The Challenge of Christian Zionism (title of the Cornerstone)

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The movement of Christian Zionism provides a challenge and an embarrassment to Palestinian Christians at a number of crucial levels, requiring us to address this issue theologically, politically, and existentially.  It raises for us a number of issues that must be addressed:

First and foremost are the theological issues:  What kind of God does Christianity teach and what kind of God do we believe in?  Is God a tribal, territorially- based God, partial to the tribe of the Hebrews and interested in granting them a particular piece of land in Palestine to be their eternal birthright regardless of the rights of its indigenous inhabitants?? Is God the Lord of Hosts, glorying in the military exploits of his people, and wrathful and vengeful towards their enemies, assuring them of military victory (regardless of their own spiritual state of godliness or lack thereof)?  Or is God the sacrificial God who loves the whole world, and who, as revealed to us in Christ, transcends racial and national boundaries, and opens his arms and offers his salvation to Jew and gentile alike, inviting into his universal kingdom all those who believe in him, granting them the power to be children of God, and inheritors of the promises??

It also presents hermeneutical problems of understanding prophecy and of eschatology:  Is prophecy a form of fortune telling, and predictions about current national and international affairs?  Is it a predictor of the end-times, and a method for identifying which political powers or movements today are evil, and constitute an antichrist to be opposed by God-fearing Christians? Or is prophecy carrying a message from God to be given courageously to a sinful society, and to those in power, calling them to repentance, and reminding them of who is truly sovereign in the affairs of men? 

Christian Zionism also revives issues thought to be resolved during the first century of the Christian era concerning the nature of relationship between the Old and New Testament, and Jewish –Christian relationships.  After two millennia of Jewish powerlessness, and gentile (including Christian) domination, and indeed even persecution of Jews, the picture has changed dramatically.  Jews now constitute a powerful, dominant and controlling force, not only in their own affairs, but exercising power over others, including the small number of Palestinian Christians.  Christian Zionism seems to celebrate this, and calls on Christians to promote this, and see in it the hand of God.  While the anti-Semitic persecution of Jews was certainly sinful and un-Christian, is the current support of their arrogance the right response?? Are they to be exempt from the moral and ethical requirements of justice on account of their suffering and is unqualified support offered by Christian Zionism the correct penitential response to Christian complicity in the persecution of the Jews?

Christian Zionism, on the political level is crassly simplistic and unabashedly biased.  It is supportive of the most extreme political positions of right wing Israelis, and deliberately ignores political realities, and the interest, or even existence, of other groups, including Palestinian Christians.  In its total bias, it also ignores the requirements of international law, ethical principles, violations of human rights, and the requirements of simple justice.  It is oblivious to the suffering of non-Jews, and the long- term impact of Israel's suicidal policies, which it gives a divine mantle of justification.  Christian Zionists, particularly in Western countries and the United States, translate their theology into concrete political influence on behalf of Zionism and the state of Israel, and successfully influence the financial, political and military assistance given by the United States government to the State of Israel.  They further claim that such political behavior, is mandated by their faith and theology, and is normative for all Christians as well.  Should all Christians support them in their political activism as well??

These issues rightly should be the concern of all Christians, but they are particularly the bane of Palestinian and Arab Christians.  Christians in the Middle East have to contend not only with the theological implications of these positions, as they live in the midst of a Moslem world reeling from the impact of the demonization of Islam and the apparent onslaught of a 'crusading" Western world on them, but also with their political impact that they feel upon them in the form of daily deprivations, humiliations, loss of land, of rights, of loved ones, and of their patrimony.  All this is justified in the name of their own God and their own scriptures.

 It is to deal with these and similar questions that the Sabeel International Conference was organized in Jerusalem.  It is our hope that the deliberations of that conference will lead us to answers that are theologically correct, and politically sensitive, and that  it will translate into a plan of action for bringing these issues to the attention of the church at large, and ultimately bringing good news of peace, justice and reconciliation to the Holy Land as well.