Tag: Palestine

Re-reading the story of Palestine and Israel

This blog comes from a guest blogger, the Rev. Dr Chris Budden. It relates to the current explosion of the conflict in Gaza and Israel. Chris is a retired Uniting Church Minister who is actively engaged with First Peoples; amongst other things, he teaches a course on reconciliation at United Theological College in Sydney, Australia. He has a long interest in ways to find peace in Palestine-Israel. His present research interest is the Preamble to the Constitutional of the Uniting Church in Australia.

There are, in my opinion, three contributing factors to both poor analysis and inadequate responses to the conflict between Palestine and Israel, and the particular role of Hamas.

Let me be very clear from the beginning. Hamas’ actions in Israel were wrong, profoundly and horribly wrong.

First, however, the response and analysis has sought to ignore history. There is a pretence that Hamas simply attacked Israel out of the blue in an act of irrationality. They are mad people who must be eliminated, regardless of the cost to the civilian population. Consider the reality:

  • In 1917 the British Government issued the Balfour Declaration supporting the establishment in Palestine of a home for Jewish people. The aim was not to protect Jewish people, but to get rid of them out of Britain.
  • Prior to World War 2, there were relatively small numbers of Jewish people in Palestine, which was controlled as a British Protectorate.
  • At the end of the war, and with the guilt of the near annihilation of the Jewish people in Germany, support was given to finally enact the Balfour Declaration. People entered Palestine, often illegally, and began to push Palestinians off their land.
  • By 1948 there was significant occupation. The UN declared that the land should be partitioned, and two states established. Israel was established, but a Palestinian state has never gained proper support. Israel is opposed to such a state, believing it would threaten their security.
  • The State of Israel is a settler-colonial state, and has done exactly what such states have done in Australia, New Zealand, USA and Canada. That is, they have stolen land, and justified that theft with the claim that the place was largely unoccupied. Where it was, the people did not use the land properly. People can be dispossessed because they are lesser people – it is a racist narrative, that has been imbedded in apartheid.
  • Palestinians have been pushed into smaller and smaller enclaves, reducing any chance of a proper state. They have had walls built around them, their movements are controlled. Witnesses say that they live in a virtual prison.
  • In the last 10 years, 3500 Palestinians have been killed by the IDF, including large numbers of children.

One of the things we learned from the struggle against apartheid in South Africa was that we should asked those who are oppressed to tell the story of their oppression, and not to ask the oppressors. People should tell their own story, and not have it told by those who continue to harm them.

Second, the clear narrative across the world is that some people are of more value than others. The latest deaths in Israel quite rightly bring forth international condemnation. But the deaths of Palestinians rarely cause a protest. And because people are not seen as equal, then it is okay to seek revenge that is completely disproportionate. Many more Palestinians must die to make up for the death of citizens of Israel.

Third, the US and its allies like Australia must take some blame for what is happening because we have failed to uphold international law; we have failed to insist that the law applies to Israel. The settlements on Palestinian land are illegal, yet they keep expanding. The state of Palestine has been declared by the UN, but no-one does anything to make it happen. It is illegal to attack civilians, but civilians in Palestine are attacked and killed all the time, and no-one is held accountable. It is illegal to punish civilians for what their military do, which is exactly what Israel is doing, but the US and its allies will not tell them to stop.

Let me say it again, this is not a defence of Hamas. Which, by the way, was supported by Israel for years as a way of dividing the Palestinian opposition.

This is a claim that we will not have peace in the area until people are treated as of equal value, until international law is respected, and until people stop stealing land. The alternative is a never-ending spiral of violence.

The response to this argument is often to label it and me as antisemitic. This is about the actions of the State of Israel. To name the ways a state breaks international laws, and oppresses other people is not antisemitic or aimed at Jewish people at all. I hope opponents will not throw labels that obscure the debate but will actually respond to the arguments I have made.

Chris Budden, 31 October 2023

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This piece was first posted on UC Forum at https://ucforum.unitingchurch.org.au/?p=5286

For my own earlier reflections on this situation, see

Israel, the West Bank, and Hamas: a prayer for peace, and a yearning for justice

and for a comprehensive overview of the history of this region over the last 100 years, from Al-Jazeera, see

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/9/whats-the-israel-palestine-conflict-about-a-simple-guide

The problem of Canaan: conquering, colonising, massacring (Deut 34; Pentecost 22A)

Land rights. Land claims. Land has always been a bone of contention-in the past, as in the present. This week, the lectionary invites us to consider land. The Hebrew Scripture passage contains an important statement about land a land claim, as it were.

“This is the land of which I swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob”, God declares to Moses in the last moments of his life (Deut 34:4), as he stands on Mount Nebo, surveying “the whole land: Gilead as far as Dan, all Naphtali, the land of Ephraim and Manasseh, all the land of Judah as far as the Western Sea, the Negeb, and the Plain- that is, the valley of Jericho, the city of palm trees as far as Zohar” (Deut 34:1–3).

That land encompassed all the land of Canaan, which later becomes the land of Israel. It is the land which was in contention between different peoples long before the story of Moses was written on the scroll that became part of Torah.

That was most likely sometime before or during the period that Josiah ruled as king of Judah, when he commanded the high priest Hilkiah to undertake an audit of funds in the temple. We are told that, in the course of this audit, Hilkiah said to Shaphan his secretary, “I have found the book of the law in the house of the Lord” (2 Ki 22:8). That’s presumed to be the first version of what we know as Deuteronomy, which later found its place as the fifth of “the five Books of Moses”.

That same land, promised to Abraham, claimed by Moses, is in contention today. It has had a chequered history. The ancient land of Canaan eventually became the land of Israel, then (along with Judaea) part of the Roman province of Syria Palaestina (132–390), and then of the Diocese of the East in the Roman Empire (to 536). What followed the fall of the Roman Empire was a millennium and a half of Muslim rule of this land, first as a part of Bilad al-Sham, the Greater Syria region, under various Caliphates.

The region continued to be part of various organisational configurations under successive Muslim rule, on into the Ottoman Caliphate (from 1517) and then into the modern era. (I am not an expert, by any means, of this ancient and medieval history; for this summary, I am dependent on what I read in what I consider to be reputable sources.)

In the early 20th century, the place where Arabs identifying as Palestinians lived was decreed to be the British Mandate of Palestine (1920–1948). The ancient conflicts, it was hoped, would be well in the past. A place for Palestinians in the modern world was, it was thought, now settled.

But this was not to be, as we well know today.

In part in response to the horrors of the Shoah, exposed by the ending of World War Two, the modern state of Israel was created in 1948. The new nation took 78% of the area which had been provided for Palestinians in the British Mandate. That this was now Jewish territory was a blessing for Jews, but it was a huge irritant to Palestinian sensibilities, which has referred to the period from 1948 onwards as the Nakba, the Palestinian Catastrophe. In the early years of the Nakba, significant number of Palestinians fled the area declared as Israel, as (in one estimate) over 500 Palestinian villages were repopulated by Jews, becoming refugees with no national identity.

The contested regions of the Gaza Strip (along the east coastline of the Mediterranean Sea) and the West Bank (land immediately to the west of the River Iordan) became known as “the Palestinian Territories”.

Another irritant has been the fact that they have been occupied by Israel since the Six-Day War of 1967, and subsequent expansion of Israeli settlements into areas where Palestinians live has exacerbated the situation. And so those who were dispossessed become the dispossessors of others, and the cycle continues.

So when we hear, this coming Sunday, “This is the land of which I swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob”, we can be sure that we know these territories; we know the conflicted situation in the modern era; and we know how the ancient texts describe and lay claim to Israelite “ownership” of the land.

When Abraham left his homeland to settle in Canaan (Gen 13:12) and when the Lord God later formalised a covenant with Abraham (then aged 99 years, we are told), the promise was made by God that “I will give to you, and to your offspring after you, the land where you are now an alien, all the land of Canaan, for a perpetual holding” (Gen 17:8).

That same phrase, “a perpetual holding”, is subsequently spoken by Jacob, as he tells Joseph, Manasseh and Ephraim of God’s words, “I am going to make you fruitful and increase your numbers; I will make of you a company of peoples, and will give this land to your offspring after you for a perpetual holding” (Gen 48:4).

That land, Canaan, is a problem that sits at the heart of the story that the Bible recounts in its early narrative books. It becomes a problem at the heart of life for the millions living in that region today, as I have outlined above. The biblical narrative tells of numerous battles leading to the defeat of many tribes: the Moabites (Judg 3:26–30) and the Ammonites to the east Judg 10:6–11:33), as well as “the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations mightier and more numerous than you” in the land (Deut 7:1; see also Josh 3:10; 12:8; 24:11), and also the Anakim (Josh 11:21–23).

Further, as recent events in Australia have powerfully reminded us, there is a problem right at the heart of the narrative that has been constructed about modern Australia. Our most recent failure even to accept a modest proposal to recognise the existence of First Peoples on the continent prior to 1788, is testimony to that problem. Although the First People of Australia were not completely destroyed and eliminated, they continue to be discriminated against in a multitude of ways.

Both the ancient Israelite narrative and the contemporar Australian narrative tell a story of a group of people who invade, conquer, massacre, colonise, settle, marginalise, and then claim as their own what had previously belonged to others who had long been there before them.

It’s a story, in both instances, that we need to hear, understand, and appreciate. We need to develop awareness of just how easily we adopt the victor’s point of view, and uncritically retell it, without thinking any more about the pain, hurt, anguish, and generations-long damage that was done, in each case.

That is hard to do. I am a white Australian, raised on the myths of the great Australian character, taught from my schooldays onwards about the glories of the British Empire and the values of western society. Understanding the situation of First Peoples in Australia takes time, focus, empathy, energy, and persistence.

And I am a Christian, raised on the stories of the Bible, taught from Sunday School onwards about the promises God made to the chosen people about the holy land that had been selected for them. Getting into the mindset of a people from so long ago, who have almost (but not quite) been written out of the story, is hard to do.

The story of the Hebrews entering the land of Canaan, battling the inhabitants and colonising the territory, lies underneath the whole story of Exodus, wilderness, and conquest, which is at the heart of the biblical narrative that accounts for the origins of Israel as a nation.

A specific set of stories which tell of that invasion and conquest is found in all its bloody detail in the book of Joshua. That book tells, in a highly stylised way, of the entry of the people of God into the promised land. It is a key incident in the extended narrative history that stretches from Genesis to 1 Kings, from slavery in Egypt, through the long haul of wilderness wanderings, to the establishment of the kingdom of Israel under King David.

That story has multiple historical problems, and needs to be understood as a mythological saga telling of the nature and identity of the people, rather than an accurate historical account of “what actually took place”. See

Invasion and colonisation, Joshua 3 and contemporary Australia (Pentecost 23A)

This ancient story of invasion, conquering, massacre, colonisation, settlement, marginalisation, and then the claiming as their own what had previously belonged to others, resonates strongly with the experience of indigenous peoples in so many places in the modern era of history-including, and especially, in Australia.

Time and time again, from late medieval times onwards, “explorers” set out from Western powers, “discovered” new lands, followed by “settlers” who came and established “civilisation”, most often by means of “subduing” the indigenous peoples, making them subservient to the “new order” and even, in many instances, punishing those who resisted their new ways, utilising various means of killing the indigenous peoples.

This is the dynamic at the heart of the story of “Israel entering the promised land” which is told in Ioshua. It is also at the heart of the story of “establishing British civilisation in the land of Australia” which is the story of the continent on which I live the land now called Australia. The imposition of a new way of living by a more powerful force, the subjugation of those who already were living in the land, and the use of violence and murder to ensure that the new order was maintained and could flourish all of this is in the history of Australia since 1788.

The story of invasion and settlement of Canaan, the defeat and decline of the various indigenous peoples of that land, resonates with the contemporary Australian experience of the indigenous peoples of the continent and its islands. Which gives us pause for thought: how, then, do we hear and understand that story recounted in Joshua, which is prefigured in this final chapter of Deuteronomy? What land claims do we accept from this ancient text? And how does that guide us, today, as we consider the land claims that are being made?

See also my discussion of the wav that biblical literalism has fed into the modern conflict over this land at