Neibuhr is Right

In 1832, Reinhold Neibuhr wrote:

“Individuals are never as immoral as the social situations in which they are involved and which they symbolize. If opposition to a system leads to personal insults of its representatives, it is always felt as an unjust accusation… Mr. Gandhi never tires of making a distinction between individual Englishmen and the system of imperialism which they maintained.”[1]

My parents were good people, kind and generous. Had anyone accused them of being evil, they would have objected and screamed “unfair.” Those who knew them best, including me, would have defended them as being good people. But they participated in, supported and benefited from an evil system. It was called segregation. Now what does that have to do with anything?

I detest Zionism and will declare in every way I know how that it is an evil system. But let me be clear. Neibuhr is right. We cannot blame nor assume that individual Jews support brutality, even though many are caught up in an evil system. Jews are good people. In fact, when I started ministry in Mississippi during the height of the Civil Rights movement, the most outspoken defenders of black people in my county were Jews as were two of the three Civil Rights worker murdered in Philadelphia, Mississippi. I repeat, Jews are good people and we cloud the issue if we think or act otherwise.

My friend Marc Ellis, conservative Jewish scholar, walked out on the porch with me at Ghost Ranch, a Presbyterian Conference Center in New Mexico, after giving a lecture on the Israeli/Palestinian situation. His eyes filled with tears. I felt a little insensitive invading his thoughts but I asked him what in particular had brought such emotion. He responded, “Judaism, my faith, the faith that I love, is right now at the same point you Christians were in the fourth century. You had to choose between the integrity of your faith and the power of Constantine. Jews today are being forced to choose between the integrity of our faith and the power of the State of Israel. You made the wrong choice and you have never recovered. It looks like we are making the same mistake.”

Michael Lerner, editor of the very popular Jewish magazine Tikkun, wrote during the first intifada, “Israel’s attempt to regain control by denying food to hundreds of thousands of men, women and children, by raiding homes and dragging out their occupants in the middle of the night to stand for hours in the cold, by savagely beating a civilian population and breaking its bones — these activities are deplorable in any civilized human being.” He goes on to plead, “Stop the beatings, stop the breaking of bones, the late night raids on people’s homes, stop using food as a weapon of war, stop pretending that you can respond to an entire people’s agony with guns and blows and power. Publicly acknowledge that the Palestinians have the same right to national self-determination that we Jews have...”[2]


Alexander Schinder, President of America Hebrew Congregations back in 1988 sent a telegram to the president of Israel saying, “The indiscriminate beatings of Arabs, enunciated and implemented as Israel’s new policy to quell the riots in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, is an offence to the Jewish spirit. It violates every principal of human decence, and it betrays the Zionist dream”[3]

This year, Jeffrey Goldberg, national correspondent for Atlantic magazine, writing of the softening of Ehud Olmert explains that his shift to the left did not occur in a vacuum. “His wife, Aliza, has been a sympathizer of Peace Now, and his children have been left-wing activists. One daughter, Diana, is a prominent gay-rights advocate in Tel Aviv, and has associated herself with groups opposed to her father’s politics. During the 2006 Israeli incursions into Gaza, she took part in a demonstration that denounced the army chief of staff as a “child-killer.” One of Olmert’s sons has refused to serve his army-reserve duty in the occupied territories, and another son managed to avoid the draft altogether. Olmert’s family is not entirely unusual…”[4]

These Jewish leaders and hundreds of thousands more like them, are doing every thing they can to challenge Israel’s occupation policies and brutal treatment of the Palestinians. They deserve our respect and need our support.

At the same time, I must say that suicide bombers and Kassam rockets do not help. There is no way that terrorism is going to bring down the Israeli defense forces. The most that such bombings can do is to cause the average Israeli to feel insecure. There are many, many Israelis willing to reach across the border with a hand of peace, but they, like any one else, can only do so when feeling secure. Palestinian terror does not help.

But neither does state terrorism, such as firing a 500 pound bomb from an F-16 into an apartment building in the middle of the night, killing 15 Palestinians, mostly children.

We cannot cease to be a compassionate voice for the victims of Zionism even when running the risk of offending some Jewish friends who may not know or do not care what is happening every day in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Nor can we delay investing the energy required to be informed. This issue is far too serious for silence and our own sense of justice requires that we challenge an evil system.

Thomas Are
December 22, 2008
[1] Reinhold Neibuhr, Moral man and Immoral Society. (Continuum Press, New York, 1932) p.163.
[2].Rosemary Radford Ruether and Marc Ellis, Beyond Occupation, (Beacon Press, Boston., 1990) p. 99-100.
[3].Rosemary Radford Ruether and Marc Ellis, Beyond Occupation, (Beacon Press, Boston., 1990) p. 17.
[4] Jeffrey Goldberg, Unforgiven, (The Atlantic, May 2008,) p.51

Can't We Talk

Jimmy Carter wrote a book simply describing Israel’s apartheid policies in the occupied territories and he was immediately condemned as anti-Semitic. Richard Falk, a United Nations investigator of human rights in the occupied territories, declared Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians as a “crime against humanity,” and he was sent home, “expelled by Israel.” Miguel D’Escoto, head of the U.N. General Assembly compared Israel’s treatment of Palestinians to the former South Africa’s apartheid racial segregation policies and just last Monday, December 15th, received written death threats.

Can’t we even talk about a foreign policy that generates so much international hatred for Israel and the United States? We need to ask ourselves, “Who is occupying whose land?” And exactly who is driving who into the sea (desert)? Who admits to torture, collective punishment and assassinations. Do they never wonder why three of Israel’s Prime Ministers have been labeled by the International Community as terrorists; Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Shamir, and Ariel Sharon.

Are we not bothered by the fact that Israel has destroyed over 18,000 Palestinian homes and uprooted probably a million olive and fruit trees since 1967? In spite of the Oslo Agreements and in violation of international law, Israel continues to confiscate land and build settlements. To date, 450,000 settlers cover 30 percent of the West Bank while native born Palestinians are confined to 70 small “Bantustans” separated by by-pass roads and “Jews Only” highways. Do we not consider a 26 foot concrete wall snaking throughout the West Bank, separating families from their places of worship, children from their schools, the sick and injured from medical facilities and farmers from their crops a bit like apartheid? West Bank now has 50% unemployment, Gaza has 80%. Most Palestinians live on less than $2 a day. Do we not consider the control of Palestinian movement by hundreds of checkpoints and Israel’s “generous offer” of self control which left Israel expropriating Palestine’s richest agricultural land and in control of all water, like the abusive domination of apartheid? Israel now occupies 85-90 percent of the land of Palestine. Surely no one has pointed out that following the removal of settlers from Gaza, with no Israeli exposure, Israel launched thousands of artillery shells and missiles into Gaza. Israel has dammed off water supplies, cut off fuel and most International aid leaving 1.2 million people without drinking water, sewage treatment, electricity, or even enough to eat.

Do we not know who blatantly violates Article 43 of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, to which Israel is a signatory, which states that, “the occupying power shall not deport or transfer parts of its population into the territory it occupies.” and who thumbs its nose at more than 57 United Nations Resolutions, including 242 requiring Israel to leave the occupied lands of Palestine?

Unfortunately for any hope of peace in the Middle East, as long as our government treats Israel like the 51st state there will be serious threats to peace. The critics are right. “Israel has a right to defend herself.” But, blowing up bridges, electric plants, water systems and even a school in Gaza is not “defending.”
Of course, most of us don’t know this side of the story because the Jewish lobby and the Christian right just don’t want Americans talking about it.

Thomas Are
December 18, 2008

Carter's Inaugural Address

Now, I know Jimmy Carter is not going to be making the inaugural speech this year, but Linda Allen sent me this “suggestion” from Carter to the new president. It seems like a reporter asked Carter what he thought the next president should do in his first 100 days in office to restore America’s standing in the world. Carter responded that it would not take 100 days, but could be done in 10 minutes.

“I outlined the inaugural address that could be given this coming January,” Carter said, saying that the next president should declare: “While I am president there will never be another person tortured (in U.S. custody). The United States will regain its position as the preeminent champion of human rights. We will abandon our policy of preemptive war. We will never attack another nation again unless our security is threatened. That’s been our policy since George Washington – until seven years ago.

“America will be at the forefront of combating global warming, and will lead in meeting all challenges to the world’s environment. Our tax policy will be designed to help the poor and working families, and not the few richest Americans. We will restore our recent rejection of every nuclear-arms control agreement that as been negotiated since the time of Dwight Eisenhower. At this time, all those are in the waste can. And we will reduce our nuclear arsenal to zero. We will rebuild the Jeffersonian wall between church and state.”

Pointing to his upbringing in the rural, segregated South and his time as president when he pushed human rights to the forefront of his political agenda, Carter said that America still has a lot to do when it comes to human rights, but that the struggle has been set back both at home and abroad since 9/11.

“America didn’t invent human rights; human rights invented America,” he said.

I hope that the shunning of Jimmy Carter at the Democratic Convention was not a sign that the new leadership is going to retreat to politics as usual. Many of the world’s disadvantaged people, including Americans, are depending upon Obama’s being strong against the tide.

Thomas Are
November 26, 2008

We may yet yearn for Bush

I don’t know anyone in favor of a permanent occupation in Iraq, or that we should draft young Americans to force our presence on the Iraqi people. So, why in the world did George W. Bush build an embassy there that is larger than the Vatican in Rome and six times bigger than the U.N. complex in New York? In their book, The Three Trillion Dollar War, Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmer describe our military bases as designed for long term U.S. occupation, some are built to house up to 22,000 troops with fully functioning American amenities including sports facilities, fast food restaurants, (Baskin Robbins, Burger King and Pizza Huts,) Rent a Cars and cable T.V. In spite of 4000 dead, over 60,000 coming home sick or wounded, a price tag into the trillions, Bush says if we will only stay a little longer, we will win.
Does he actually think we can kill them all? And if only ten escape, will they not come after us?
I hate what George W. Bush has done to this nation: torture chambers, black sites, borrowing us into generations of debt, ignoring civil liberties guaranteed by the Constitution, squandering our good name around the globe and neglecting the emotional and medical needs of thousands of wounded warriors who have returned home.
Yet, having said all that, we may well look back and yearn for Bush, if we put John McCain in the White House. He presents himself as a Bush-Lite but other than his rethoric about torture he walks hand and glove with Bush’s “Bring ‘em on” mentality for war. Only worse! McCain’s casual singing of “Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran,” coupled with his close ties to Joe Leiberman and William Kristol, both of whom would promote any conflict if it were seen as beneficial to Israel, could very well lead us into war with Iran, or Syria.
We can’t pay for the war we are in. We are told that it runs into the billions. Billions! I can’t imagine how much that is. According to the internet, a billion seconds ago, I was still in seminary. (I have been retired for ten years.) A billion minutes ago, the apostle Paul was still in seminary. A billion hours ago, our ancestors were living in caves. A billion days ago, there were no creatures on earth walking on two legs and a billion weeks ago, who knows? But to John McCain, a billion dollars is two and a third days in Iraq and he is talking about a hundred years… plus Iran. Sarah Palin would even include Russia.
Bomb Iran and I fear we will long for the days when we regretted only one major national disaster. We can’t let this happen.
Ending this madness in Iraq and stopping a war with Iran starts Tuesday, with us.


Thomas Are
tomare1@alltel.net
October 30, 2008

A Conservative Point of View

At a recent meeting of progressive thinkers in north Georgia, we were all pretty unanimous in bemoaning the actions of congress in voting down for the ninth time a bill to increase the minimum wage while giving them self a raise. Suddenly, a member of the group said, “Someone here should speak up for the conservative point of view.”

I am not a conservative but I thought I would give it a try.

“The upper twenty percent of American households now own 84.4 percent of the wealth of this nation, (with 59 percent in the hands of the upper five percent,) while the bottom sixty percent get 4.6 percent all for themselves. If we can just elect the right politicians, Congress could give enormous tax relief to the wealthy, could remove the Estate tax, the tax on investment income, initiate a flat tax and keep the minimum wage down for another nine years. Who knows, we at the top might get to own 85 percent, or 88 percent, maybe even 90 percent of America’s wealth. Isn’t that the way it’s supposed to be? After all, most of the working poor would much rather live on welfare and handouts. We are the sharp cookies, the ones who create the jobs and make it all work. And nobody can call us greedy. We just want what is best for everybody. After all, because we are so sharp, we don’t have to be greedy. All we need is a government that is greedy on our behalf. So get out there, invest a little money in the right politicians. It’s the best investment you’ll ever make. And keep in mind, those poor people could invest in politicians too, if they wanted to. This is the land of equal opportunity.”

Of course, I didn’t say any of this at the meeting. I just sat there thinking that living in a world of limited resources, as long as any of us has more than we need, it means many will have less than they need. And I was wondering how God, who according to the Bible has a special concern for the poor, would have responded to my conservative point of view.

Thomas L. Are,
One of the upper twenty percent.
October 20, 2008

Republican Supreme Court

Most of us gave little thought to the Supreme Court until it took over the 2000 vote count in Florida and gave the election to George W. Bush. Seldom mentioned, even in this election cycle, is the dramatic swing of the Court to the right. Presidents Reagan, Bush I and II appointed Scalia, Thomas, Roberts and Alito, all right wing Republican Party puppets. John McCain promises to continue the Bush appointment goals.

John Dean in his recent book, Broken Government, quotes the New York City Attorney, Martin Garbus, who pictures the direction the courts are taking us:

Imagine the effect on our lives if workplace standards for health and safety were severely cut back; if abortions were banned, no exceptions; if minimum-hour and wage laws were so reduced as to be meaningless; if child labor laws were abolished or weakened; if there were no gun control at all. Imagine what our world would look like if the law abolished equal rights… if the state took money from public schools and gave it to parochial schools; if regulatory agencies like the Food and Drug Administration, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, or the Environmental Protection Agency were so gutted or handcuffed as to be completely ineffectual; if Congress’ ability to pass needed social legislation ended. All this and more are the declared goals of the radical Right who now dominate the Republican Party on matters related to the judiciary. The judicial revolution that began under Richard Nixon, which accelerated during the Reagan’s second term and peaked in the past five years, has become a runaway train.

I hope Garbus is wrong. I also hope we won’t give John McCain the chance to prove him right.


Thomas Are
October 12, 2008
tomare1@alltel.net

What is Victory???

McCain’s campaign is seeking to make a point over the fact that Barack Obama did not use the word “victory” during their debate, which McCain used over and over. The problem is, McCain never told us what victory would look like.

Would victory mean that a million refugees had returned to their homes?
Did he envision victory when the last man who hates America has been shot?
Or when Iraq tears down that ever increasing security wall separating Shia from Sunni which now cuts through almost every neighborhood in Baghdad?
Could we call it victory when a Shia Government aligned with Iran is securely established and maintains military control over the entire nation?
Maybe it would look like victory when the infrastructure destroyed by our invasion is rebuilt, in other words, when we put Iraq back together again.
And what about the more than 4000 young men and women who have had their lives taken from them in this struggle, will their families ever feel a sense of victory? Or those 30,662 wounded whose lives will never be the same again. Maybe we will feel victorious when their families have a big picnic and shout, “We won. We won.”
Would victory mean that the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi citizens who have died in this war would have been forgotten and written off as unavoidable “collateral damage?”

McCain seemed proud to declaring his vision for victory. I wish he had given us some idea of just what victory he had in mind.

Thomas Are
tomare1@alltel.net
October 1, 2008