Ideological Curios, Part II

Israel, Palestinians and the Secular Left

We lament any crass, nationalist idolatry which intones, "My country, right or wrong". But it seems as though, when it comes to Israel and the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, the world is filled with ideologues who have fallen into just such an idolatry.  Amongst these groups it is "My Israel, right or wrong" or "My Palestinians, right or wrong".  In both these cases, beneath the surface lies a controlling ideology which frames either Israel or the Palestinians as all good or all bad.

In a previous post we discussed the flawed biblical theology of Dispensationalism which leads professing Christians to side with Israel, right or wrong.  More accurately, they rarely see any wrongs when it comes to Israel.  Ironically, this highly motivated stream of Christians are acutely aware of the depravity and secularity of the West, including their respective host countries, but are blind toward the same failings and evil coursing through Israel's veins.

A similar, but reverse blindness can be found amongst the secular Left in the West.  Peter Hitchens, who for many years deliberately walked in the pathways of the Left, explains:

The strangest thing of all is that European secular left (with few exceptions) disapproves strongly of Israel and often denounces it inaccurately as religiously intolerant; yet is seldom if ever characterizes the Muslim coalition against Israel as theocratic or reactionary.  Why is this?

In general, the Western secular left (as did for many years the Soviet Union) has sympathized with the Islamic campaign against Israel since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war turned that country from a surrounded and endangered island of beleaguered territory into a colonial power occupying large amounts of territory inhabited by Arabs.  [Peter Hitchens, The Rage Against God: How Atheism Led Me to Faith (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2010), p. 130.]

In other words, to the secular Left, Israel has been framed as a colonialist power, which in turn frames Israel as an enemy in the mindset of dominant Marxist ideologies throughout the West.  (Colonialist powers represent the oppression of capital against the poor; this ideological "frame" consequently justifies the violent uprising of the oppressed as Freedom Fighters, a nascent proletariat rising up against capitalist exploitation.)

Marxist and Marxist-derivative ideology leads to a binary, reflexive Pavlovian perspective upon the Middle East: that is, Israel--comprehensively evil; Palestinians--comprehensively justified. 

Some Marxist leftists in Britain have taken this to its logical conclusion and have formed alliances with British Muslims despite the Muslims' highly conservative attitudes toward women and homosexuals.  Others prefer to live in a state of unresolved doublethink. . . . As much as they dislike Islam's role as the intolerant censor of novels and cartoonists, as the enemy of feminism, and as a harsh voice of sexual conservative, the western liberal Left have spent too long as Islam's ally against Israel, or as defenders of mass immigration by Muslims into European countries to be wholly convincing on this point.  [Ibid.,  p.131,f. ]

This ideological mindset explains what happens when hostilities break out between Israel and the Palestinians.  Almost universally the Western media and the Commentariat are hostile towards Israel and are easily gulled by Palestinian propaganda proclaiming (often staged) Israeli atrocities.  Almost to a man the Western media comprehensively suspend disbelief or anything resembling a critical cynicism towards Palestinians because of the binary mindset which holds them fast in a mental prison: Israel-bad; Palestine-good.  Coupled with this, one suspects, is a condescending paternalism with respect to Palestinian people and authorities--to wit, an assumption that they are too ignorant and uneducated to engage in anything so sophisticated and subtle as public mummery and staged propaganda.  Peasants they are, and peasants are neither intellectual nor subtle enough to dissemble or lie. 

Christians need not take one alternative or the other.  Our calling is to be faithful to the Scriptures in all our allegiances and loyalties.  We believe this necessarily requires that we face reality, removing all worldly and false blinkers.  This implies that we do not easily take sides.  Even as we are not blind to our own sins, we will not be blinded out of false loyalty to the sins of our own nation, nor to those of other nations.  We remain strangers and exiles amongst the nations of the world, whilst praying and working to extend the Kingdom which has come and is coming in all of them.  This means we are citizens, first, of a heavenly Kingdom, whilst being citizens of earthly kingdoms.  But our loyalty to God's Kingdom is our primary loyalty. 

This also means that any ideology which pushes us towards holding any one nation as holy or messianic is false and deeply erroneous.