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Thursday 1 May 2008
The Bible and Zionism: Invented Traditions, Archaeology and Post-Colonialism in Israel-Palestine, by Nur Masalha. New York and London: Zed Books, 2007. 321 pages. Notes to p. 335. Bibliography to p. 354. Index to p. 366. $126.00 cloth; $36.00 paper.
This review is forthcoming in the summer edition of the Journal of Palestine Studies.
Among the most prominent of the ideological weapons deployed in service of Israel’s Jewish ethnocracy are the Bible and biblical archaeology. In his latest book, The Bible and Zionism, Palestinian scholar Nur Masalha concentrates on how both are used to effectively further Zionist and Israeli strategic aims. The book, divided into three parts, provides an effective critique of these tactics and offers constructive resources for countering the “invented traditions” used in support of Israeli state power.
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A Reflection on John Dominic Crossan, God & Empire: Jesus against Rome, Then and Now [2007]
In the past few awful, maleficent years of the Bush Administration, a spate of books has appeared in which the word “empire” is used as applicable to the United States itself. In his latest work, Scripture scholar John Dominic Crossan brings his research on the historical Jesus to bear on this timely, troubling matter of empire.
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For Michelle Conley
For years in my Social Justice course at Saint Louis University, I assigned the 1993 paperback by Cao Ngoc Phuong entitled, Learning True Love: How I Learned & Practiced Social Change in Vietnam. Phuong’s story is of a young woman growing up in Vietnam during the 1950s and 1960s. From a young age, her passion is to be of assistance to poor people; she also wanted to be a Buddhist, but didn’t have very inspiring teachers. This changed when she met Thich Nhat Hanh, who became her mentor, a relationship that is now in its fifth decade.
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A shorter version of this article will be published in the winter 2007 issue of Journal of Palestine Studies.
The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East, by Sandy Tolan. New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2006. xiv + 264 pages. Bibliography to p. 282. Notes to p. 348. Index to p. 362. $24.95 cloth.
Witness in Palestine: Journal of a Jewish American Woman in the Occupied Territories, by Anna Baltzer. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2006. xii +212 pages. Appendices and glossary to p. 221. $62.00 cloth.
In July 1967 three young Palestinian men leave the recently Israeli-occupied West Bank on a mission of visceral importance. Natives of al-Ramla, now in Israel, the men simply wish to see the home of their childhood. Bashir Khairi knocks on the front door of his family’s home and is met by a young Israeli woman, Dalia Eshkenazi, whose family came to occupy Bashir’s home after they fled Bulgaria after World War II. That encounter leads to many more in the decades to come, and is the narrative dynamic of Sandy Tolan’s The Lemon Tree.
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Review of Jan T. Gross, Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland after Auschwitz. New York: Random House, 2006. 303 p. $25.95. Forthcoming in Shofar.
In Fear, historian Jan Gross explores a seemingly baffling phenomenon. How is it that there was aggressive anti-Semitism in Poland, after the Holocaust?
How is that even thinkable? After all, did not ethnic Poles and Polish Jews both suffer horrifically during the Nazi years? Did not Poles see much more intimately than other Europeans what the Nazi system of mass murder was like, since Poland was the site of so many death camps?
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I recall Rabbi Michael Lerner once describing Zionism as “the national liberation movement of the Jewish people.” And doesn’t that sound noble and necessary? And I sometimes hear Palestinians use the word “Zionist” as a sneering insult, for the base and ignoble enterprise against Palestinians (assumed in this sneer is that Zionists must necessarily be Jews, which isn’t true, of course; see my review of Stephen Sizer’s text, Christian Zionism). More...
This review is forthcoming in the summer issue of Journal of Palestine Studies.
Christian Zionism: Road-map to Armageddon?, by Stephen Sizer. Leicester, England: Inter-Varsity Press, 2004. 264 pages. Glossary to p. 269. Appendix to p. 272. Bibliography to p. 283. Index to p. 295. n.p.
In her study entitled The Question of Zion, Jacqueline Rose stated that “it has become commonplace for critics of Israel responding to the charge of anti-Semitism to reply that it is Zionism, not Jewishness, which is the object of their critique. This simply displaces the problem, leads to silence. As if that were the end of the matter and nothing else remains to be said. Bizarrely, the result is that while Israel barely leaves the front page of the daily papers, Zionism itself is hardly ever talked about.” [italics in original, p. xii]
And when Zionism is typically talked about, it is Jewish Zionism that is the focus. The invaluable contribution of Stephen Sizer’s book, Christian Zionism, is that he discusses in detail a lesser-acknowledged kind of Zionism, one that, he claims, predated political Zionism by 60 years (p. 254). Sizer, chairman of the International Bible Society in England, reveals a Christian Zionism that, for its own distinctly theological reasons, supports Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land. One got a glimpse of such confident convictions when, in February 2006, American televangelist Pat Robertson attributed Ariel Sharon’s stroke as a punishment from God for giving up the Gaza Strip. In Robertson’s worldview, God’s wishes cannot be trumped by mere political expediency.
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The Violence of Love (reprint). By Oscar Romero. Translated and compiled by James R. Brockman, S.J. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2004. Pp. xvii, 214. Notes. $15.00 paper.
Monsignor Romero: A Bishop for the Third Millennium. By Robert S. Pelton, C.S.C., ed. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2004. Pp. vii, 128. Notes. Bibliography. $22.50 cloth.
March 24, 2005 marked the 25th anniversary of the assassination of Oscar Romero, Archbishop of El Salvador. He held that position for only three years, but committed himself with increasing vigor and courage to the defense of the poor masses of his country, precisely in response to the demanding call of the Gospels. Since his death, he has been seen as a saintly figure for many in Latin America, while some others detest his memory. His fellow bishop in Brazil, Pedro Casaldáliga, once observed, “The history of the Church in Latin America divides into two parts: before and after Romero.”
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The following review is forthcoming in the spring issue of the Journal of Palestine Studies.
Israel’s Holocaust and the Politics of Nationhood, by Idith Zertal. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Cambridge Middle East Studies 21. 208 pages. Biographies to p. 216. Glossary to p. 222. Bibliography to p. 230. Index to p. 236. $30.00 cloth.
In late summer of 2005 on the order of Ariel Sharon’s government, several thousand Israeli settlers departed the Gaza Strip. In protest, some settlers donned Star of David patches, which Jews had been forced to wear under Nazi domination. Settlers, among them Holocaust survivors and their children, contended that withdrawal would lead to another Holocaust.
Such an assertion of persecution and victimization in terms of the Holocaust has a long history, according to Israeli writer, Idith Zertal, in her recently translated book from Hebrew, Israel’s Holocaust and the Politics of Nationhood. Zertal’s work explores the growing reliance upon Holocaust discourse in Israel, as she candidly states, “Politicians, journalists, and historians let themselves speak out in the name of the Holocaust dead. They/we all use Holocaust images for their/our purposes. Some of these images are threatening, others are trivial, all are distorting” (197).
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A Meditation after Reading Raimundo Panikkar's book, Cultural Disarmament.
Cultural disarmament means not idolizing our own way of life as superior, incomparable, unique. Cross boundaries, explore other lands, learn other tongues. Study Islam, Arabic, and Cairo.
Cultural disarmament means ceasing to act like omniscient teachers and instead adopt the curiosity of eager learners. Raise more questions than answers, fast from issuing ex cathedra pronouncements.
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And other poems featured recently:
The CTSA Core Community is pleased to announce Mark Chmiel's newly published work, The Book of Mev, about his late wife, St. Louis native, photojournalist and activist, Mev Puleo.
Listen now to Mark reading a passage.
Read a review of the book.
The book is available for purchase directly from Mark, at Left Bank Books, and online at Amazon.
CTSA is a member of Justice and Peace Shares. Visit the websites of some of the other member groups.
Inter-Faith Committee on Latin America