You will know them by their fruits (Part II)
You will know them by their fruits (Part II)
(even as smoke and mirrors try to distract from the rot in front of us)
This is part II of a series on becoming honest about the behaviors our beliefs produce. To read part one click here.
Have you noticed the whisper roaming the world? Even the trees know it is time for oppressive systems to die. — Jaiya John
Have you ever encountered a “shifty” word? A word that gets defined differently by different groups — a word that, just when you think you’ve pegged the meaning of it, someone pulls the rug out from under you, insisting that this word means precisely the opposite of whatever you’ve understood it to mean.
Zionism is one such shifty word.
The Rev. Dr. Munther Isaac defines Christian Zionism as “a political movement that uses the Bible to justify and legitimize Israel's position of power, and by extension their own power, at the expense of Palestinians.”
Yet anytime a definition like this is offered, asserting that Zionism is a political movement with horrific consequences for Palestinians, you will find Zionist apologists contending for more palatable, pleasant definitions. Some proffer the notion of a “spiritual Zionism.” In the process, the rug gets pulled out from under word, so that there can be no conversation about the fruit of this ideology.
Now, one could excavate the term by looking to the founders of modern Zionism themselves, who explicitly named ethnic cleansing of Palestinians as a crucial component of their nationalist project. (One early Zionist leader said that “…the colonisation of Palestine has to go in two directions: Jewish settlement in Eretz Israel and the resettlement of the Arabs of Eretz Israel in areas outside the country.”)
Or, one could look to Antizionist Jews, who consistently affirm that the conflation of Judaism and Zionism is a politically expedient lie — one which does immense violence to Palestinians while harming the souls of those who embrace it.
But to know that something is deeply amiss with this ideology, we don’t have to look any further than its fruits (as Jesus advised his disciples to do):
30,000+ killed in Gaza since October 7, including 13,000 children, with likely tens of thousands of other deaths unreported, including many bodies still under the rubble;
437 people killed in the Occupied West Bank, including more than 116 children
Multiple Flour Massacres, involving hundreds of people shot at and killed by the Israeli military while attempting to retrieve the meagre supplies that have been allowed into Gaza;
27 children have starved to death in the entirely human-made catastrophic famine that is affecting 70 percent of northern Gaza, while settlers gleefully prevent aid from entering Gaza with calls of, “not a single loaf of bread.”
Meanwhile, the US is building a pier off Gaza’s coast, allegedly to alleviate suffering with humanitarian aid, while continuing to supply the weapons that are causing this horrific suffering in the first place;
And, settlers are already mapping Jewish-majority towns onto the enclave, with legislation already drafted by far-right politicians to make this international violation of human rights legal under Israeli law.
A ravenous, racist system is perpetrating genocide on the Palestinian people. Shouldn’t it be enough to see these fruits and reject the plant as a poisonous one?
We can look at the fruits of a belief system to know if it is a good seed. That is, if the actions and behavior produced by our beliefs are affirming of life and its flourishing. If the outcomes of a belief system are death and destruction, that is a serious tell. Bad seeds produce bad fruit.
Zionism doesn’t get to be purely “spiritual.” There are always embodied outcomes to a belief system. Whatever its varied historic expressions, its fruits today are chaos and catastrophe on a genocidal scale.
Zionism depends upon distraction. Hasbara (“explaining”) — Israel’s propaganda arm — is the epitome of this. With sleight of hand, anyone who would dare question the system is painted into a corner as antisemitic (and antisemitism is conflated with anti-Jewish). Its supporters do not want us to see Zionism’s fruits.
But once we have seen them, how can we look away? And, having seen the bad fruits, some of us have begun taking a good hard look at the seeds they came from.
One of those seeds is the theology of “chosenness,” which Palestinian Lutheran pastor and theologian Mitri Raheb unpacks in his book Decolonizing Palestine. This language is used by many to describe the relationship of God to the Biblical people of Israel. It is extended by some people (both Jewish and Christian) to describe a belief in divine election of the modern nation state of Israel.
(It is worth noting here that the Reconstructionist stream of Judaism rejects the theology of chosenness on the grounds of its supremacist proclivities, favoring language that uplifts and celebrates the dignity of all people).
A person or even a group believing themselves to be chosen is a common practice amongst humans. In the ancient world, it functioned as a survival mechanism for navigating a world of things that could kill you — wild animals, heat, floods, drought. It can be understood as part of a healthy ego. The idea that “God's got us” can give comfort and courage amidst the chaos of the world.1
Yet chosenness becomes problematic when it is understood as a point of privilege — that is, “God chose me over and above you.” It becomes dangerous when relied upon to reinforce hierarchies of human worth. And it becomes violent when wielded as what Raheb calls theological “software” to justify the use of military “hardware” to dominate and subjugate another group of people.
Chosenness as a theology has managed to grow deep roots, especially in the post-Holocaust era. As a Christian, I know it to be deep in the soil of my own tradition. So what does it take to uproot such a stubborn, self-propagating belief?
Planting good seeds
Maybe uprooting is not the (only) answer.
We could keep pulling weeds all day, pointing to the bad fruit of Christian Zionism (and there is value in weed-pulling for sure), but if we don’t also plant good seeds, how will new beliefs take root and sprout new life? How will people be inspired to believe and act differently if they don’t first taste the abundance of love and liberation?
At the invitation of Palestinian American Episcopal priest the Rev. Leyla King, I was among the young clergywomen to found a new grassroots organization called Palestinian Anglicans and Clergy Allies. PACA has the audacity to proclaim the simple yet subversive truth that Palestinians are included in God’s people. That Palestinians are God’s beloved, too, and thus worthy of respect, of love, of life.
This reflects a promise made in the Episcopal Baptismal service to “Respect the dignity of every human being,” which itself hearkens back to the story of Creation, with its theology that all people have been made in God’s image.
PACA is planting seeds by inviting clergy to listen to and learn from their Palestinian siblings in faith. We hope for the fruit of transformative human encounter, trusting that when we see the image of God in the other, seeds of change are planted in the soul.
There is much uprooting to do. And, for those of us who want to see the fruits of justice tomorrow, today we plant seeds.
This opens a whole other can of worms about theodicy. Does God protect or simply sustain? Setting that aside for another time, if you want a very accessible book that pastorally deals with this question, may I recommend spiritual director and psychologist James Finley’s book The Healing Path.