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Features All Features Zionists or Zealots?, Part II
Features All Features Zionists or Zealots?, Part II | Zionists or Zealots?, Part II |
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Sondra Oster Baras is unperturbed. "I am not offended by anyone else’s theology which encompasses a certainty that their faith is true to the exclusion of all others," she writes in response to the question of evangelical eschatology. "As an Orthodox Jew, I feel the same way about my own faith. Therefore, if someone has a vision of hell and salvation that does not comport with mine, it does not matter." A native of Cleveland, Ohio, Baras moved to the West Bank settlement of Karnei Shomron in 1985. There, as executive director of CFOIC Israel, she oversees the organization’s "nerve center" with the aid of three full-time staff members. All money collected by CFOIC overseas that is designated for use in Israel ends up in her hands for distribution to individual communities. When Johnston Federated writes a check for Itamar, it goes through her. But Baras is also the group’s charismatic focal point, making regular trips to the States for fundraising tours and keeping the faithful informed with her regular "News from the Land" bulletins. On its web site, CFOIC continually updates wish lists for beleaguered settler communities: bullet-proof vests, see-saws, "guard/attack" dogs, toys. And the money keeps pouring in. In one recent dispatch, Baras boasts of receiving over $2 million in checks from Christian supporters during her most recent speaking tour in the United States. A lawyer by training, Baras dismisses criticisms of her work with the nimble rhetoric of a trial attorney. She contends that whatever their theology, the Christian leaders she works with bear no hatred for the Jewish people. "I am sure they firmly believe that we need to accept Christianity. But, as human beings, they respect our own equally firm beliefs and are willing to let G-d be the ultimate arbiter. As long as we can respect each other, understand our differences and agree to disagree, we can work together on the issue we do agree upon." Kim Troup, the Christian director of CFOIC North America, echoes Baras’ sentiment: "The basic foundation of our relationship with the Jewish residents of Judea, Samaria and Gaza or anyone Jewish is the fundamental acceptance that we have differing views regarding the Messiah." "Just a few weeks ago," adds Baras, "a young Christian woman approached me after I had finished a talk in her church. She was very troubled and asked me how I reconciled my relationship with Christians knowing that they believed I was damned if I did not accept Jesus as my savior. I calmly responded that the problem was actually hers. I was perfectly confident that Jesus was not anyone’s savior." But if Baras is so dismissive of Christian dogma—the root of their devotion to Israel—couldn’t she be accused of exploiting the beliefs of devout Christians for her own purposes? "I am not exploiting anyone," writes Baras, shrugging off the charge. "CFOIC was founded by Christians who wanted to help Jews in the communities. They came to me and I discovered, in them, wonderful friends and natural allies for our cause. No one is exploiting anyone. We have a common purpose and we work together." "Whether or not I am being taken advantage of or not is not a question I ever think about," writes Troup. "I am not responsible for the thoughts and actions of those on the receiving end….[God] will handle anyone that is receiving it with a wrong motive. I would know something was wrong if any Jew did not think evangelical eschatology was delusional nonsense because for them to believe it is truth would mean that they were Christian and not Jewish." And yet, if Baras does in fact think of Christian doctrine as "delusional nonsense," she does not hesitate to use Messianic rhetoric to appeal to a Christian audience: "I am turning to you, my dear Christian friends," she writes in one of her newsletters, "to take heart and not lose faith. G-d is in charge and He will not allow evil or misguided plans of men to corrupt the prophetic vision of eternity" [emphasis added]. As Baras herself points out, such phrases mean very different things to Orthodox Jews, but she knows full well how her Christian readers will interpret them. If Troup and Baras each think the other’s beliefs are ultimately fantasy, surely their relationship must rest on some form of mutual manipulation. Evangelicals see no salvation without Christ, treating Jewish settlers like canaries as they mine for the apocalypse. The settlers repudiate Christ, but take the money anyway. Still Baras insists that any suggestion of mutual exploitation is "retarded." "You have a friend and you lend the friend your jacket and the friends brings you a cake," she writes. "Is that a mutually exploitative relationship?" Moral objections aside, it does make practical sense for someone like Baras—a settler ideologically committed to the vision of a Greater Israel—to seek and accept support from fundamentalist Christian Zionists. Apart from an apocalypse in which Christ returns and unbelievers are delivered up to Satan, settlers and Christian Zionists want exactly the same thing: settlements. They are both absolutely committed to expanding the land of Israel to its biblical borders. They both oppose the principle of land for peace. But most Israelis, and most American Jews, feel quite differently. Despite three years of brutal Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the majority of Israelis still support a two-state solution through a peace process and a negotiated settlement—a territorial compromise in which Jewish settlements in Gaza and the West Bank would be uprooted and a sovereign Palestinian state established in those regions. In a poll published in the Israeli newspaper Yediot Acharonot shortly after Ariel Sharon announced his decision to withdraw from Gaza, 68 percent of Israeli Jews said they would accept the dismantling of settlements as part of a peace settlement. Similar views hold sway among Jews in this country. In a poll conducted in July for the American Jewish Committee, 63 percent of American Jews said they favored the eventual establishment of a Palestinian state. Such notions are, of course, anathema to rank-and-file evangelicals like the members of CFOIC. Motivated as it is by biblical literalism and dispensationalist fervor, the CFOIC brand of Christian Zionism is necessarily expansionist. "The only Road Map I can read is the one set forth in the Bible," writes Baras, rejecting President Bush’s current plan for peace. "And that one contains no mention of a Palestinian State." To many prominent dispensationalist evangelicals the very idea of pursuing a temporal peace agreement is absurd. Hal Lindsey, author of the best-selling The Late Great Planet Earth, writes, "As the Bible tells the United States, the dispute over Jerusalem and Israel’s borders will never be settled by any peace agreement nor any whiz bang diplomatic breakthrough." Echoing Lindsey’s sentiment, Jerry Falwell has said that that there will not "be any real peace in the Middle East until the Lord Jesus sits down upon the throne of David in Jerusalem." But like Theodore Herzl in his courting of Rev. Hechler, pro-Israel advocates in the American Jewish establishment see their indulgence of evangelicals as pragmatic politics. They are quite happy simply to ignore their new allies’ ideology: "Until I see Jesus coming over the hill," Lenny Davis, former chief of research for AIPAC has said, "I am in favor of all the friends Israel can get." "Some say that Evangelicals are behind Israel for the wrong reasons," writes the ADL’s Abe Foxman in a recent statement on his organization’s web site. "[That] they see Israel’s existence as a necessary precursor for Armageddon and the second coming of Christ, visions which do not include a place for Jews. These religious beliefs, however, speak to an unknown future (indeed one that Jews do not envision)." Published under the title "Why Evangelical Support for Israel is a Good Thing," Foxman’s essential argument is that motivation is irrelevant. Here and now, Foxman contends, the Christian Right is an invaluable ally for Israel. "Foxman is dead wrong," says Lewis Roth, associate director of Americans for Peace Now. "Their motivations do count, because they would never support a peace process that would require Israel to make concessions to the Palestinians. And ultimately, it’s only a peace process that will secure Israel’s future in the region." To Roth, the people who are truly supportive of Israel want to see Israel as a solidly Jewish, democratic state. Some Christian Zionists, on the other hand, "are people who want to see Israel as a theological stepping stone to a time when Jews must either convert to Christianity or perish." "This is all about their ideology, their prophecy, their view of the world," says Charney Bromberg, executive director of Meretz USA—an organization that promotes a pro-peace agenda for Israel. "It’s about their need to see the world consolidated under the rule of Jesus, not the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And if Jews don’t get the difference, woe unto them." As Bromberg points out, Christian Zionists are in it for the Second Coming. So they must put settlements before peace, and a Greater Israel before a safe and democratic one. For Herzl, the only question was "should the state of Israel exist?"—to which he and Hechler had the same answer. His pragmatic alliance with Hechler made sense because their interests, other than in eschatology, coincided. Today, Israel already exists. The question now is "what should Israel be?"—on which, unless one is a settler like Baras, Jews and Christian Zionists have widely divergent opinions. Organizations like AIPAC and the ADL, ostensibly committed to Israel’s welfare and not to its settlements, have allied themselves with a political faction that will support nothing but an expansionist Israel. "The danger," warns Bromberg, "is that [Jewish organizations] are making an element of evangelicals into political players who are not politically adaptable and who are so ideologically rigid that they may not follow Foxman and company’s lead when Jewish organizations see the need for withdrawal from settlements." If the evangelical community continues to exert such influence, how will the Bush administration ever find it politically feasible to throw real diplomatic muscle behind a peace agenda? Speaking by phone, Foxman dismissed such concerns: "[Evangelicals] will have as much say about" any peace process, "and as much influence as we will." Meaning exactly none, according to Foxman: "It will be the Israelis who will decide whether or not Arik Sharon should withdraw from Gaza and not the evangelical community or the Brooklyn Orthodox community or the secular American Jewish community…We have opinions but they have no impact." But if evangelicals truly had no impact on decisions in Washington—and by extension in Jerusalem—Foxman and other Jewish pro-Israel activists would not be courting them so eagerly. Nor would Sandra Oster Baras be making lecture tours of Christian congregations, or networking so feverishly within the American evangelical community. Christian Zionists believe Israel is God’s hour hand and Jerusalem his minute hand in the countdown to Christ’s return. If they had no influence, Baras and Foxman wouldn’t even give them the time of day. What happens, though, if that meta-historical clock stops ticking, and Israel moves to become a geographically static nation like most others? Will Christian Zionists stand in the way of all withdrawals, of any attempt to cede land for peace? Will they turn on a pragmatic Israel that chooses to dismantle their vision of a biblical one? On April 2nd, Ariel Sharon announced that he had ordered a halt to all development work on Israeli settlements in the Gaza strip. Just two weeks later, in an interview with the Israeli daily newspaper Ma’ariv, Sharon declared that he planned to pull out from Gaza entirely by next Passover. "Disengagement is good for Israel," he said. "We need to get out of Gaza, no longer be responsible for what’s happening there. I suggest you take me seriously. I have the power to do this…it is my decision and I intend to see it through." For CFOIC’s faithful, such developments are deeply troubling. "We have faith that we are where God wants us to be," wrote Baras in her "News from the Land" bulletin, responding to the outpouring of concern from her followers. "That the land of Israel belongs to the people of Israel and no one else. That if we stand strong against terrorism, strong in our rights to the Land of Israel, strong as a people united against a terrible foe, we will prevail." Baras is girding for battle, as are her Christian friends. "We do know that there is going to be a tremendous force coming into the land against Israel and against the Jewish people," writes Eric Yoder, paraphrasing the book of Daniel—"It will be a time of trouble, the like of which has never been since the nation came into being." Many settlers have sworn to resist. Deputy minister of education Zvi Henel, a member of the far-right National Union Party and resident of a settlement in the Gaza Strip, said: "Sharon will not find in his government a majority to uproot settlements. But if—God forbid—he succeeds in carrying out his plan, we will not be part of his government and we shall fight him with all our strength." It seems that soldiers will have to remove some of their fellow Jews by force. Sharon’s governing coalition may fall as he takes steps to implement his bold strategy. But not yet. For now, all is quiet. The bulldozers haven’t entered Alon Shvut, the Messiah hasn’t appeared in Elei Sinai, and the children of Dugit are still waiting for their playground.
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