missionary]
will naturally spread around him an atmosphere of liberty.” Codman was suggesting that, just like Protestant Christianity, America too had a divinely
sanctioned mission to expand its way of life, its values of
economic freedom and political democracy, for the salvation
of mankind. Or, as one of Reverend’s compatriots put it,
America was “God’s last dispensation towards the world.”
It is
not by coincidence that in the opening years of the 21st
century we are still adhering to this traditional script. Many of America’s leaders since the time of Codman have held
his same point of view. And now we have President George W.
Bush, whose public remarks clearly indicate that he too
believes the United States is God’s instrument in the divine
mission of spreading modernity, development, free
enterprise, and overall “freedom.” The evangelicals are
also still with us, adding the ingredient of spiritual
redemption. As Robert Pyne, a theologian at the Dallas
Theological Seminary has observed, today’s Christian
evangelicals “identify the American cause...as the cause of
Christ.” As it was for John Codman so it is for today’s
American fundamentalist Protestants – the United States
marches through history in partnered strides with God.
The Zionist Connection
The same
Protestant fundamentalists who sought (and still seek) to
redeem the Holy Land through missionary work as well as
bringing the world the blessings of the American way of
life, had (and still have) a fascination with the Jews. This
is because many of these evangelicals were (and still are) true believers in the biblical prophecy that speaks of the
return of the Jews to Palestine as a necessary precondition
for the second coming of Christ. In his book The
Roots of Fundamentalism, Ernest R. Sandeen captures
the importance of this connection when he tells us that many
Protestant fundamentalists “watched in fascination the
formation of Zionism under Theodor Herzl and the meeting of
the first Zionist Congress in Basel in 1897....Almost
instinctively [they] grasped the significance of Allenby's
capture of Jerusalem and celebrated the event as the
fulfillment of prophecy.” Thus it was that, by 1917 and the
issuance of the Balfour Declaration, most American
Protestants who concerned themselves with the Holy Land were
enthusiastic supporters of the right of the Jews, led by an
active Zionist movement, to "return home."
In terms
of altruistic imperialism, the Zionists soon became
perceived as a major force for the physical redemption or
modernization of Palestine, as well as the realization of
prophecy. They won support in the United States by claiming
to be acting in a traditional American style. For
instance, American Zionists quite purposely drew parallels
between the American pioneer experience and the Zionist
colonization of Palestine. Throughout the 1920s and into the
1930s representatives of the Zionist Organization of America
placed articles in strategic American newspapers describing
the Zionist “pioneers” as modern day versions of America’s
“brave and religiously pious settlers.” Here are some
quotes from one article that appeared in the New York Times
on June 11, 1922. “These immigrants to Palestine are indeed
the Jewish Puritans.” Their settlements are “the Jamestown
and Plymouth of the new House of Israel.” They are
“building the new Judea even as the Puritans built New
England.” The settlers are like the “followers of Daniel
Boone who opened the West for American settlers” while
“facing the dangers of Indian warfare.” In the process “the
Jews are bringing prosperity and happiness in Palestine.”
As the
Zionists opened the Holy Land for settlement, the natives,
the indigenous Arabs (both the Muslim majority and what
American Protestants considered the “pseudo” Christian Arabs
of the Greek Orthodox and Catholic “degenerate churches”),
became less noticed by American and other observers except
in as much as they stood in apparent opposition to
redemption and modernity alike. This took the form of a
process of “perceptual depopulation” that erased the
demographic and cultural/religious realities of Palestine.
It was a form of ethnic cleansing at the conceptual level.
Impact on US Foreign
Policy
In the
20th century, the impact of these interlocking
religious and imperialist-colonialist lines of thinking on
U.S. government policy begins with Woodrow Wilson. Wilson
was easily persuaded by Louis Brandeis to support the
Balfour Declaration because of, in part, the President’s
belief in biblical mythology. As he told the Zionist leader
Rabbi Stephen Wise in 1916, “To think that I, son of the
manse, should be able to help restore the Holy Land to its
people.” Most of the American Presidents who followed
Wilson were similarly pro-Zionist. However, for the men in
the White House there were sometimes countervailing
international pressures that limited their ability to make
too public a pro-Zionist display. For instance, Woodrow
Wilson was a Christian Zionist but, during World War I, he
could not be as forthright about it as he might have wished
because to do so would have alienated the Turks and risked
the ruin of the American missionary presence in the Ottoman
Empire. Just preceding and during World War II, Franklin
Roosevelt, who was sympathetic to the Zionists without being
religiously motivated, agreed with the State Department that
too much of a public pro-Zionist display would unsettle the
Middle East and perhaps drive the Arabs into alliance with
the Axis Powers. After World War II, presidents such as
Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson (who likened the Israelis to
19th century “Texans fighting Mexico”), and
Ronald Reagan (who had made references to Israel’s foes in
terms of biblical prophecies) continued to have a basically
romanticized biblical understanding of Palestine and
Israel. However, even while faced with the issue of oil,
they tended to be increasingly forthright in their support
for Israel. Their Christian Zionist sentiments merged with
the political and financial strength of the Zionist lobby to
produce overtly pro-Zionist pronouncements and policies.
Congress, on the other hand, never suffered the occasional
restraints felt by the executive branch. Their politics were
wholly local and, very early on, the American Zionists had
made themselves a force in the domestic politics of
America. Thus, by 1922 Congress had passed a joint
resolution in support of the Balfour Declaration and from
that point on the legislative branch never looked back. They supported the Zionist interpretation of events during
the 1929 Arab uprising in Palestine and the rebellion of the
late 1930s. Even during World War II, when Roosevelt and
the State Department were trying to keep the Arabs from
deserting the British-American cause in the Middle East,
Congress repeatedly tried to pass pro-Zionist resolutions
calling for open Jewish immigration into Palestine.
There
were varied factors that reinforced this enthusiasm for
Zionism: anti-immigration sentiment among constituents
during the depression and post World War II years (that led
American leaders to support Palestine, rather than the U.S.,
as a destination for Jewish refugees), a mixture of post-war
guilt and humanitarian sympathy with the Jews as victims of
the holocaust, and the sheer financial and organizational
clout of America’s Zionist organizations. However, the
effectiveness of all these factors was underpinned by the
reality that a large number of Americans, who think little
of foreign policy unless it can be linked to their everyday
lives, had already been conditioned to view Palestine in
romanticized biblical terms. In other words, for many
American Protestants (to say nothing of the American Jews)
Israel was, and is still, an extension of Sunday School, and
in this mythologized form does touch their lives. As Lyndon
Johnson once told a meeting of B’nai B’rith, “The Bible
stories are woven into my childhood memories as the gallant
struggle of modern Jews to be free of persecution is woven
into our souls.” Add to this Christian Zionist
predisposition an updated version of the bipolar world view
wherein Israel is seen as “the only democracy in the Middle
East” and a Western civilizational outpost that is allegedly
“just like us,” and you get the acquiescence of many
contemporary Americans to U.S. support for Israel that,
between 1948 and 2001, totaled some 91 billion dollars.
Today’s Christian Zionism
Today’s
Christian Zionists are motivated by the same religious
passion as America’s 19th century evangelical
missionaries. However, they are now much better positioned
and equipped to spread their ideas. Utilizing televangelist
techniques, religious radio, evangelical newspapers and even
religious novels, they have once more taken up the
fulfillment of prophecy as a key motivator for American
support of Israel.
Nor
should one think of today’s Christian Zionists as a fringe
group. Those who call themselves “Christian conservatives,”
take the Bible as the literal or inspired word of God,
believe in prophecy, and expect the end of the world in the
relatively near future, make up close to 20% of the
American electorate. This constituency has become the
voting core of the Republican party, or as Karl Rove, Bush’s political adviser describes it, the Republican
party’s “base.” The base proved its political potency in
November of 2004.
The
Christian Zionists are represented by such groups such as:
1) The Christian Coalition of America founded by Pat
Robertson (who on a November 2002 program of the Christian
Broadcasting Network which reaches 180 countries, called
Muslims “worse than Nazis” and the efforts to bring peace to
the Middle East a waste of time – “The idea that you’re
going to make peace with the Muslim world by giving them
territory (a reference to the Palestinian desire for a
state) is an absolute illusion.” 2) The Moral Majority
founded by Jerry Falwell, who in October 2002 called
Mohammed “a terrorist” and in June of 2003 remarked that “it
is my belief that the Bible Belt in America is Israel’s only
safety belt right now.” 3) The National Unity Coalition for
Israel (NUCI), an important lobbying arm of the American
Christian Zionist movement that maintains close contacts
with neo-conservative Washington think tanks and Bush
administration personnel. It is presently claiming to
represent 40 million Americans and runs an on-going “Save
Israel [from any compromises to the Palestinians] Campaign” 4) The Religious Roundtable run by Ed McAteer, the
self-styled “godfather” of the modern Religious Right. In
his opinion, “the best friends that Israel has are not those
people who believe the Bible contains the word of God, but
that the Bible is the word of God.”
All of
these individuals and groups were galvanized by the 1967
“Six Day War” and Israeli expansion into the Occupied
Territories. Just as in the case of General Allenby’s
capture of Jerusalem in December of 1917, they saw the hand
of God in Israeli expansion into the West Bank and Gaza
Strip, and interpreted these events as a big step toward the
fulfillment of biblical prophecy. Their faith seemingly
reconfirmed by events, Christian Zionists have since been
energized to do what they can to move prophecy forward. They take hard line positions on the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict, and have repeatedly warned the Bush
administration that any real pressure on Israel to make a
just peace would result in their abandonment of the
Republican Party. In this way they have effectively blocked
any substantive American Government support for a
Palestinian state or the trading of land for peace. In
essence they support the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in
the name of Christ.
In this
effort they once more have close allies in the government. For instance the November 2002 convention of the Christian
Coalition, held in Washington DC, was opened with a
videotaped benediction that came straight from the Oval
Office. The most powerful republicans in Congress addressed
the Convention (as did the Zionist mayor of Jerusalem),
including Tom Delay who was then the House majority whip. We
are “standing up for Jews and Jesus” he told the crowd. Later, as the majority leader in the House of
Representatives, Delay went to Israel with the same message
and addressed the Knesset directly. Under these
circumstances, according to Doug Bandow, a senior fellow at
the conservative Cato Institute and himself an evangelical,
the Christian Zionist message “colors the environment in
which [government foreign policy] decisions are made.” It
is no surprise then that this administration often turns a
blind eye to Israeli behavior no matter how brutal. The
oppression of the Palestinians and the confiscation of their
land is simply “God’s way” of keeping his promise to “bless”
the Israelites along with those who aid them (most of all
America), and “curse” those who oppose Israel (most of all
the Palestinians).
It
should be kept in mind that this whole-hearted evangelical
support of Israel and Zionism does not come from any love of
the Jewish people or pity for their past sufferings. On the
contrary, if a Jew takes the time to reflect upon what these
evangelicals and their prophecies seek to accomplish, the
only rational thing to do is run the other way. In fact, what the Christian Coalition et. al. have in mind for the
Jewish people is annihilation in a fashion that makes the
Holocaust look like an amateur operation. Here is their
scenario. After the Israelis clear out the Palestinians,
the Jews as a whole take the Palestinians place as the
accursed of God. First there is the great battle at
Armageddon at which most of the Jews are simply
slaughtered. And then, in the aftermath, the surviving Jews
see the light and convert to (Protestant fundamentalist)
Christianity. Poof, a world wiped clean of the Jews. Remember, those who ardently await these events are part of
Karl Rove’s Republican base. The Grand Old Party turns out
to be partially grounded on a movement of fanatic
anti-Semites.
What is
equally disturbing is that the right wing of the Israeli
political spectrum and their American Jewish boosters are in
alliance with these divinely inspired supporters of
Armageddon. They take their money and host them to champagne
tours of the Holy Land even while these same Zionist Jews
make fallacious claims of anti-Semitism against anyone who
would criticize on-going Israeli barbarity in the Occupied
Territories. We should judge these Zionists by the company
they keep and, in their growing fanaticism, their taste has
turned self-destructive. They now favor the companionship
of those who anxiously await the ultimate demise of the
Jewish people.
Amongst
these Zionists, both Jewish and non-Jewish, are the
neo-conservative imperialists who make up President Bush’s
secular advisers: people such as Vice President Cheney,
Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, National Security Adviser
Condoleezza Rice, and, of course, Richard Pearle, Paul Wolfowitz, and Douglas Feith. Thus we have an intertwining
alliance of neo-conservative government leaders and the
Christian Zionist movement. It should be noted that all of
these people and groups also believe that the United States
has a duty to reshape the world in terms of its own
interests. Just as in the mid 19th century, a
sense of divine purpose has today been married to American
manifest destiny. The same neo-conservative advisers who
support Israel with the assistance and blessing of the
Christian Coalition, planned the invasion of Iraq, and
assert America’s right to remake the Middle East in the name
of, as Reverend John Codman put it some 167 years ago,
“spreading the atmosphere of liberty.” As American troops
bombed Baghdad, the televangelist leader Franklin Graham
(son of Billy Graham) prepared his army of missionaries as a
second wave of invaders. Once more, we see ourselves as
“God’s last dispensation towards the world.”
President George W.
Bush: High Priest of a Fundamentalist National Religion
President George W. Bush has said that he makes decisions by
“gut instinct.” There seems little doubt that his instinct
is basically that of an evangelical Christian with an
unquestioning commitment to a divinely inspired American
Manifest Destiny. Read Mr. Bush’s 2002 and 2003 State of
the Union Messages and you will find “the loving God behind
all of life and all of history” has once more called on the
United States to spread “the liberty we prize” which,
according to the President, is “the right of every person
and the future of every nation.” For Mr. Bush the American
cultural paradigm encompassing modernity, development, free
enterprise, and democracy conveniently turns out to be
identical with “God’s gift to humanity.” Here are a series
of additional quotes from the President that meld Christian
fundamentalist thought and American manifest destiny: “Our
Nation is chosen by God and commissioned by history to be a
model to the world of justice.” The United States has been
called upon to bring God’s gift of liberty to “every human
being in the world.” “We are in a conflict between good and
evil, and we will call evil by its name.” In Saddam
Hussein “we are encountering evil” that must be destroyed,
even if it means war–an action about which Mr. Bush says,
“if anyone can be at peace, I am at peace about this.” As
one reporter recently concluded, “the sense of divine
calling is hard to miss in the White House.”
However, perhaps even more than the fundamentalist
presidents before him, Christian evangelicalism melded to
American nationalism marks the boundaries of Mr. Bush’s
world view and he seems incapable of the self-examination
and reflection required to see beyond it. The results can
be frightening to those who happen to be outside of Bush’s
world. For one, decisions made from “the gut” and guided by
“providence” do not have to be thought through. In the Bush
White House no one is allowed to play the devil’s advocate,
the “what if” critic. According to a Bush staffer “no one
is allowed to second guess, even when you should.” When,
according to former Commerce Secretary Don Evans, the
President’s faith gives him “a very clear sense of what is
good and what is evil” you don’t need any second guessing. As a consequence the president knows who are the
“terrorists”and “evildoers.” Correspondingly, his gut and
faith tells him who is “good.” In the Middle East, the good
guys are the Israelis.
George W. Bush and
Israel
The way
George W. Bush interprets his Christian fundamentalist faith
causes him to have an a priori sympathy for Israel. Before
he was President, Bush told the American Jewish Committee
that, “I am a Christian. But I believe with the Psalmist
that the Lord God of Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps. We
will stand up for our friends in the world. And one of the
most important friends is the state of Israel.”
Prior to
September 11, 2001 this commitment was kept in the
background. The president had seen the approach of the
Clinton administration to the Israeli-Palestinian problem as
overly intrusive and unsuccessful. The result was a
hands-off attitude that clearly favored the stronger party
in the conflict. On September 11, however, as the Twin
Towers came down, Bush’s sense of divine calling seemed to
rise up and his orientation changed. The “war against
terrorism” became a holy mission for him. It was a “war to
save civilization itself.” And, almost automatically, Israel
became a key player in the President’s “anti-terror front.”
Mr.
Bush’s gut told him that Yasir Arafat and most of the
Palestinian leadership were “tainted by terror” and
therefore evil. This is not surprising given that Bush’s
evangelical orientation makes it hard for him to understand
Palestinian violence in terms of resistance. When it comes
to the Holy Land, what is most real for the president is the
Palestine of the Bible, which is “covenant land,” and this
rationalizes Israel’s possession of the West Bank and Gaza
Strip. Therefore, he views the Palestinian reaction to
occupation as defiance of God’s will. The last 36 years over
which Israel has destroyed Palestinian civil society, killed
thousands of Palestinian civilians, and displaced hundreds
of thousands more is, for the president of the United
States, religiously justified.
In
addition, if we are to judge from the justifications put
forth for the war in Iraq, Bush is convinced that
imperialism and colonialism should once more be fancied
altruistic endeavors. Israel’s settler movement and
presence in the Occupied Territories could be interpreted in
the light of the Zionist movement’s original assertions for
the occupation of Palestine–as at once the fulfillment of
biblical prophecy and the expansion of Western
civilization. This also allows Bush to rationalize away
Israeli actions, even at their most bloody. Thus, Israel’s
Prime Minister Sharon, who is a war criminal even in the
eyes of some of his own countrymen, has been transformed
into a “man of peace.” Such a deluded approach has led
American Zionist leaders to rate Bush’s government as “the
best administration for Israel since Harry Truman.” Correspondingly, it can safely be said that almost no one in
the Arab or Muslim world takes seriously any Bush
administration blather about democracy and peace.
Conclusion
The 19th
century Western cultural paradigm, combining as it did
imperialism and religion, has once more come to the fore
within the context of 21st century technology and
geopolitics. A sense of cultural and religious superiority
reigns in U.S. government circles, while a claim to the
right of preemptive attack and conquest has been formally
proclaimed. Of course, there are no longer a multitude of
Western states competing for empire and therefore no
immediate possibility of a “balance of power.” Now the
United States stands supreme. It alone claims the right to
say, as Hilaire Belloc once did of the British, "Whatever
happens, we have got the Maxim Gun, and they have not." In
other words, power can do anything it wants in the world. However, those who wield the power always need ideologies
and rationalizations to differentiate themselves from the
merely criminal. Today, most of the rationales of this new
rising empire are remarkably unoriginal. The bipolar
perception of the world (now termed a “clash of
civilizations”), the assertion of imperialist altruism, God
as a partner in spreading modernity, development, free
enterprise, democracy, etc. are all alive and kicking in the
rhetoric of the Bush administration and its supporters.
There is also the persistent Christian Zionist belief that
American foreign policy is destined to help pave the way for
Christ’s second coming and the apocalypse–an eminently
anti-Semitic ambition.
History
is littered with leaders who thought God was on their side. It is such an utterly vacuous and irrational belief that
those who know real history (as against mythology) can only
wonder at its persistence. Yet this is how our present
American leaders see the world. It amounts to the
delusions of power marching hand and hand with the religious
delusions of those who dream of prophecy and hear God
whispering in their ears. Both approaches, the power of
“blood and iron” and power Christian fundamentalist
religion, now stand supreme in the halls of Congress and the
Oval Office. The resulting inevitable slaughter has only
just begun. American manifest destiny and Christian
Zionist delusions now pave the road down which we all walk. It runs through Palestine and leads to hell.
Lawrence Davidson is a frequent contributor to
Logos and is Professor of
Middle East History at West Chester University in West
Chester, PA. He is author of two recent books:
Islamic Fundamentalism (Greenwood Press, 2003) and
America's Palestine: Popular and Official Perceptions from
Balfour to Israeli Statehood (University Press of
Florida, 2001). He also has written over twenty published
articles on US perceptions of and policies toward the Middle
East.
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