The Religious Left in America and internationally is viscerally opposed to Israel, whom it exclusively faults for nearly all Middle East turmoil. But liberal churchmen in the West used to support Israel, welcoming its creation as a providential reaction to the horrors of the Holocaust.
The infamously controversial Episcopal clergyman James Pike, as dean of the Cathedral of St John the Divine in New York hailed Israel in 1958 as an “oasis of freedom and democracy” in the Middle East. Then about to become the Episcopal Bishop of California, Pike was a flamboyant icon of left-wing Protestantism. At a farewell luncheon for him in New York, the American Christian Palestine Committee presented him with an Israeli Bible and saluted him for his “leadership both in the creative understanding of Israel and the gallant furtherance of a Middle East at peace.”
Pike responded that Israel’s 10th anniversary was of “significance to Christians not only because of Christian communities in Israel, but because the heritage of Judaism – which is our heritage, too – is made more vivid by the restoration of Jewish life and culture in the place of its original development.” Ironically, Pike would later die of exposure while wondering lost in an Israeli desert in 1969.
The American Christian Palestine Committee that commended Pike was founded in 1946 to foster support for Zionism and Israel, especially among liberal-leaning Mainline Protestant clergy. Its executive secretary, Karl Baehr, returned from Israel in 1949 and told The New York Times that the “vast majority of the citizens of Israel want peace” and the “recent war with the several Arab states is considered a shameful and needless waste of life and property.” But “most Israelis, Baehr noted,” also perceive that “Arab nations, and their behind-the scenes supporters, do not want peace,” fueling an Israeli expectation of a “renewed attempt to crush their infant democracy.”
Baehr, a Mennonite, recalled Arab Ramallah Radio’s broadcast of “threatening and hostile statements, including a screed from the Arab military governor of the Old City of Jerusalem, declaring, ‘The time for revenge will come.’” Another similar broadcast threat was: “There will be no freedom from fear in Israel. Forty-five million Arabs will see to that.” Other Arab broadcasts explained that the temporary peace would only facilitate Arab planning for renewed hostilities. Noting that the new Israeli government was offering concessions, Baehr observed that the Arab states offered none in return.
Quoting a Methodist missions official, Baehr wrote: “Arab liberals and intelligentsia are organizing to take over the leadership which has often been left to incapable and venal rulers. The end in view is to strengthen the Arab nations to the place that they will be able to expel the Jews from Palestine.” In light of “inflammable circumstances,” Baehr wondered whether Israel could ever realistically be expected to take back “masses of Arab refugees” before a “firm and final peace.” Baehr also wondered, if war was renewed, if Israel would “again be blamed for the refugees inevitably created, and for the destroyed villages which usually accompany fighting.”
Baehr concluded his letter to The New York Times: “In view of this obvious hostile attitude on the part of the Arab states, why has our State Department brought no pressure to bear upon them to change their position and negotiate a peace?” This question largely went unanswered, of course. Continue >>
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