[This post is part of a series by Sam running at normblog on Mondays for the next couple of months. The first post of the series is here.]
4. Religious Claims
Two weeks ago, I ended my post with the question, 'Whose land is it anyway?' Before getting to that question, I wanted to clear away some of the prejudices that cloud discussion of the whole conflict: last week, therefore, I talked about racism and anti-Semitism. It's time now to get back to the question about ownership of the land. We'll start with two unsatisfactory styles of argument on this topic - one this week and one next week - used by partisans on both sides. It'll be a while before we see good arguments on the 'whose land' question: they are not as straightforward as the bad ones.
a) 'In the Bible, God gave the land of Israel to the Jews.'
b) 'God punished the Jews for their rejection of Christ by removing their right to the land.'
c) 'Territories, like Palestine, that have come under the sway of Islam - parts of the Dar al-Islam - must always remain Muslim.'
In the West, at least, we hear a) much more often than b) or c), but the latter have also played a role in polemics on the Palestinian side. Demonstrators against Zionism in the 1920s carried placards asking 'Shall we give back the country to a people who crucified our Lord Jesus?' A speaker at the beginning of the 1936 Arab Revolt urged his listeners to 'fight your enemies, the enemies of religion, who wish to destroy your mosques', and many Palestinians today seek a single, Muslim state in the land, not just an Arab one.
Since a) is more commonly heard than b) and c), however, and since what I have to say about it carries over pretty readily to the other two claims as well, I will focus this post on that version of the religious arguments for ownership of Palestine.
Many Jews, religious and non-religious, cite the Bible as the basis of the Jewish claim to Palestine; many Christians do as well. A lot of people seem to think it is a strong, even obvious, argument on the Jewish side. I think it is the weakest argument the Jews have, and should be retired permanently from debates over this issue. Three reasons why:
a) The interpretation of sacred texts is a tricky business, especially if one wants to apply them to modern politics, and it is by no means obvious that the Bible does depict God as giving the land of Israel/Palestine unconditionally to the Jews. Some passages in the Bible do seem to say that (chapters 15 and 28 of Genesis, for instance), but others make God's grant of the land to the Jews dependent on their keeping certain commitments. For instance:
And the land was defiled - therefore I did visit the iniquity thereof upon it, and the land vomited out her inhabitants. Ye therefore shall keep My statutes and Mine ordinances, and shall not do any of these abominations;... that the land vomit not you out also, when ye defile it, as it vomited out the nation that was before you. (Lev 18:25-28)
And, in later books of the Bible, the Israelites do commit 'abominations' that would seem to void their right to the land. Moreover, God is represented as Himself the agent of the destruction that comes upon Israel and Judea (see Jeremiah 21, for instance). So even if one is a deeply religious Jew or Christian, and believes that the Hebrew Bible is literally the word of God, one need not think that God wants Jews to live in the land now. That's precisely why many religious Jews were initially opposed to Zionism (and a few still are). They felt, in line with a central strand of Jewish tradition, that exile was a divine punishment for Jewish sin that could only be lifted by the coming of the Messiah: a new, miraculous divine intervention in history. To try to set up a modern Jewish state without a direct sign from God, on this view, is a sacrilege and a project doomed to failure (like the attempt of the Israelites to enter the land, after God had withdrawn permission for them to do that, in Numbers 28:40-45).
b) The vast majority of Israelis are secular, and want to live in a secular liberal democracy. Using the Bible to legitimate their whole political project therefore opens up difficult questions for them. Whenever I hear secular or even just non-Orthodox Jews saying that the land of Israel/Palestine is Jewish because God said so in the Bible, I want to ask: 'Does that mean you are now going to cease all work on the sabbath, which the Biblical God commands rather more explicitly? How about eating only kosher food? How about observing the prohibition on sexual intercourse during menstruation?' It's very unlikely that most Israelis, or pro-Israel Jews, would commit themselves to these aspects of the Bible, and unimaginable that they would want Israeli law or policy to be based on them (even most Orthodox Jews don't want that). But then it looks hypocritical, or confused, to cite the Bible in defence of the Jewish right to the land.
c) Here's the most important point. The Bible is not a deed to property, or a recognized political constitution, or a document that has or should have any other sort of standing in international law and politics. Imagine what would happen if the sacred Scriptures of any religion were considered a legitimate basis for political claims. Muslims might claim a right for an Islamic state to be established over the entire world; Muslims and Christians alike could claim that Jews are now disfavoured by God and should live permanently under their rule; Hindus could claim that practically all of India rightly belongs under their control. Of course, it would take somewhat tendentious readings of these religious traditions to reach such conclusions, but - as we've seen - it takes a somewhat tendentious reading of the Jewish Scriptures to reach the conclusion that God, now, wants Jews to rule over Israel/Palestine, and there are, notoriously, millions of believers who do read Islam, Christianity and Hinduism in just the way I have suggested. The modern political order, to the extent that it has achieved any international peace and justice, is based on the setting aside of religious claims in the foundation of states. It has its origins in the decision of Catholic and Protestant regimes in Europe, after over a hundred years of war, to put religion aside in their future relations. And that makes very good sense. Why, after all, should a Muslim or Hindu or Buddhist, or of course an atheist, take seriously what the Bible says when it comes to who owns a particular piece of land? It would make as much sense for a Jew or Christian to give up their claims on some land because of a passage in the Quran. Because we don't all agree on which religion, if any, is the right one, we will have constant war, and certainly not achieve anything we could agree was justice, if we allow religious texts to ground political positions.
A good way to think about the use of religious traditions to ground states will also be helpful when we look at other principles on which Jews and Palestinians base their claim to Israel/Palestine: How would we feel about this principle being made into a general rule for the apportioning of land throughout the modern political order? Imagine if every group in the modern world was seen as having a right to land that their religion led them to think was theirs. Muslims could lay claim to Spain; Hindus might claim much of Pakistan and all of Sri Lanka; some Christians would claim a right to rule the whole world. This is a recipe, of course, for chaos and huge injustice if we look to the ordinary, secular ways in which we think about property-ownership and political rule. (Could it possibly be just for the modern inhabitants of Spain to have to submit to Muslim rule?) It is no wonder, therefore, that religious teachings have no weight in modern international politics.
More briefly, now, to the religious claims made by the Palestinian side. One important reason why Palestinians, and Muslims throughout the world, resist a Jewish state in Palestine is the principle in Islamic law that territories conquered by Islam belong from that point on permanently to the Muslim umma and should never again be ruled by non-Muslims. And some Palestinian Christians, in the early days of Zionism, objected to Jewish acquisition of land in Palestine on the grounds that the Jews (they believed) killed Christ. Both of these claims have of course exactly the same status as the Jewish claim to the land on the basis of the Bible, and both should be similarly dismissed in international politics. Perhaps the dangers of Muslim and Christian religious bases for politics can help Jews see what is wrong with a religiously Jewish basis for politics, and vice versa. Certainly, the two sides cannot expect to convince each other - or to reach, therefore, a sincere peace - if they rely on religious arguments. (Sam Fleischacker)
[The next post in the series is here. Responses may be sent to Sam at this email address: sfleisch (AT) uic (DOT) edu]