Christians Building Walls Instead of BridgesIn the history of walls, few have ever achieved the height, length and humanmisery of the “Concrete Curtain” laid in the Promised Land of Israel.Under the leadership of Prime Ministers Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert, and nowBibi Netanyahu again, the nation-state of Israel has carved out prime real estate for itself by building a twenty-seven foot concrete wall that meanders through the land and lives of four-million Palestinians, taking the best of their inheritance and compressing them intothree disconnected islands of human misery.Higher than the Berlin Wall and projected to stretch some 400 miles, the ConcreteCurtain may be one of the most egregious violations of human rights in modern history,built with the complicit approval of the American government and the overt pressure of the Evangelical Christian Right.The Concrete Curtain is a political and religious statement of enormousproportions, failing to register with American Evangelicals who blissfully worship underthe authoritarian leadership of tele-Zionists and preachers who not only monopolize theairwaves but who have positioned themselves as players in Republican Party politics.“We must kill them before they kill us” is the mantra of these Evangelicals whohave built their own wall of separation between the American Dream and the humanmisery of other Christians in far away places. While they praise God for His blessings onAmerica, they use those blessings to fund illegal settlements on the West Bank and tolobby for the ancient national boundaries of Israel that are destined to trigger the Battle of Armageddon and force Jesus to come back on their timetable rather than God’s.Military force being an ineffective deterrent to terrorism, the US and Israel nowturn to building walls to protect themselves against outsiders – Israelis in Palestine andthe U.S. along our southern border. Walls built to keep others out, however, have exactlythe opposite effect. They imprison the builders and embolden those outside to new andexciting challenges. Fear builds the wall, while the challenge to scale the wall becomes ametaphor of hope for the oppressed. In the Information Age, the notion that you couldcontain the human spirit with a wall is reflective of a medieval mindset in a nuclear age.Besides being a colossal waste of time and resources, it is lunacy of the highest order.We in America have come to accept such lunacy as national security.As Westerners, and particularly as Western Christians, we bear much of theresponsibility and, indeed, much of the shame that comes from an attitude of armchaircompassion for one race over another in a place we are not obligated to live.We can argue as to whether the new boundaries of Israel, as defined by themeandering Concrete Curtain, are inviolate because of God’s promise to Abraham (Gen17:6-8). We can argue as to whether Jesus is yet to return, whether He is here already orwhether He is spiritually present but physically absent. We can argue whether millionsof the Jewish people have or have not already become Christians, beginning with the Dayof Pentecost, when three thousand Jews became converts (Acts 2:41).What Christians cannot disagree on is this:
He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly
with your God
(Micah 6:8
NIV Version
).There is no justice in pushing the Palestinian people into oppression because of abiblical border dispute. There is no justice in preferring one brand of Semite over another– European Jew over Palestinian Arab. There is no justice in stirring up war in theMiddle East in order to escalate the final Battle of Armageddon, wherein those refusingto accept Christ are obliterated. There is no justice in using tax-free revenues of non-profit para-church ministries to fund illegal settlements of secular or religious Jews on theWest Bank in order to drive out its long-term residents.There is no mercy in stepping on the necks of Palestinian Christians by AmericanChristian Zionists. There is no mercy in dehumanizing Palestinians as faceless terrorists,all. There is no mercy in praying for the nation of Israel to crush the people of Palestine . There is no mercy in elevating the nation-state of Israel over human rights.As for “…walking humbly with your God,” one thing that faithful Muslims, Jewsand Christians alike share in their doctrines is a professed belief in the sovereignty of God. Zionism, Christian or Jewish, and Islamist
Jihad
is the height of arrogance becauseit is tired of waiting for God and has decided to take matters into its own handsTo sacrifice on the altar of our peculiar theology the lives and human rights of Muslims and fellow Christians in Palestine is a crime of immense proportions.I stand with President Jimmy Carter in my conviction that Israel has a right toexist within recognized borders and to be accepted by Palestinians and all its Arabneighbors. The Palestinians, as well, are entitled to the right of return to their homeland.The killing of either, however, cannot be condoned or ignored by church or government.Both Palestinians and Jews must live according to international law and conscience andmust be judged impartially.Since the Six-Day War in 1967, Israel has had no enforceable borders. Bordersare now emerging as a result of the four-hundred mile concrete barrier through the WestBank and East Jerusalem that has all the earmarks of political apartheid and ManifestDestiny.Four obstacles have prevented the world from reacting with force to the IsraeliOccupation. The first is the enormous residual guilt from the Holocaust. The second isthe realization that to take on Israel militarily would be no romp in the desert. The thirdis that the pre-’67 borders made absolutely no logistical sense; they left Israel extremelyvulnerable to attack by the Arab states. The fourth is that the Occupation of the territoryhas been spun as a defensive action – protecting Israeli citizens from terrorism.The Fourth Geneva Convention forbids the settlement of people in militarilyoccupied territories, thus rendering the settlements on the West Bank and Gaza aviolation of international law. Christian Zionists in America have played a key role inencouraging and financing those settlements, both in violation of international law and inviolation of the spiritual law of honoring political authority as being God-ordained.The so-called “Two-State Solution” as envisioned by the UN Partition in 1947 hasgiven free reign to Israel to grab as much land as possible so as to render statehood forPalestinians a practical impossibility. Palestinians now find themselves locked behind atwenty-seven foot security barrier in a number of inaccessible and unconnected islands.They can neither pass freely into Israel , nor can they pass freely into Jordan , Egypt ,
Lebanon or Syria .They are a people without national citizenship or international credentials.With the election of George W. Bush as President through the support of theChristian Right, Tim Le Haye and Jerry Jenkins published their
Left Behind Series
of novels that sold over seventy million copies.Politically, Christian Zionists believe that the Bible, or their interpretation thereof,supersedes even the government of the United States . Islam is considered a satanicreligion, and therefore its destruction is justified; the Al Aqsa Mosque and Dome of theRock on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem must be torn down in order for the Temple to berebuilt and for Jesus to return.Every event in Israeli life is sifted through a biblical lens and interpreted as amandate on US foreign policy. Peace initiatives are openly condemned. Elected officialsare cowed into submission by the unholy alliance between American Christian Zionistsand AIPAC, the Israeli lobby.While Pat Robertson and the late Rev. Jerry Falwell were known to have bandiedabout the support of one hundred million Evangelicals for the Christian Zionist cause, thehard core is more likely between twenty-five and thirty million. Author Grace Halsell(
Forcing God’s Hand
), who calls the movement “a cult,” estimates that it is led by eightythousand pastors, disseminated by one thousand Christian radio stations and one hundredChristian TV stations.Jerry Falwell had consistently put pressure on Presidents Clinton and George W.Bush to refrain from complying with the Oslo Accords. Author Stephen Sizer referencesa 1999
Washington Post
interview in which Falwell is quoted as saying that pressingIsrael to withdraw from the West Bank “…would be like asking America to give Texasback to Mexico to bring about a good relationship. It’s ridiculous!”Evangelical churches are persuaded to “Adopt-a-Settlement” and to support“brave new Jewish settlers” living in Israel . Christian Friends of Israeli Communities(CFOIC) claims that thirty-nine illegal Jewish settlements have been adopted by overfifty churches worldwide. ICEJ is reported to have provided financial support forprojects within the Jewish settlements, including “bullet-proof vests to strengthen theresolve of settlers living among what it describes as ‘3 million hostile Palestinians.’”International law and individual justice are secondary to these advocates of God’sownership of the land. Evangelist Pat Robertson is known for his statement that Israel ’sPrime Minister Ariel Sharon’s stroke was payback from God for withdrawing in 2005from Gaza in accordance with the 1978 Camp David Accords.John Hagee, in 2006, was able to bring together some four hundred Christianevangelical leaders, reportedly representing as many as thirty million Christians, for a“Summit on Israel.” Its purpose was to prevent the Bush Administration from pressuringthe Israelis into turning over more land."Think of CUFI as a Christian version of American Israel PublicAffairs Committee (AIPAC)," the powerful pro-Israel lobby, Hagee told
The Jerusalem Post
in an interview a few days before the early Februarysummit. "We need to be able to respond instantly to Washington with ourconcerns about Israel . We must join forces to speak as one group and
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