Rosemary Radford Ruether and Herman J. Ruether. The Wrath of Jonah: The Crisis of Religious Nationalism in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.

Rosemary Radford Ruether and Herman J. Ruether. The Wrath of Jonah:The Crisis of Religious Nationalism in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press 2002. 296 pages. Paper $12.60.

Several times during the last century, since the establishment of the State of Israel, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has come to occupy center stage on the world scene. At present it heats up once more as Israel turns the screw on the Palestinian people to squeeze life out of the Palestinian entity ("state").

Under the guise of joining the United States in fighting terrorism, Israeli militarists, who are opposed even to the miserable and unfair deal the Palestinians got at Oslo and Madrid, saw their lifetime chance to realize their dreams of a "Greater Israel" and a final solution by voiding the land from the "low-life" Palestinians.

The Wrath of Jonah is a welcome source of valuable information, and sober analyses that should be necessary reading to help bring light to the densely clouded atmosphere prevailing as a result of Israel's campaigns of disinformation and influence in the media, added to the widespread public apathy.

In the first chapter, the authors deal with the history of Palestine and the various peoples or tribal groups that populated the region synchronously since about 10,000 years B.C.E. There is also a succinct mention of the various empires that controlled Palestine up to the first half of the 20th century. The authors then deal with the interactions and strife brought about by the three monotheistic religions and the contradictions between exclusivism and self-centeredness on the one hand and elements of ethical humanitarianism on the other in all three; and tolerance of each towards the other alternating with condescension, worsening into open persecution during times of crises. In recent periods, all three faiths have seen revival of exclusivist fundamentalism caused by rivalry over possession of the land each of them deems "Holy."

The second chapter deals with the development of Zionism and differentiates between "Practical Zionism," which appeared in the late 1880s as a reaction to anti-Semitism and had no aspirations for return of the Jews to Palestine, and "Political Zionism" which arose as a secular movement seeking the establishment of a Jewish State in Palestine. Zionism is flawed by ethnocentric nationalism that was directed towards the Arabs, regarding them as ethnically and culturally inferior. The contradictions inherant in Zionism created a "culture" of duplicity leading to outright lies and the fabrication of myths resulting from a profound phobia of illegitimacy, hence the insistence that all nations, especially the Arabs, recognize Israel's right "to exist."

In chapter three, the authors survey the complex relationship between Christianity and Zionism. Early Christianity blamed the Jews for not accepting Jesus as the messiah. This continued through mediaeval Christianity when Palestine was considered by the Church as the Christian "Holy Land." During the Crusades many atrocities were committed by the Crusaders against the Jews. A drastic change of this Christian attitude towards the Jews occurred in the 16th century with the emergence of nationalism in Europe and the arrival of Protestantism. New beliefs emerged to the effect that the Jews should return to their promised land before their conversion to Christianity, which will be the sign of the second advent of the Messiah. Later on, with the fall of the Ottoman Empire, British Christian Zionism gained more strength to reach its zenith in the Balfour Declaration of 1917, and continued to be effective through the British Mandate in Palestine and during and after World War II and disclosures of the Nazi atrocities of the Holocaust. In the U.S. the Evangelicals, and to a lesser extent the Catholics, stood wholeheartedly behind Jewish Zionism.

Chapter four addresses the emergence and survival of Palestinian nationalism and reveals the heroic struggle of the Palestinian people against all odds in the face of Zionism, Western imperialism and anti-Arab racism in Western culture. Zionist leaders strove to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state, planning to usurp the whole of Palestine after voiding it of its Palestinian inhabitants. With the fall of the Ottoman Empire, Britain and France took over its colonies, with Britain controlling Jordan, Iraq and Palestine, over which latter land they gained a mandate from the League of Nations. The problems of the Palestinian national leadership became more pronounced in the 1920s and 1930s with the riots that erupted against the Balfour Declaration and rising Jewish immigration. Britain went on with its duplicitous policies, giving contradictory promises to the two sides of the conflict and eventually reneging on their promises to the Palestinians and succumbing to Zionist pressure. The riots were brutally suppressed by the Mandate authority, which rendered the Palestinian leadership mostly ineffective for the duration of World War II. With the U.N. Partition resolution, the first Arab-Israeli war in 1948 and the defeat of the Arab armies, the Palestinian nationalist movement suffered a severe setback. About 750,000 Palestinian refugees fled their homeland into refugee camps in neighboring Arab countries. In the mid-1960s the PLO emerged as the movement spanning a wide political spectrum. The PLO led frequent raids into Palestine from Jordan and Lebanon. In the 1967 war Israel occupied the test of Palestine i.e., the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, which together constitute 22% of the area of Palestine that had not yet been taken by Israel. Another flux of hundred of thousands of Palestinian refugees took place. The destruction of the PLO military and political infrastructure in Jordan in a confrontation with the Jordanian authorities in 1970, and later by Israel's invasion of Lebanon, placed the burden of resisting the occupation into the hands of the Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank and Gaza who rose up in the first Intifada, 1987-1993. The authors proceed to reveal the terms involved in the Oslo agreement and how it confines the Palestinian Authority to more municipal functions and denies the Palestinians full sovereignty. Following Oslo, Israel proceeded to transfer the West Bank into separate cantons, unsustainable economically and completely dependant on Israel. With more land confiscations, house demolitions, arrests and killings it is easy to see the basis behind the desperation and disillusionment that has befallen the Palestinians. The second Intifada, which erupted in 2000 represents just a normal human reaction to atrocities committed by Israel against a helpless people suffering under one of the most brutal occupations in modern history.

Chapter five deals with contradictions of the Jewish State as its ethnic and religious exclusivism clashes with the universalist ideals of democracy and socialism adopted by early Zionists. From its inception Israel planned to reduce the Palestinians living in their allotted areas to a politically impotent minority and to prevent those living in the Arab areas from achieving any sovereignty over a nation state of their own. Israel's acceptance of the partition plan was only to gain international recognition while refusing any territorial limits imposed on it, and the residence of so many Palestinians in it and a parallel Palestinian state. Israel started to prepare for war and launched a campaign of massacres, terrorization and expulsion of Arabs. Simultaneously there was a feverish influx of Jewish immigrants into Palestine. The Jewish population rose steadily up from about half a million at the time of the U.N. partition, to 2.5 millions in 1964 and eventually reached 5.8 millions in 2000. One of Israel's fears comes from what they see as future dangers of higher birth rates among the Palestinians, which would bring their numbers higher than the Jews by 2010. This is actually the reason behind the current campaign of terrorization, expulsion, house demolition and outright killings. The authors go on to detail the various repressive measures exercised by the military occupying authority that has made life nearly impossible for the Palestinians. In the face of all the humiliation and repression, the Palestinians are struggling to survive and maintain their cultural identity.

In chapter six the authors discuss the contemporary Christian Responses to Zionism and Judaism. Starting with Roman Catholicism, the writers show how the relationship of the Vatican to Israel has been in a state of flux since 1948. The Vatican supported the U.N. Partition resolution, hoping for the internationalization of Jerusalem under Catholic supervision. Since 1967 there has been a de facto recognition of the State of Israel, with only the request of safe international access to holy places for all three faiths. As the Vatican stopped short of recognition of the State of Israel it hoped to continue with the Christian-Muslim dialogue and relations with Muslim Arab nations. The Vatican reiterates its support for the Palestinians' rights to have their own homeland and Vatican institutions in the West Bank continue to support Palestinian human rights. The World Council of Churches, an International organization of Protestant and Eastern Orthodox Churches, issued declarations similar to those of the Catholic Church defining its relations with the Jews. The WCC executive committee adopted an evenhanded policy balancing Israel's right to exist within secure borders with the Palestinians' right to self-determination. On the question of return of Palestinian refugees, the WCC had contradictory views and called for their settlement in other Arab states. The Council also issued a series of declarations condemning Israeli violations of Palestinian human rights both in the Occupied Territories and in Israel proper. American Fundamentalist Christians base their views of Israel on Biblical theology and consider international politics as a contest between God and Satan, with the U.S. and Israel on one side and the Russians and the Arabs on the other. The), strongly believe that the establishment of Israel will lead to the second advent of Christ and that Christianity is the completion of God's promise to the Jews. To them, there is a political commonality between America and Israel as both are "Judeo-Christian freedom loving democracies." They also believe Israel has the right to all the land between the Nile and the Euphrates and not only the land they were allotted by the U.N. Partition resolution. The writers conclude this chapter with some comments on the response of Arab Christians to Judaism and Zionism. The Middle East Council of Churches, which is the voice of Arab Christians, places major emphasis on the spiritual universal meaning of Christian faith and seas that the secularization of the state resolves the confusion of religious faith with Political citizenship, that has plagued the monotheistic religions for several centuries. The best solution for the Middle East is for Israel to be a secular pluralist state with Jews, Christians and Muslims living together as equal citizens.

Chapter seven deals with the Jewish and Christian responses to the Holocaust. The Zionists went about creating a parallel between the terrors of the Holocaust and the Arabs "who deny them security and refuse to allow them their own state." Thus they pictured the Arabs as Nazi surrogates and revelations of Satan, not fellow human beings. As to the Christians, the feeling was that the Church, both Catholic and Protestant, was culpable for centuries for anti-Semitism in Europe, which made the Holocaust possible. This led many Christian theologians in the 1960s and 1970s to pledge to oppose anti-Semitism including anti-Zionism. Some of these theologians went so far as to call for helping the State of Israel by raising money for its defense and claiming that the "so-called" Palestine problem was caused solely by the Arab States, which "made the Palestinians Refugees and kept them they way."

Chapter eight is a theological and ethical evaluation of Zionism. It stresses that the excessive brutality with which Israel has treated the Palestinians cannot in any way be compared to any military damage the Palestinian commandos could pose to Israel' security. The Israeli inordinate repression can only be explained as overzealous attempts to suppress Palestinian nationalism and also to silence dissent among those Israelis seeking Justice for the Palestinians. The terrible and criminal way in which the Palestinians were treated by Israel poses a tragic moral dilemma that faces many Jews, especially in the Diaspora. Many morally sensitive Israelis emigrate from Israel, and many Jews experience traumatic sadness and or deep anger against what they consider "anti-Semitism." The Arabs and their Third World allies reject Israel as a colonial settler state and an extension of Western Imperialism. The U.S. administration and media have been strongly biased towards Israel because of general Western hostility to the Arabs and as they regard Israel as part of the Western World both racially and ideologically and as a crucial ally in the Middle East. The authors then turn to refuting three claims made by the Zionists, namely: (i) that Jews are not merely a religious community, but a nation and race that can only be expressed in a Jewish nation-state by and for Jews alone; (ii) that the ancestral homeland of this Jewish state is Palestine, and preferably the whole of Palestine and not just the area given them by the U.N. partition resolution; (iii) that the return of the Jews to their homeland and the founding of the state are Messianic events.

In the "Postscript 2000" at the end of this Second Edition of the book, the authors express strong doubts about improvement in the situation of the Palestinians as Israel continues to remove of subjugate Palestinians in increasingly diminished numbers on lesser and lesser land. In their view, the solution has to come from a change in consciousness on the part of the Israelis that would bring about an acceptance of the Palestinians as neighbors and not as a detested people they can expel by war. Such change would be possible on a large scale only through a long healing process that can and has to begin now in those Israelis and Jews who represent a genuine and alternative voice. In the short term they call for a two state solution with full sovereignty for the Palestinians over their own state, within the pre-1967 borders. In the long term, however, they hope for a confederation of Israel, Palestine and Jordan for economic, political and ecological cooperation. The Palestinians will have to help such trends by finding a way to resist the Israeli occupation nonviolently.

The book makes serious and commendable attempts at refuting the many fallacies and myths Israel has created to justify its brutal, inhumane and utterly illegal measures against the Palestinians. However, there are a few points that the book does not discuss regarding Zionism and the influence the American Christian Fundamentalists are exerting on the present American Administration's policies in the Middle East to serve Israeli interests. The book should have shown how the discontinuity of the Jewish people in time and space belies the myth of the continuity embodied in Israel's declaration of independence. There is an increasing unanimity among Jewish and non-Jewish scholars on the non-Semitic, non-Israelite, non-Palestinian origin of contemporary Israelis who are, largely, a Slavo-Turkic people originally from the Turkic Khazar kingdom. This latter Kingdom was established after the mass conversion of Khazars to Judaism in the 8th century A.D. With the overthrow of this Jewish Khazar kingdom in the 10th century A.D., the Khazar Jews dispersed between the Volga and the Rhine Rivers, and between the Caspian and the Baltic seas. The present estimate is that the Khazar Jews are the ancestors of 90% of today's world Jewry.

I had also anticipated, but did not find any reference in the book to the fact that Zionism has failed to achieve its objectives, namely: solving the Jewish question and eliminating anti-Semitism which actually still exists even in the U.S. and is on the rise in Europe; achieving normalcy for the state of Israel, which remains an abnormal colonialist garrison state without sensible and stable basis for the future; and erasing Palestine and the Palestinians from the map as the Palestinians outnumber the Israelis two to one and show strong determination to return to their homes and regain their rights. As to the hopes expressed by the authors in the postscript that the Palestinians will have to find peaceful methods for resisting the Israeli tyranny and oppression, I think many readers would see that as utopian.

Ramsis (G. Lutfy is a retired professor of zoology and currently resides in Honolulu, Hawaii.