By Dexter Van Zile
Anglican Priest Naim Ateek recently toured Washington state in support of his most recent book, A Palestinian Christian Cry for Reconciliation (Orbis, 2008), in which he falsely accuses Israel of perpetrating a “slow and creeping genocide” against Palestinians – who have one of the fastest growing populations in the world.
Apparently, leveling false accusations at the Jewish people and their homeland is not enough to get one barred from polite society in 21st century America.
So much for history progressing in an upward spiral.
The centerpiece of Ateek’s tour was his June 20, 2009 appearance on Weekday, a radio show hosted by Steve Scher and broadcast on KUOW, an NPR station in Seattle. During his radio appearance, Ateek returned to a persistent theme in his writings: the notion that the god described in some of the Hebrew Scriptures is a primitive, violent and territorial god who cares only about Jews.
During the interview, Ateek stated that some books in the Hebrew canon – most notably Daniel and Jonah – offer a critique and an alternative to this “exclusive, bigoted god who says I’m gonna go with you to war, I’m gonna kill your enemies.”
While allowing Ateek to ramble, KUOW host Steve failed to address a central question: What type of god is propounded in Ateek’s so-called “peacemaking” ministry?
The answer is not pretty. Ateek, who condemns belief in a god that would direct its blessing exclusively toward the Jewish people, propagates the agenda of a god who directs its judgment and anger at Israel, especially its Jewish inhabitants. Ateek’s commentary about the Arab-Israeli conflict provides a resting place, an ark, for just such a god.
For example, Ateek asserted that the “Today the Jewish people are not suffering. They are the oppressors. … They can be relieved from their suffering if they do justice.” In Ateek’s logic, the fact that Palestinians have engaged in persistent acts of violence against Israel is proof of Israeli intransigence – not Arab rejectionism. Exactly who wants to get rid of whom in the Middle East?
Under Ateek’s view, Israeli concessions and peace offers are meaningless and Palestinian violence can be easily justified.
For example, on October 5, 2000, soon after the beginning of the Second Intifada, when a real peacemaker would be calling for calm and for an end to violence, Ateek issued a statement that portrayed Ariel Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount on Sept. 28 as a “violation” and a “desecration” and asserted that “It was right for our Palestinian Muslim brothers and sisters to stand up in the defense of their holiest place, al-Haram al-Sharif, when it was being threatened and desecrated.”
On its face, “standing up in defense of their holiest place,” seems like a pretty benign affirmation of nonviolent action, unless of course one takes into account the fact that five Israelis had been killed by Palestinian violence in the two weeks before Ateek issued this statement.
While Ateek gives close scrutiny to the theology of Christian Zionists and Jewish extremists, he gives light treatment to the theology motivating Muslim violence against Jews and the Islamic refusal to accept the notion of a sovereign Jewish state. His painstaking exegesis of the Hebrew scriptures and repeated invocations of Christianity’s universalism – which are invariably targeted at Jewish beliefs and policies – testify to a god obsessed and offended by the Jewish refusal to accept Christianity, and silently indifferent to a Muslim intolerance toward Jews.
One question that Scher could have asked of Ateek is why he spends such a disproportionate amount time condemning Christian Zionists, who have never blown up a bus, and the small number of Jewish settlers whose violence toward Palestinians, while condemnable, does not even come close to the misdeeds perpetrated by groups like Hamas and Al Aqsa Martyr’s Brigade against Israelis.
The story Naim Ateek tells about the Arab-Israeli conflict, cloaked as it is in the language of Christian peacemaking, attests to the existence of a deaf, dumb and blind god who would use Muslim and Arab violence against Israel as a scourge against the Jewish people.
Such a god is not worthy of worship.
Dexter Van Zile is Christian Media Analyst for the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA).