The unqualified support given to the state of Israel by certain Christian groups — most often fundamentalists and Evangelicals — can be puzzling. It is a support based on a literal reading of the biblical accounts that identify Israel as the land promised by God to the Jewish people.
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(This article originally appeared in The Wanderer and is reprinted with permission. To subscribe call 651-224-5733.)
Some of these groups will stress a Christian stake in the plot, their understanding that Jesus cannot come again until Israel plays its biblically assigned role in the final days. Indeed, some observers in the mainstream press warn Israelis that they should not take the friendship of pastors such as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson on face value, arguing that these Christian preachers do not have Israel’s best interests at heart, but view Israel as a prop to be destroyed in their vision of Armageddon.
But let us leave aside for the moment the question of what role Israel will play at the Second Coming of Christ and focus on the claim that a Christian should support Israel’s right to exist because the Bible identifies it as the land given by God to the Jewish people. Israeli settlers make precisely this claim when they expropriate Palestinian land. The question: How much territory is Israel entitled to in the Middle East today because of God’s promise to Abraham? Does Israel have a divine mandate to exist? Or should its claims to sovereignty be viewed as any other nation-state’s in the world arena?
Vincent A. Droddy, an instructor of history at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, in an article in the February issue of New Oxford Review, offers valuable insights into these questions. (Droddy stresses that these opinions are his own and not the views of the U.S. Navy.) He disagrees with the fundamentalist Christians who see Israel’s right to exist as God-given, arguing that “the modern state of Israel” is “simply another nation, subject to rules of moral behavior neither more nor less stringent than those applied to other nations,” and that “to identify the modern state of Israel with the ‘Israel of God’ is to misunderstand the Bible.”
Says Droddy, “One can no more determine who among Jews is a descendant of Abraham than who among non-Jews is a descendant of Abraham. Thirty-five centuries of ethnic intermingling have made the ‘seed of Abraham’ by the flesh impossible to determine.” We must remember, he argues, that as “punishment for their sins, God allowed the northern tribes to be carried off by Assyria, so that the Kingdom of Israel ceased to exist as a cultural or political entity. Later, the people of Judah were likewise punished for their sins, by being carried off into Babylonian exile. Those descendants of Abraham through Isaac and Jacob are today ethnically indistinguishable from other peoples in the Near East.”
Moreover, “conversion has made Jews of many who were not of the offspring of Abraham. (Esther 8:17; Mt. 23:15; Acts 2:7-11). As recently as the eighth century A.D., wholesale conversion of the Khazar of Russia to Judaism occurred.” Further, Droddy argues, the “commonly accepted definition, that a Jew is someone born of a Jewish mother, does nothing to assure the ethnic definition. A woman with no descent from Abraham could convert to Judaism, and have a Jewish child by a man who has no descent from Abraham.” And most Jewish groups would consider that child a Jew.
But what if one were to object that God’s promise was not made to an ethnic group but to those who practice the religion of Judaism? Droddy answers, “Judaism has several divisions, primarily Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform. Reform Judaism has been so liberal that the others would not accept Reform converts as Jews.” Indeed, there are Jews who are not religious at all, “claiming Jewishness by heritage” rather than because of their religious beliefs. “Some Jews convert to other faiths or become atheists and still consider themselves Jewish. Thus people can claim to be ‘Jewish’ without practicing Judaism.”
Droddy concludes: “Who then is a Jew? Some Jews are descended from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and some are not. Some practice a form of Judaism and some do not.” Hence it is possible to support “the Jews (as a religious or ethnic group) and oppose the state of Israel (as many ultra-orthodox Jews do, saying restoration of Israel can only be accomplished by the Messiah), or one can be a supporter of Israel (for geopolitical reasons) while hating Jews.”
Droddy’s case seems persuasive to me. It does not imply hostility to Israel, merely a view of Israel that places it among the family of nations, with rights and responsibilities no different than any other nation-state’s. But it does maintain there is no reason for a Christian to back Israel without qualification, or to think that Palestinian claims for a homeland somehow violate God’s law. If Israel is entitled to the West Bank and Gaza, it is not because of a divine mandate.
Of course, saying that does not meant that Israel is not entitled to that land by the standards other nations use to define their borders. Or that Israel has no right to retaliate forcefully against terrorist groups and their supporters operating out of the West Bank or Lebanon, or to have destroyed Saddam Hussein’s nuclear facilities.
Let’s be honest: If terrorist groups operating out of bases in Mexico were sending suicide teams to kill American civilians throughout California and Texas, and if they were building facilities to develop nuclear and biological weapons to supply cells of sympathizers they had sent into other American cities, most of us would not hesitate to call for troops to be sent into Mexico to destroy them. We are getting ready to send troops half way around the world into Iraq to do just that. Rejecting Israel’s claim to be God’s Promised Land does not imply a rejection of the Israeli people’s right to act energetically in their self-defense. If you can’t use the Bible to legitimize Israel’s right to exist within safe and secure borders, neither can you use the lack of biblical foundations to call for its destruction.
