Revisionism

I noticed a member of the congregation coming in to the Narthex while I was saying prayers the other morning, and leaving something on the table where leaflets and notices are put. It turned out to be a small pile of home-made leaflets announcing a public meeting held by the local branch of the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign.'ISRAELI APARTHEID', it declared. 'Author Ben White explains how Israel has established a system of apartheid over the last 60 years'. I took the leaflets home, and produced a small notice instead, adding a question mark to the title and amending the blurb to 'Ben White believes that Israel has established a system of apartheid affecting its Palestinian citizens ...' etc.

Throughout my life I've hated it when anyone assumes they know what I think and how I will respond, especially when it means informing me, in advance of knowing my real feelings and opinions, what I ought to think. In most British liberal Christian circles, in complete contrast to the US, for instance, there's a casual assumption that Christians will be pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli. It tells you something that members of our church can assume that there is no question over putting out publicity of this aggressive and one-sided nature.

I'm not overly pro-Israel, but I do feel there is moral ambiguity on all sides in the Middle East conflict. Liberal Christians tend to see the Palestinians as a tiny nation bullied and beaten about by a powerful Israel; Jewish friends of mine, in contrast, regard the Palestinians as part of an international Arab coalition threatening a sixty-mile-wide strip of land that makes up the only stable democratic state in the region. 'Just look at Israel on the map', said one, 'It's tiny, and all these countries around it who want to wipe it out'. Neither point of view, I think, is without some truth. Or perhaps I just have a reprehensible degree of cowardice and just can't take sides.