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Anti-semitism or Social Injustice? A Response to Fred Jaher |
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by David Green
Email: davegreen48 (nospam) yahoo.com (verified) |
13 Mar 2005
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In January, History professor Fred Jaher accused local Presbyterian pastors of anti-Semitism. This is my response. |
Dear Tom Kacich:
I have previously submitted a Guest Commentary in response to Frederic Jaher’s of January 28, in which he accused Presbyterian ministers of anti-Semitism when they called for selective divestment from Israel. I am now submitting a response revised from my previous submission. I feel that it is extremely important to present a variety of views on this issue, including a variety from Jews. I have also included my transcription of Jaher’s original column. Thanks.
David Green
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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 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 morality, but themselves and their congregants, while providing a much-needed example for the rest of us, Jewish or otherwise. This is not about Jews against Christians, but Americans against Palestinians. Regarding divestment, the issue is only whether this is an effective tactic in the promotion of a just peace as a solution to Israel’s occupation.
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) 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; and when Zionist leaders in Palestine undermined an effective boycott of the German economy.
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 by the 1960s 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 injustice. 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.
Indeed, Jaher represents that portion of the Jewish community—and especially Jewish leadership and institutions—that has turned its back on social justice partly as a result of its ongoing rationalization of injustice in Israel and support for American hegemony. This became painfully clear in early 2003 when our local religious leader publicly advocated the invasion of Iraq, and referred to Jewish texts to support his case.
David Green is a member of AWARE, the Anti-War Anti-Racism Effort
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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. |
This work is in the public domain |
