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Loving Violent Arabs: A Study of Radicalism Within the Israeli Messianic Movement

December 2018

DOI:10.1007/978-3-319-65566-6_6

In book: Expressions of Radicalization (pp.147-180)

Authors:

Kristian Steiner

Malmö University

Anders Lundberg

Social work

Steiner and Lundberg examine how Israeli Messianic leaders articulate the hope for peace in the Middle East. More specifically, they draw attention to how Messianic leaders understand the Middle Eastern conflicts and whether this understanding could be considered as radical. All of the informants underline the complexity of the conflicts and most of them tend to emphasize their permanence. The informants are pessimists regarding the conflict, half of them describe it in fatalist terms. This colours their hope for peace; they expect an escalation of the Middle Eastern conflicts, even the apocalypse. And lastly, the informants prefer a one-state solution. In comparison to the Israeli political mainstream, like Likud, the Messianic movement is not necessarily radical.

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K. Steiner, A. Önnerfors (eds.), Expressions of Radicalization,

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65566-6_6

CHAPTER 6

Loving Violent Arabs: AStudy ofRadicalism

Within theIsraeli Messianic Movement

KristianSteiner andAndersPLundberg

IntroductIon

Messianic Judaism is a religious movement espousing a largely evangelical

theology, while adhering to a Jewish cultural heritage, including the

observance and celebration of life-cycle events, the Sabbath, and the

Jewish feasts (Kollontai 2004: 195). The present movement took shape in

the United States in the 1960s, but it has a nineteenth-century British

Hebrew Christian background (Cohn-Sherbok 2000: 68; Kollontai

2004: 195). A handful of Messianic Jewish families lived in what is now

the State of Israel before its inception in 1948, and the rst attempt to

establish a Messianic congregation took place in 1925 (Cohen 2013:

107).

Traditional Judaism denes Messianic Jews as apostates (Cohn-Sherbok

2000: x–xi), and the movement has suffered persecution from Orthodox

Jews (Cohn-Sherbok 2000: 79). Unconrmed estimates put the number

of Messianic Jews in Israel at between 6000 and 20,000 across 150 con-

gregations, and that number is probably growing.

K. Steiner (*)

Malmö University, Malmö, Sweden

A.P. Lundberg

Linnaeus University, Växjö, Sweden

Expressions of Radicalization : Global Politics, Processes and Practices, edited by Kristian Steiner, and Andreas

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148

This chapter presents a study of Israeli Messianic leaders’ understand-

ing of the current Middle Eastern conicts. The two aims addressed are

(1) to gain an understanding of how these leaders analyse and respond

normatively to these conicts, and (2) to approximate the extent to which

their discourse can be understood as radical in relation both to Israeli

mainstream politics and ideals and to the wider global context.

research Methods

In this section, we describe the three methodological steps undertaken in

the study: selection of interviewees, interviews, and analysis of interviews

and other available data. To meet the study’s requirement of a representa-

tive selection of Israeli Messianic leaders to cover different segments within

the movement, we rst selected congregations of different ages and sizes,

with different geographic, ethnic, and theological characteristics.1 Thus,

we interviewed leaders of smaller and larger evangelical and charismatic

congregations founded before and after the Russian immigration of the

1990s in both urban and rural areas, in the north and in the south, and in

the occupied territories. We also strived for representation across age and

gender in the interviewees. In all, we interviewed 15 pastors and leaders

who we believe reect the movement’s leadership. The fact that we could

nd only one female leader with a formal position might reveal the posi-

tion of women within the movement.

The interviews were conducted on October 17–25, 2015, during a

wave of violence sometimes called the Knife (or Stabbing) Intifada. Ergo,

although we believe the selection of interviewees is representative, the

timing and context were extraordinary:

1. Interviewee 12 is an Israeli-born Jew in his 50s, leading a Messianic

congregation in one of the urban areas.

2. Interviewee 23 is an Israeli-born Jew in his 50s, leading a Messianic

congregation in one of the urban areas.

3. Evan Thomas is a New Zealand-born Jew in his 60s, pastor of Beit

Asaph in Netanya, one of the older Messianic congregations in the

country.

4. Eitan Shishkoff is an American-born Jew in his 60s who moved with

his wife to Israel around 1992 and started the rst of several congre-

gations in 1975. Shishkoff leads a congregation in Kiryat Yam, north

of Haifa, and has published a book on Gentile-Jewish relations.

K. STEINER AND A.P. LUNDBERG

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149

5. Sergei Bosharniko is a Ukrainian USSR-born Jew in his late 40s,

leader of the congregation Ruach HaChayim in Nazareth Illit.

6. Eliav Levin is a Ukrainian USSR-born Jew in his early 40s, associ-

ate pastor at Ruach HaChayim in Nazareth Illit.

7. Yo-Yakim Figueras is an Israeli-born non-Jew in his 40s and leader

of the congregation of Hasdey Yeshua in Arad.

8. Joseph Finkelstein is an American-born Jew in his 60s who made

Aliyah4 late in life. Finkelstein is co-leader with Figueras of Hasdey

Yeshua in Arad.

9. David Ortiz is an American-born non-Jew in his 50s, and leader of

the congregation Kehilat Ariel in the Ariel settlement on the West

Bank. He is married to Leah Ortiz.

10. Leah Ortiz is an American-born Jew in her 50s who became a

Messianic believer in the 1970s. She is currently associate leader of

the congregation of Kehilat Ariel.

11. Liron Shany is an Israeli-born Jew in his late 30s and associate pas-

tor in the congregation of Kehilat Haderech in Karmiel.

12. Ray Pritz is an American-born non-Jew in his late 60s who has

been living with his family in Israel for many years. Pritz is one of

the leaders of the congregation Kehilat Modi’in in Modi’in Illit.

13. Olavi Syväntö is a Finnish-born non-Jew in his 80s. Syväntö was

one of the founders of the congregation of Nachalat Yeshua in

Beer Sheva in the 1970s.

14. Howard Bass is an American-born Jew in his 60s and current leader

of the congregation of Nachalat Yeshua in Beer Sheva.

15. David Lasoff is an American-born Messianic Jew in his 50s, teach-

ing at the University of the Holy Land.

The interviews were semi-structured, using both pre-set questions and

spontaneous follow-up questions (Bryman 2015). They covered issues

related to the interviewees’ faith and to the conicts in the Middle East. If

certain topics relevant to the study aims were not addressed by the inter-

viewee, we followed up with precise, and sometimes controversial, ques-

tions. The interviews were held in English (in one case with the assistance

of an interpreter), recorded, and transcribed (O’Reilly 2005: 175).

In our analysis, we take a hermeneutical approach (Silverman 2016),

emphasizing how interviewees interpret phenomena around them in a

meaning-making process. We apply internal triangulation to achieve valid-

ity in data gathering by probing with various sets of questions and by

LOVING VIOLENT ARABS: ASTUDY OFRADICALISM WITHIN THEISRAELI…

Expressions of Radicalization : Global Politics, Processes and Practices, edited by Kristian Steiner, and Andreas

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150

combining data from the interviews with onsite observations, with books,

booklets, and brochures published by the interviewees or their congrega-

tions, and with congregational websites (cf. O’Reilly 2005: 154; Seligmann

2005: 239). Our interviewees are public gures whose identities, except

for two who wished to be anonymized, we have kept public.

MessIanIc understandIngs oftheMIddle

easternconflIcts

Our interviews concerning Messianic understandings of the conicts in

the Middle East touched upon six themes: (1) the meaning of peace, (2)

the onset and essence of the Middle Eastern conicts, (3) the character of

Arabs, Muslims, and Islam, or Judaism and Israeli Jews, (4) the possibili-

ties for, and obstacles to, regional and universal peace, (5) expected future

developments in the Middle Eastern conicts, and (6) morally acceptable

responses to the conicts, both as Messianic believers and as a nation. The

discussion is therefore conceptual (theme 1), descriptive (themes 2 and 3),

analytical (themes 4 and 5), and normative (theme 6).

The Meaning ofPeace

A few interviewees had a utopian and otherworldly understanding of

peace, making it difcult for them to settle for imperfect political compro-

mise. They seemed to expect peace, ‘but’, said Shany, ‘it is not the peace

that the world is talking about’; rather, peace is a state of complete har-

mony or ‘unity’ (Shany). This utopian understanding of peace is con-

trasted to political attempts to make peace in the Middle East, which are

labelled ‘false’, ‘temporary’, ‘a ‘band-aid kind of peace’, and ‘not the kind

of peace that Jesus says he gives us. It is the peace that the world will give’

(Bass; cf. Shany).

God’s peace is different: ‘Jesus died on the cross and gave his blood.

That is God’s peace plan. Either you believe that, or [if] you don’t believe,

you don’t have peace’ (Bass). Interviewee 2 added:

Heavenly peace is having no enmity between you and God. And when you

have no enmity between you and God, then God ghts for you … God

brings the victory. If both of us have peace with God … then we both have

fellowship next to the feet of Christ. … Real peace is having no enmity

between us and God.

K. STEINER AND A.P. LUNDBERG

Expressions of Radicalization : Global Politics, Processes and Practices, edited by Kristian Steiner, and Andreas

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151

As we will see, this utopian understanding of peace has consequences for

how these interviewees interpret practical work for peace and how they

assess ethical responses to the conicts.

The Onset andEssence oftheMiddle Eastern Conicts

In conversations about the onset and essence of the conicts, almost all

interviewees revealed a distinct nationalist Zionist historiography. About

half the interviewees claimed that Jewish immigration to the region was

divinely ordained. Sometimes their understanding of the conict did not

allow them to see the conict from a Palestinian perspective. For instance,

Shany seemed unaware of their situation, claiming that Israel used to treat

Palestinians on the West Bank ‘as citizens or as people with equal rights’

and he could not understand the reasons behind the Second Intifada

because ‘there was such harmony’.

In a Zionist vein, David Ortiz stated that ‘the land was empty’ before

the Jews arrived and that Palestinians have roots outside of Israel, and

Bass, Lasoff, Interviewee 1, and Syväntö maintained that Israel’s enemies

were entirely responsible for the conicts in 1948 and/or 1967.

Interviewee 1 alleged the purpose of the Arab states in 1948 was to get the

Jews out of this land and that the Palestinians do not want peace: ‘the

Palestinians and the Arabs refused to resolve it’. Only two interviewees

(Pritz and Thomas) questioned this Zionist narrative and believed respon-

sibility for the current conicts was shared.

When asked, most interviewees located the onset of the conict in

ancient history. The conict supposedly started 1400 years ago, with the

foundation of Islam (Interviewee 1), or even earlier ‘at the time of

Abraham, and Isaac, and Ishmael’ (Bosharniko; cf. David Ortiz, Shany;

Shishkoff;). In any case, ‘throughout the Bible history, the conict has

always been there’5 (David Ortiz). Consequently, the conict appears

‘endless’ (Bosharniko) and maybe permanent.6

The interviewees are divided on the essence of the conicts; just as many

(ve interviewees) emphasized its worldly and human essence (i.e., social,

national, political, and psychological factors), as its spiritual, even demonic

and apocalyptic essence. Pritz and Thomas belong to the rst category,

believing (in Pritz’s words) that ‘Satan can probably take a vacation here;

he doesn’t need to do much work, because it is being done for him’. Pritz

and Thomas also claimed that Arab and Jewish actors share responsibility

for the conict, that ‘the violent acts were absolutely not limited to one

LOVING VIOLENT ARABS: ASTUDY OFRADICALISM WITHIN THEISRAELI…

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152

side or the other’ (Pritz), and that the Arabs are frustrated and caught in

an intractable ‘spiral of violence’ (Thomas). The conict is dened as gen-

erally human and not as ‘particularly specic to Jews and Arabs’ (Pritz).

Both Thomas and Pritz emphasize Jewish immigration during the second

half of the nineteenth century as a propelling factor, making Arab groups

feel threatened by Jewish purchase of land (Pritz; Thomas).

The ve interviewees who thought the conicts were essentially spiri-

tual still this did not absolve Palestinians or Muslims from responsibility for

the conicts. A recurring idea in our data is that Muslims, and sometimes

Christian Arabs, do not embrace the ‘divine order’ in which God gave the

land to the Jews. To Bass, this refusal has led to an ‘enmity over what even-

tually comes down to the inheritance’ and this makes the Middle Eastern

conicts unique. Islam is particularly destructive in this respect, since it

represents ‘a driving force that is aimed to the elimination of the Jews from

this land’ (Interviewee 1). Islam thus, fosters a ‘refusal to embrace God’s

plan … for the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to live in this

land’ (Shishkoff; cf. Bass). And the fact of ‘one son being chosen over the

other for a position of greater privilege … created a

resentment we are still

living with’ (Shishkoff). All in all, ‘until these two members of the family

agree with Him, the Father, there is no peace’ (Bass).7

For about half the interviewees, salvation history plays an important

but varying role in their understanding of the spiritual essence of the con-

ict. In this logic, the conict ‘is not about land. It is not about holy sites.

It is spiritual’ (Shany). Their basic idea is that God will save humanity

forever at the end of time and the Jewish people are one of God’s tools in

this endeavour. Regrettably, ‘they [Muslims] want to divert, break God’s

plan. We are a part of this plan, so we are receiving the clashes… [there is]

a war between the heavenlies’ (Interviewee 2; cf. Bosharniko; Interviewee

1), and ‘the spirit at work is against the Lord’ (Bass), ghting ‘against

Judo-Christian biblical truth’ (Interviewee 2).

For ve of the interviewees, an alleged Muslim tendency to territorial

dominance, primarily over Israel but in the long run over the entire world,

is one such spiritual cause of the conict. Apparently, ‘the heart issue is

Muslim domination over this land. And not just the West Bank and Gaza;

it is Muslim domination over the whole Israel’ (Interviewee 1). Thus, the

conict will be global in the end:

Islam is the mouth of the devil. … Forget it, it will never be satised. When

they are nished with us they will come to you. What do you think? You

K. STEINER AND A.P. LUNDBERG

Expressions of Radicalization : Global Politics, Processes and Practices, edited by Kristian Steiner, and Andreas

Önnerfors, Palgrave Macmillan US, 2017. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/malmo/detail.action?docID=5205507.

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spoke too much in Europe. You criticize Israel too much. So now God gave

you a bonus; take all the refugees. You count one year, two years. And you

will see a mosque under your house. And I want to see what you think about

the problem. (Interviewee 2)

Lasoff has a clearer denition of the conicts’ spiritual essence. To him,

Islamic radicalization is the problem:

We are living in a time where Islam is radicalized to the point where they

openly advocate … nobody stands up in a synagogue and says ‘kill the

Arabs’, but it’s okay in the mosque to stand up, hold a knife and say ‘boys,

stab the Jews’.

Later in the interview he modies his position, claiming that ‘there is a

polarization on both sides. The middle is dying’.

Figueras summarizes one Messianic position well, stating that the spiri-

tual essence of the conict lies in Islam, since ‘Islam is a religion of peace

only if you are a Muslim’, and that the core of Islam is violence:

The last words of Mohammed were ‘You look for the Jews and for the

Christians to kill them, and if you don’t nd them, the stones and the trees

will tell you, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him’.

The Character ofIsraeli Jews, Arabs, Muslims, andIslam

In our pursuit of Messianic understandings of the Middle East conicts,

we need to understand how the movement’s leaders characterize the in-

group and the out-group. Before turning to the analysis, a few general

remarks about the data: rst, in the interviews, remarks about the charac-

ter of the out-group are much more prevalent than remarks about Israeli

Jews. Interviewees focus mostly on Islam and Muslims, to some extent on

Arabs in general, and rarely on Christian Arabs. Negative depictions domi-

nate. Depictions of the in-group are rare, except for some negative depic-

tions of Orthodox Jews, who can be considered an ‘internal other’. The

descriptions of the out-group are generally negative and often emerged in

passing during description the conicts or other issues, we rarely had to

ask for characterizations of the out-groups per se. Two interviewees,

Thomas and Pritz, deviated clearly from negative depiction of Muslims

LOVING VIOLENT ARABS: ASTUDY OFRADICALISM WITHIN THEISRAELI…

Expressions of Radicalization : Global Politics, Processes and Practices, edited by Kristian Steiner, and Andreas

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154

and two other interviewees also avoided negative depictions of Muslims

and Arabs.8

The most recurrent characteristic ascribed to the out-group is violence.

Most of the interviewees, at least initially, try to uphold a distinction

between Islam’s violent creeds and Muslims, with whom they claim to

maintain good relations and, in one case, even claim to love (Interviewee

1). Declarations of love and good relations, however, are often followed

by exclamations such as ‘Islam is evil. Islam is an evil religion’ and ‘it is not

the people, it is Islam. And with Islam they say again and again they want

to destroy you’ (Shany).

The separation between the creed and its followers is not systematic. In

Shany’s utterance above it is unclear whether ‘they’ refers to Islam (in that

case it should have been an ‘it’), or to Muslims. Moreover, it is believed

that spiritual forces behind Islam inuence its followers:

There is the people and there is their religion. And behind the religion there

are spiritual forces acting. Okay? … Islam is a problem for the whole world,

not just for the Middle East. And you begin to sense it in Europe now.

(Interviewee 1)

Thus, what Europe is allegedly experiencing is not a creed, but Muslim

behaviour caused by spiritual forces. Ergo, Islam is something more than

a creed, it is a spiritual force. Under this force, Muslims do not have the

full capacity to ethically reect on Islamic values, as followers of other

ideologies supposedly do.

Despite their declared concern for Arabs, at least one interviewee seems

to have very little tolerance for Arab criminality or violence:

I do believe that we not should hate the Arabs. … If a person was born here

and lives here it is his place, exactly as it is mine. And I should deal with him

as a citizen. On the other hand, this person needs to respect the land and

love the land, respect the authority, and go to the army or go to the civil

service. If you hold democracy in one hand and in the other hand a gun, I

would volunteer to put a bullet in his head. I am sorry and that is because

he is a criminal and a criminal is a criminal, regardless if it is a Jew or Gentile.

(Interviewee 2)

And according to some interviewees, blood (Interviewee 2), ‘blood-

lust’ (Shishkoff), and ISIS are illustrations of Islam in general and of core

Islamic values:

K. STEINER AND A.P. LUNDBERG

Expressions of Radicalization : Global Politics, Processes and Practices, edited by Kristian Steiner, and Andreas

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Interviewee 2: Frankly what is ISIS? It is a fundamental Islam. This is the

clean Islam. This is Islam as it is written. Without the Shiites and other

things. This is the netto Islam. See what we have? Heads all over.

Interviewer: So, the core of Islam is blood?

Interviewee 2: Absolutely yes. What is Islam mean in Arabic? Surrender.

And if not, then you will be in two pieces. That’s it. That is not Christianity.

That is not Judaism.

David Ortiz also blurred the line between Islamic violence and Muslims.

According to him, ‘moderate Islam is not very appealing to Muslims’ and

the Taliban and ISIS are ‘the kind of Islam a Muslim wants to die for’. Other

forms are ‘phony Islam’. He also generalized the ‘Muslim mentality’ as a

death cult, and alleged that dying, as well as killing, is an integral component

of Muslim identity. Muslims, David Ortiz said, do not think they have any-

thing to live for, and instead focus on what they can die for. ‘What am I

going to die for today? What is worth dying for? Am I going to go to the

checkpoint? And pull a knife at a soldier. Maybe that’s worth dying for’.

This allegedly violent character was also reected in the depiction of the

conicts. We were told that Arabs states started the conicts in the Middle

East (Lasoff; Interviewee 1; Shishkoff), and unlike Israel, they have not

been constructive in trying to solve them (Figueras; Shany; Shishkoff) or

the situation of the Palestinian refugees (Interviewee 1). Moreover, when

Islam did make peace, it was construed a mere tactic, since Islam ‘says you

have to kill, eventually. Maybe right now, we will stay low until we get the

power’ (Figueras). Because of this Islamic character, we cannot expect real

compromise: ‘To kill all the Jews and make this an Arab place, and then the

problem would go away. That is the solution for many Arabs’ (Lasoff).

Lasoff also contrasted a peaceful rational ‘us’ to an irrational violent ‘them’:

We are a civil society in Israel, and you are a civil society in your country. We

can talk to you, and we can talk to Britain, we can talk to the United States

about our differences. But we are not going to pull out a gun and go to war

with you because we see things differently from you. We are in the West,

where the West is the rule of law. That is not the game they are playing.

Shishkoff maintained the reason for this is probably ‘the Palestinian view-

point, being “no, you guys don’t belong here. And you have ripped off

the land from us”’. The Palestinians and/or their leadership were also said

LOVING VIOLENT ARABS: ASTUDY OFRADICALISM WITHIN THEISRAELI…

Expressions of Radicalization : Global Politics, Processes and Practices, edited by Kristian Steiner, and Andreas

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to have been very unconstructive in the peace process. ‘Whenever we

offered a solution, they started a new upraise [sic] or a new problem’

(Shany), and every Israeli retreat is supposed to have been met with

aggression.

This violent Muslim attitude is allegedly perpetuated through chil-

drearing. We were repeatedly told that Palestinian parents (Lasoff; Shany;

Shishkoff) and schools (David Ortiz; Shany) teach their children to kill

and hate Jews:

Her [13-year-old stabbing girl] parents did not beg them to stay at home.

No, they go: ‘be a shahid, be a martyr’. They think it is according to Islam;

it is love because their children will get 70 virgins in heaven. I don’t know.

(Shany)

Another repeatedly stated Islamic characteristic is expansionism, some-

times violent, and dominance. Allegedly Islam took the Middle East by the

sword without ‘discourse’ (Interviewee 1). And after they conquer, Islam

‘just takes a dominant role, a superior role. I am a dhimmi,9 and the rest

of the Jews are’ (Finkelstein). And this attitude still prevails, ‘there is no

end. Islam will claim the whole world’ (Bass; cf. Interviewee 2) since ‘it is

in their religion to take over whatever’ (Interviewee 1). Moreover, Muslims

in Europe, unlike other immigrants, also allegedly seek power. They are

interested in becoming a parliament member and being the Prime minister.

In Islam, you don’t think in stages … In the city council, I want to make

decisions in the community. ‘How long have you been in Sweden?’ ‘Two

weeks. I want to make decisions’. (David Ortiz)

Muslims supposedly have a few manipulative strategies for these ends.

They use their mosques (David Ortiz), they use ‘attery’, ‘intermarriage’,

and ‘if those things don’t work, then comes terror, but it’s the last resort’

(David Ortiz).

Palestinian corruption and lack of democracy are two additional charac-

teristics appearing in our data (from six interviewees). Allegedly the goal

of the Palestinian leaders is never to ‘make a good life for their people. If

you use your people as a shield in war, to me that’s not like you’re really

seeking a good life for your people’ (Shishkoff). One telling example was

when one interviewee was asked whether he prayed for justice. Without

answering the question, he began lamenting Palestinian corruption:

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157

The amount of money they receive from the world …, since the last peace

accord, is larger than the whole than the entire European continent [sic]. It

is huge amount of money. They could have used that money for good

things. (Shany)

Still a few of the interviewees could see one positive outcome of this mis-

management: ‘right now, you see more and more Christian Arabs [in

Israel] siding with Israel’ (Figueras). Sometimes it was difcult for the

interviewees to distinguish not only between Islam and Muslims but also

between Islam and Arabs. For instance, David Ortiz not only claimed that

‘Islam sees the democratic government as against God’ but also under-

lined that ‘there is no democratic system in the whole Arabic world’.

As we already have seen, Arabs and Muslims were repeatedly depicted

as morally inferior. A few interviewees even characterized them as intel-

lectually inferior. David Ortiz stated that Muslims are ‘primitive’ while we

‘are people of science, of culture, mathematics’, ‘we are up here, and they

are down there’. ‘We’ must ‘come down to his level’ in order to reach him:

‘For I am waiting for him to come to my level, which is so much higher’

(David Ortiz). In a different interview, the interviewer (Steiner) told

Interviewee 2 how Christian Zionism often contrasts successful, talented

Jews to backsliding and undemocratic Arabs. Initially the interviewee was

reluctant to use such depictions, but he did not deny their empirical valid-

ity: ‘Very few Muslims are Nobel Prize laureates; they are not a blessing to

the rest of the society as [are] Jews or Christians’, and he concluded:

You cannot argue with the facts … that this religion does not encourage the

blessings that the Judeo-Christianity encourages. If you take a black person

who believes in Judeo-Christian foundation, you will have a million better

results rather than you take the same black person or yellow or white what-

ever, who upholds Islam according to what is written. (Interviewee 2)

Related to this issue is the interviewees’ depiction of Arab and Muslim

self-image. In this case, attitudes diverged. Some interviewees thought

that Islam sees itself as superior (Figueras) and does not accept ‘indels’ as

equals (Interviewee 1). Bosharniko, on the other hand, claimed that Arabs

could now see their own inferiority clearly; as Israel’s economy grows, the

gap between Israel and its neighbouring countries increases, and they are

‘really jealous’. This jealousy he said started with Ishmael, and ‘if he was

not that jealous and had done what God told him to do, there would be

no problems at all’ (Bosharniko).

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Finally, the interviewees were asked whether Islam could be reformed.

Only one explicitly said no and depicted Islam as static:

I think in the heart of it, it cannot be reformed … As a whole, if you look at

the history of Islam, the amount of wars and battles it has against Western

civilizations and Christianity, it is in the hundreds. It is not something new.

(Interviewee 1)

Still, since most interviewees depicted the conict as permanent, there was

an implicit tendency to suggest that Arabs and Muslims do not change

because their conict behaviour remains the same.

In all the interviews, we found very few descriptions of Jews, Israel, and

the Messianic group in particular, although we tried to gather this kind of

information. This is not exceptional. Negative identity formation is uni-

versal; it is often easier to create an identity by contrasting oneself against

the other. Occasionally the interviewees gave Bible-based depictions of

Jews as world improvers (Bass), messengers people (Shishkoff), and a

blessed (Bosharniko), but very seldom explicitly depicted Jews in real life.

More commonly we saw a clear strategy to implicitly depict Israel as inno-

cent and ethical. A clear strategy was to marginalize any unethical Israeli

actions by dening them as atypical10 or to contextualize Israeli violence.

Orthodox Judaism was an exception to that rule, and was repeatedly

depicted negatively. One interviewee claimed that these Jews ‘actually

worship idols’ (Shany), but more commonly, Orthodox Jews were said to

persecute Messianic Jews. Some interviewees had experienced weekly

demonstrations outside their homes or congregations (Bass; Figueras).

Eliav Levin, associate pastor in Nazareth Illit, had his car burnt up. David

Ortiz and his family were subjected to a terror attack carried out by an

Orthodox Jew, when a bomb almost killed his son. David Ortiz also

described violence carried out by Orthodox Jews during street evangeliza-

tion. ‘They are trying to discredit us in every way that they can’. Still, none

of the interviewees described Orthodox behaviour as typically Jewish or

originating from Jewish culture, religion, or values. Thus, their behaviour

was marginalized within Judaism.

We found a few cases where (potentially) immoral behaviour was given

an explanatory context. In one case, Bass described how during his rst

visits to Israel, he found Israelis to be impolite and rough, and even to live

in sin. Still, he immediately contextualized their behaviour, depicting it as

an effect of the pressure they experienced living under constant death

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threats. Likewise, Shishkoff described how civilians ‘are beginning to carry

weapons’, but allegedly only to defend themselves. He called this ‘some

upsetting trends’, but considered that the conictual context made it ‘very

logical’ (Shishkoff). Lastly, the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) had undeni-

ably been killing large numbers of civilian Palestinians in the Gaza Strip,

but again because of the context, Israel was not to be blamed:

OS: There is no room for manoeuvre. They are using the mosques, they are

using schools they are using hospitals, they are using civilian homes. To

shoot from. There is no … whatever you do it is a lose-lose situation, for

them and for us. Because we hold ourselves from retaliating, and eventually

you have to put a stop to it, so it is a scenario every few years, there’s a big

operation in Gaza, a lot of people are getting killed on both sides, you know,

and they would do it again. How to ght? This is not a tank against tanks or

airplanes against airplanes or soldier against soldier.

In fact, the interviewees never depict Israel, Jews, or Israelis in general as

inherently violent. Shishkoff believed that the ‘desire of the vast majority

of Israeli citizens, from all kind of political persuasions, is for peace’. Israel

could compromise and did not want to occupy or colonize the West Bank

(Shishkoff). In fact, ‘Israel has continued to make shipments of aid [to the

Gaza Strip], and not to cut off electricity and water, things that are neces-

sary for life’ (Shishkoff). All in all, ‘there is no blood lust in the religion or

culture of Israel’ (Shishkoff). On the contrary, ‘Israel has tried to engage

in peace’ (Interviewee 1).

These values are also manifested in Israeli and Jewish behaviour.

Through childrearing, Israel was said to consciously pass on these peaceful

values to coming generations through the educational system: ‘We are

taught in school is love your enemy. Love the Arabs. … You know it is a

very humanistic and very peace-oriented way of thinking in the education’

(Shany). Likewise, the IDF are depicted as disciplined and ethical, with its

primary problem possibly its leniency towards Palestinians: ‘The re open-

ing regulations are so strict. Israel is so afraid what the media and the

world will say that it actually risks the life of the soldiers’ (Shany). Three

interviewees also claimed that Israeli governments have reached out for

peace with the Palestinians, but in vain (Finkelstein; Interviewee 1; Shany).

The Messianic movement, nally, was given few, but always positive,

characteristics. We were told that ‘among the Messianic believers, I don’t

nd anyone who hates the Arabs or the Palestinians. They all talk about

forgiving the Palestinians’ (David Ortiz), without indicating any thought

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of asking for forgiveness themselves. Some interviewees also emphasized

having Muslim or Bedouin friends (David Ortiz; Inter viewee 1; Interviewee

2), and said that Arabs are welcome to join or visit their congregations.

Interviewee 1, before he became a believer, was impressed by Messianic

Jews who had the capacity to love ‘even Arabs’.

Possibilities for, andObstacles to, Peace

All our interviewees saw major obstacles to peace, although this pessimism

was expressed to various degrees and for various reasons, often reecting

how the interviewees dened the essence of the conict and the character

the enemy.

Almost half the interviewees emphasized secular obstacles to peace

more than spiritual ones. Pritz and Thomas not only focused on secular

obstacles to peace, they also divided the responsibility for the gloomy

future between Israel and various Arab and Muslim actors. Thomas saw a

‘zero-sum mentality’ on both sides and a lack of the leadership that would

…have the courage to force the nation to sit down in ways that change this

course from zero-sum mentality into looking for ways of a win-win solution

in various areas of the conict. So right now, we do not have those peoples.

(Thomas)

Pritz echoed Thomas, saying ‘I think there needs to be a change of mind-

set’, and did not believe peace was possible unless ‘there come forward

leaders who are more interested in peace than they are in maintaining their

own image and their own power’. But Pritz saw no willingness to compro-

mise, and Thomas could not see ‘a real will on either side to resolve the

conict, [nor a] will to compromise to such an extent that would pave the

way for common ground’, possibly, as Pritz put it, because politicians feel

they have to respond to violence from the other side, or risk not being

re-elected.

Thomas and Pritz also pointed out religion as an obstacle to peace, but

as a social and immanent phenomenon, not a demonic force. Religion,

Thomas said, complicates compromise as several actors claim that their

demands are divine and have the power to create clear symbols (Thomas)

and to polarize (Pritz).

Most interviewees, however, either mixed worldly and spiritual reasons

for the conict or emphasized spiritual ones, and all, except Thomas and

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Pritz, saw the Arab/Muslim camp as the main obstacle to peace. One

alleged worldly reason for the conict was Palestinian and Muslim anti-

peace norms. These norms included a refusal to let the Jewish people live

in Israel, and, as Shishkoff put it, ‘you can’t create self-rule with people

who are determined to destroy you’. Allegedly, Palestinians and/or

Muslims have no willingness to compromise, nor any willingness to lay

down their arms (Shishkoff). The Muslim leadership and Islam were said

to play central roles in forming such uncompromising norms. The Muslim

leaders ‘want to keep the Palestinian problem always alive. Because it

serves their interests’ and ‘Islam does not want peace. It will never, it can

never happen’ since ‘Islam does not want Judaism existing at all. Especially

not in the land’ (Shany). It ‘is an insult [to Islam] that Jewish people are

living here’ (Shishkoff). Muslims may tolerate Jews as long as the Jews live

under Muslim rule as second-class citizens (David Ortiz; Interviewee 1),

but never accept peace if it implies a Jewish state (Bass). ‘Therefore… you

cannot solve it with “okay, I give you a territory” or “okay, I give you

autonomy”’ (Interviewee 2).

This uncompromising attitude makes the conict incomprehensible for

the Western world since it cannot understand the ‘fanatic driving force behind

the Islamic that refuses to accept us back in the land of our fathers’ (Interviewee

1). Ergo, a peace deal to a Muslim would contradict core teaching:

If you are Muslim, what hope does it give you to make peace with someone

that your religion says you have to kill? Eventually, maybe right now, we will

stay low until we get the power. This is what your religion tells you in the

end. So, in that sense, I am very pessimistic. (Figueras)

Seven interviewees claimed that the hegemony of such anti-peace norms

was perpetuated because Palestinians, mainly children, were continuously

brainwashed and indoctrinated to commit violence against Israelis

(Figueras; David Ortiz) and to hate Israel and Jews (Interviewee 1):

The problem is that the teaching, from cradle to the grave, if you look at the

teachings of the Quran, you see how the young people are being raised in

the schools, and what they are getting in the mosques, and what they get in

their homes, and what they get in the media. It is very, very difcult

(Finkelstein).

At least ve interviewees state that the Middle Eastern conicts are spiri-

tual or even demonic (Bass; Interviewee 1; Interviewee 2; Shany;

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Shishkoff). This interpretation stems from a fatalistic theology called salva-

tion history. Its basic idea is that Israel is God’s tool in the salvation of the

earth. Since Israel is so important to God, it is ‘always in the focus of

Satan’. Thus, the closer we get to the redemption of the world, the harder

Satan will work to thwart God’s plan. Ergo, the conicts in the Middle

East will have to escalate before the return of Christ. Unsurprisingly,

Shany did not think any peace agreement would work, since ‘Satan is

ghting as hard as he can to prevent all these prophecies from being ful-

lled’. Ergo, ‘there will be no peace between Jews and Arabs and there will

be no peace between … no true peace between people before the Messiah

comes’ (Shany). According to this theology, the Jews must reside in

Jerusalem and believe in Christ at His return, and this is what Satan is try-

ing to prevent (Shany).

Finally, some interviewees saw a possible way to peace through the

mass-conversion of Muslim Arabs and Jews to Christianity, since ‘with-

out Jesus there is no hope’ (Bosharniko), and Jews and Arabs would have

a ‘joint basis’ in Christ (Shany). ‘Unity can only come in Christ’ (Shany).

But salvation through Christ is not sufcient; it is also required that

Arabs adopt a Christian Zionist theology stating that Jews are the chosen

people and that God’s promises were given to the Jewish people

(Bosharniko).

The Future oftheMiddle Eastern Conicts

The interviewees were not only pessimistic about the chances for peace.

All of them also pictured a future worse than the present, with even more

violence. A few also expected the political isolation of Israel. Those inter-

viewees who emphasized a spiritual force in the Middle Eastern conicts

also foresaw the apocalypse or Armageddon, and some of them mentioned

the risk of a false peace under the Antichrist.

Bosharniko, Lasoff, Thomas, Pritz, and possibly Figueras were the

most reluctant to elaborate on the future in prophetic terms. They were

pessimists though, but for immanent political reasons. Thomas thought

‘the future, the forecast of it, is extremely bleak’ and Pritz was ‘not too

optimistic that it will be possible to reach some sort of political arrange-

ment where everyone is happy’. On the contrary, Pritz predicted a

growth of the ‘right-wing on both sides. … And it … is not ready to stop

yet’. Still, Pritz hoped for ‘a reaction, back towards the centre’ where

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people ‘are less radical in their world view, or their national view’.

Figueras, too, was pessimistic for political reasons and concerned that

Iran’s atomic capability, combined with the collapse of some Arab states

and their subsequent Islamization, might pose an imminent security

threat for Israel.

Five interviewees formulated spiritual ideas about escalation of violence

and the apocalypse, and thus saw no peace before the return of Christ

(Bass; Interviewee 1; Interviewee 2; Shany; Shishkoff). Possibly, ‘we are

right now in a paradise compared to what will happen’ (Interviewee 2).

There might be shorter peaceful periods, but sooner or later ‘it will always

explode. There is always this tension’ and it will always be ‘very volatile’

(Shany). Some interviewees expressed these notions spontaneously, others

emphasized other issues as more vital and described their ideas about the

future only after being asked.11

Five interviewees also foresaw the future political isolation of Israel

before the apocalypse. ‘God will bring all the nations against Jerusalem,

and Islam is stirring up all the nations against Israel’ (Bass; cf. Bosharniko);

‘a spirit against the Lord is at work’ (Bass). Bass, Interviewee 2, and Shany

believed that devastating bloodshed would come at Armageddon, where

‘many Jews are going to die (Bass)’. One Messianic leader, interviewee 2,

was more verbal and explicit. He believed the conicts would escalate

‘because that is what the Bible speaks of, the tribulation time and so on’

and continued:

Within seven years about two thirds of all the population of the world will

be dead. In today’s number, it’s something above ve billion people. Above

ve billion people! Can you understand it? It is ve thousand million …

God ghts against his enemies. Their blood will stream from Megiddo to

the desert. Three hundred kilometres. In the level of the mouth of the

horse, one point two or one point one metres. That is what it is. God will

crush all the enemies who come against him just before his return.

(Interviewee 2)

This immense bloodshed will also affect Israeli Jews:

At the end of the tribulation, one third will be left. That will be all Israel.

That is why it is said that all Israel will be saved. In Romans 26 it is talking

about the third that is left over now. This last third will now be the one

hundred percent. (Interviewee 2)

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Ethically Acceptable Responses

Interviewees were asked to describe ethically acceptable responses to the

conicts, and envisaged responses were all consistent with their analyses of

the conicts. We found a variety of arguments, all of which argued against

making peace. First, most interviewees (with Pritz and Thomas being the

clear exceptions) would not actively work for peace, since they understood

such work as ‘humanistic’ (Shany), unspiritual, or (more frequently) a

hopeless endeavour in this age (Bass; Bosharniko; Figueras; Finkelstein;

Shishkoff) leading to no lasting solutions (Bass; Interviewee 1; Interviewee

2). On the contrary, such efforts might contribute to

a false peace, because that is what the Bible says. … The Bible is teaching us

that there will be peace in the future. … If Christ is not absolutely as the

Bible describes him, there’s only false peace. [Later in the interview:] You

see, it’s a deal of a peace that will bring out the worst war ever. So, Antichrist

… will come, enforce a covenant with many according to Daniel 9:27. And

many will enter into this peace thinking that he is the Messiah. Wow. He will

bring peace, he will restore the temple, he will bring the Jews to the land.

(Interviewee 2)

Second, none of the interviewees12 suggested territorial concessions as

their rst choice. Almost all were ery opponents of territorial concessions

and a Palestinian state,13 and might exclaim like Bosharniko that ‘we

should not give up anything’. One argument against territorial conces-

sions was simply that God had said so: he wanted Israel to be managers of

the whole land (David Ortiz) and gave specic territorial promises to the

Jews (Shany) and its tribes (Figueras), and the promised territory is ‘big-

ger than the land is now’ (Bass). Some interviewees went further and

claimed that politicians who make territorial concessions will be punished

since ‘God will judge those who divide his land’ (Bass), or as Interviewee

2 put it: ‘if someone ghts against it [God’s sovereign decision], it is a

problem with God’. Syväntö came to the same conclusion by inference:

dividing Jerusalem must be against God’s will, since ‘Jesus will not return

to a Muslim Jerusalem. … It will be in Jewish hands, according to the

Lord’s promises’. Moreover, dividing the land is futile. ‘A two-state solu-

tion sounds good. … But since 1995 the Palestinians have proved that you

can’t trust them’ (Interviewee 1), a Palestinian state would be Islamist and

‘will not bring peace’ (Bass; cf. Shany), and territorial concessions will not

give peace: this is a leftist illusion (Figueras).

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A third argument against peace was that Palestinians are not entitled to

statehood or to the land, either because they are not a true ethnic group

with a clear identity (Interviewee 1) or because the land was historically

taken by force by Muslims (Interviewee 1). A fourth argument, tainted

with colonial attitudes, is that territorial concessions followed by the

establishment of a Palestinian state, will not be benecial for Palestinians.

The interviewees underlined three main reasons for this: (1) lower salaries

and other benets (David Ortiz), (2) Palestinian corruption (David Ortiz),

and (3) no freedom of religion for Christians (Bass; Shany). Allegedly,

many Arabs do not trust the Palestinian government (Lasoff) and Arab

Christians ‘know that they are much better off under Israeli sovereignty

than under any other Muslim sovereignty’ (Shany). And among Palestinian

Christians in Israel within its recognized borders

you see more and more Christian Arabs siding with Israel, saying ‘Okay, we

are going to send our children to the Israeli military, because we need to

take sides in what is happening here in Israel. What will happen when the

Muslims will attack us in Nazareth? We want to be part of that thing that is

called the State of Israel’. (Figueras)

Bosharniko concludes:

Most of the people who live there on the West Bank and in Gaza, they want

to live peacefully and quietly. They do not want the terrorists to be there. ….

They want the Israeli army to come back. They really like that. They dream

about it. I know that for sure. …this is what the simple people think.

(Bosharniko)

Neither human rights nor justice for Palestinians were central to main-

stream Messianic ethics, although some interviewees paid lip service to

them (Bass; Shishkoff). Most saw (only in theory, and with several reser-

vations) Palestinians Israeli citizenship as a way to give them full rights

(Bosharniko; Lasoff; Interviewee 1; Pritz; Thomas). When Shany was

asked how he prays for Palestinians on the West Bank, he gave a spiritual

answer: ‘My heart’s yearning is… that we will have unity in Christ’. He

denied praying that the IDF would treat Palestinians fairly: ‘I do not pray

about how Israel should treat the West Bank. It is not in my prayers. I

pray for the salvation of the people’. When asked if he prays for justice,

Shany gave an evasive answer: ‘For God’s justice. For God’s will to be

done’.

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All interviewees were devoted Zionists, believing in the right of the Jews

to ‘return’ to Israel. A few would even claim that ‘when the Jews are in the

Diaspora, that is not their natural place. Their natural place is Israel … their

real place is here. It’s not natural for the Jewish people to be abroad’

(Figueras). However, none of the Messianic leaders saw it as a congrega-

tional obligation to nance or otherwise facilitate Jewish Aliyah. ‘I would

not put it as a priority’ (Interviewee 2; cf. Bass; David Ortiz; Interviewee

1; Shany). ‘God is going to do it’ (David Ortiz), so it is not a mission for

the believer. Although no congregation collected money to help Jews

immigrate, almost all congregations helped needy, often immigrant, Jews.

It seemed that a one-state solution was the priority for all interviewees,

including Thomas and Pritz. Still, Pritz had an entirely different approach

from the rest based upon a radically different theology. To him the ‘return’

of the Jews is foretold in Scripture, but neither Jewish sovereignty nor

statehood is. Pritz preferred a one-state solution, but not a Jewish state,

admitting that this idea is controversial and calling himself ‘extremist’.

Thomas appeared unprepared for the question of whether he preferred a

one- or a two-state solution; only after a somewhat hesitant discussion did

he seem to favour a one-state solution, although he remained open to the

other option. Thomas believed that Israel should not be an ethnic Jewish

state, but a state for all its inhabitants. Moreover:

My personal preference would not to be to create an independent state of

Palestine … but to incorporate the Palestinian peoples in the State of Israel.

Make them Israeli citizens, providing for them all the facilities from educa-

tion and everything. (Thomas)

Bosharniko and Lasoff took an intermediate position between Pritz/

Thomas and those who saw Israel as a Jewish state. Bosharniko seemed to

imagine a future when all Palestinians, with a few reservations, were citi-

zens and would ‘go to the army’. The discussion, however, revealed that

Bosharniko was not aware of the demographic effects of such a measure;

that incorporating the entire Palestinian population would jeopardize

Israel’s Jewish character and dominance. Lasoff, although he was aware of

the demographic effects, still advocated giving the Palestinians Israeli citi-

zenship, although possibly restricting them to living in ‘cantons’. Neither

the Jewish character of Israel nor Jewish dominance was important to him.

What mattered was that Israel always remains ‘the state of refuge for the

Jews’ (Lasoff).

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167

Surprisingly, the remaining interviewees seemed to have only vague

ideas about what should happen to Palestinians in a greater Israel. Most

appeared unprepared or hesitant to discuss the matter, as if they had

never reected on the question. To some, the question was sensitive

(Bass).

Most interviewees seemed able to imagine all Palestinians becoming

Israeli citizens, but they cited so many reservations that this solution

became highly improbable. Interviewee 1, for example, said his ‘heart’s

desire’ was to see Palestinians treated equally, but only on condition that

Palestinians be willing to live in a Jewish state, under Israeli laws. And

since he believed such willingness to be absent, he seemed nally to lean

towards the status quo, that is, continued occupation. Shishkoff also

struggled with the question: ‘Within my life experience I have a passion

for the equality of human beings. That is unquestionably part of what

drives me’. Shishkoff was also aware of the demographic effects that

including all the Palestinians in Israel would imply: ‘[There would] theo-

retically be so many Arab citizens of Israel that the nature of the state

would change’. In the end, his solution was ‘self-rule’ without citizenship

(Shishkoff). Finkelstein and Figueras, who were interviewed together,

agreed with Shishkoff ’s idea. They also realized the contradiction in trying

to combine democracy with a greater Jewish Israel:

Do you want to get all the Palestinians on the left side of the Jordan to

become Israeli citizens? Okay, then you are not left with a Jewish democratic

state. Maybe with a democratic state, but I believe when the Arabs have

enough power, the Jews will not be around here. (Figueras)

Later in the interview, Finkelstein and Figueras explicitly rejected citi-

zenship for Palestinians on the West Bank, ‘because that would be the end

of the Jewish state’ (Finkelstein). When these two interviewees were asked

whether this solution, annexing the West Bank without accompanying

citizenship for its inhabitants, would not resemble apartheid, Figueras

suggested a limited Palestinian self-rule, but reiterated that ‘biblically, I

think the land belongs to Israel, to the Jewish people’ (Figueras). Still, he

adds:

I would try to give the Palestinian population as much freedom to govern

themselves, to decide for themselves, to feel as less friction with the Israeli

army as possible. As much honour as human beings as possible. (Figueras)

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Figueras also restricted this self-rule to what he believed to be possible, a

temporary condition, since God would eventually give the Jews the entire

land.

Most interviewees narrowly limited the role or calling of believers in

the conict. Because the conict cannot be solved and humanity cannot

be reformed on its own, most of the interviewees saw prayer and evange-

lization as God’s primary commandments. One interviewee explicitly set

evangelization against promoting peace, saying that ‘we have a gospel to

take to the people so they can get saved. To try to promote any peace

agreement will be unsatisfactory in any way’ (Bass). Other interviewees

claimed that we should ‘manifest the life of Yeshua’ (Shishkoff), pray, since

prayer is the key to ‘church-growth’ (Bosharniko), and to ‘share the gos-

pel wherever we can’ (Leah Ortiz; cf. Bass Interviewee 2; Shishkoff), to

give people peace with God and save them from God’s wrath (Bass), tell-

ing them that ‘Jesus is coming soon, that he saves’ (David Ortiz). Ergo,

‘we should all teach, preach, and evangelize’ (Shany).

This reluctance to believe in political peace does not imply passivity. In

addition to spreading the gospel, grass-roots work for reconciliation with

Arabs and humanitarian aid for immigrants were also seen as commend-

able. Some interviewees said that they actively tried to live in harmony with

Arab Christian believers (Interviewee 1; Shany) and to welcome Arabs to

their congregations (Figueras). They also tried to live in peace with

Palestinians and prayed for Palestinians during Israeli military operations

(Interviewee 1). Unlike political peace, grass-roots work was thought to be

meaningful. Or in Figueras words: ‘What is in your garden? Take care of the

garden around you. Do something good to the Bedouins here outside,

show my face to the ultraorthodox Jew that hates you because you are a

believer’ (Figueras). To a limited extent, these ideas materialized in active

peace work with a limited relationship at the leaders’ level between Messianic

Jews and evangelical Palestinians. One example mentioned a few times was

the Masters’ programme at Israel College on the Bible in Netanya, with

50% Israeli Arab and 50% Jewish students (Interviewee 2; Shany; Thomas).

In northern Galilee, where Arabs had Israeli citizenship and the relation-

ship between Arabs and Jews was better, prayer meetings were organized.

Only one interviewee, though, mentioned the work done by Musalaha, an

evangelical organization promoting reconciliation between Arabs and Jews.

As on several other issues, Pritz and Thomas deviated from the Messianic

Jewish mainstream regarding individual political measures. They also

seemed to deviate on ‘land theology’ (the meaning of the Holy Land in

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God’s universal plan of salvation). Pritz expressed his concern about the

spread and increasing prominence of nationalism in the Messianic move-

ment, and Thomas clearly distanced his congregation from land theology.

While mainstream Messianic Judaism seemed to see a contradiction between

evangelization and political work for peace, Pritz described another view:

I believe that the commands that we have are timeless. … The commands

that we have are to be peacemakers … ‘ministers of reconciliation’, and to

be rst and foremost servants of the good news. … I think that the believer

should be focusing more on their own values, the Bible’s values for us. And

if we will live that out, I think it will inuence what goes on around us. … I

am very concerned, concerned means worried, about the tendency that I see

among (Messianic) believers today, in the country, to be quite polarized,

and to be far more political than we should be.

One last subtheme concerned attitudes to violence within the Messianic

leadership. None of the interviewees were pacists, and all who had the

legal duty to serve in the IDF had done so. Only one interviewee,

Thomas,14 hesitated. All were Zionists and considered its military opera-

tions necessary. This means that almost all interviewees understood vio-

lence as necessary to the protection of Israel, but none of the interviewees

suggested using violence to further God’s purpose in salvation history or

to hasten the apocalypse and the end of history. Most importantly, since

the state of Israel is legitimate in the eyes of the Israeli Messianic leaders,

there were no indications that they supported unlawful violent actions or

any kind of violence outside IDF’s chain of command.

radIcalIsM WIthIn theIsraelI MessIanIc MoveMent

It is frequently stated that ‘radicalization has … no obvious essential or

inherent characteristics’ (c.f. Introduction in this volume), but can be only

understood in context. In this section, we develop three reference points

based upon the discussion in the introduction and assess the extent to

which interviewees articulated radical positions in relation to:15

1. The contemporary Israeli mainstream (socio-political mainstream);

2. Human rights standards and Enlightenment principles (visual focus

of observer’s observation);

3. International Christian Zionism (larger context of globalized

politics).

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In the rst part of this section, we establish an Israeli mainstream to assess

whether the Messianic movement can be labelled ‘radical’ in the Israeli con-

text. In the second part, we introduce absolute observation criteria (as dis-

cussed in our Introduction) called ‘the superior viewpoint of human rights’

against which we measure radicalization. The positions of the Israeli Messianic

movement might not be interpreted as radical against the background of

Israeli socio-political mainstream positions, but using human rights and

political principles derived from typical Enlightenment principles (such as

tolerance, freedom of religion, separation of powers, and human agency) as

a reference point might give us a different result. In the last part of this dis-

cussion, we assess Messianic radicalization not in relation to ‘global political

settings’ but to an international evangelical and Christian Zionist setting.

Finally, although we stressed in the introduction the importance of

studying both the cognitive/ideological and the behavioural aspects of

radicalization, we will not address the behavioural aspect of radicalization

in the Messianic movement because no such data exists for that discussion:

the interviewees did not ever suggest, support, or legitimize any illegal

violence.

Contemporary Israeli Mainstream asaPoint ofReference

In 2013–2015 Israeli politics took a turn towards the right. A major step

in this direction was Likud’s transformation into a radical right populist

party after its 2012 merger with Avigdor Lieberman’s extremist party,

Yisrael Beiteinu Beytenu,16 which led to the mainstreaming of Lieberman’s

extremism (see Filc, Chap. 5 in this volume). Another step was Likud’s

choice of coalition partners after the elections in 2015. At that point,

Likud was the biggest party in the Knesset, but lacked a majority. Benjamin

Netanyahu, leader of Likud and Prime Minister, chose to build a coalition

with ‘several smaller center- and far-right parties’ (Benn 2016: 22) instead

of searching for a centrist coalition partner, and thus began the main-

streaming of right-wing extremism in Israel (Benn 2016: 24ff). But does

the leadership of the Israeli Messianic movement articulate a radical ideol-

ogy in the context of the extreme right-wing ideology of mainstream

Israeli politics?

To examine this question, we identify the discourses of the Likud party

and the Zionist Union,17 the two largest political parties or alliances in the

2015 national elections, as representative of the contemporary Israeli

political mainstream. This analysis draws on studies by Kleczewski and

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Amossy (2016) and Navot and Rubin (2016), and compares their results

with the data in this study.

The discourse of most of our interviewees is very similar to that of

Likud and Netanyahu. From this perspective, Messianic discourse cannot

be dened as radical. There is one difference though: unlike our interview-

ees, Netanyahu is not religious and rarely refers to religious ideas. For

example, Netanyahu claims that the Middle Eastern conicts are an ancient

‘thousand-year-old feud’ based on Muslim hatred of Israel (Netanyahu in

Navot and Rubin 2016: 633), but in Netanyahu’s case this hatred is not

related to biblical promises, nor is it about obstructing God’s universal

salvation. Instead, ‘Radical Islam … hates Israel [and its secular and ratio-

nal values system] because it is an organic part of the West’ (Netanyahu

cited in Navot and Rubin 2016: 637, n. 45).

Both Netanyahu and our interviewees characterize Islam, Muslims, and

Arabs negatively, most commonly as violent. Our Messianic interviewees

gave a detailed and complex image of Islam, and sometimes Arabs/Muslims,

as inherently violent, although this was sometimes combined with a decla-

ration of love for Arabs and Muslims. In the election campaign in 2015,

Arab and Islamic hatred, violence, and threats to annihilate Israel were

regular parts of mainstream Israeli political rhetoric (Navot and Rubin

2016: 634; Kleczewski and Amossy 2016: 775). Arabs, including Israeli

Arab citizens, were used to instil fear. Regrettably, Navot and Rubin

(2016) and Kleczewski and Amossy (2016) discuss the image of Arabs and

Muslims only briey, making it difcult for us to draw any detailed conclu-

sions regarding the similarities between the mainstream Israeli and Israeli

Messianic movement’s depictions of Muslims and Arabs.

Not being religious, Netanyahu does not expect a divinely preordained

escalation of the Middle Eastern conicts. But like the Messianic leader-

ship, he is a pessimist; he believes that peace is impossible, and that Israel

therefore needs the West Bank as a buffer zone against Islam (Kleczewski

and Amossy 2016: 776f).

Netanyahu emphasizes the clash between Western and Muslim civiliza-

tions and value systems. As a politician, he must produce not only security

threats but, in order to be re-elected, functional solutions to make him

appear able to manage such threats. Unlike Messianic leaders, in his capac-

ity as a statesman, Netanyahu cannot use a fatalist discourse, but must

provide a vision for the future to retain popular support.

Lastly, Netanyahu’s solutions to the conict are quite similar to the

ones put forward by our interviewees. Unlike the Zionist Union, our

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interviewees and Netanyahu do not support a land for peace policy. The

Messianic and Netanyahu’s arguments are instrumental; land for peace

would put the state of Israel at risk (Kleczewski and Amossy 2016: 776f),

since a ‘Hamastan will appear at the heart of our country’ (Netanyahu

2015-02-18, cited in Kleczewski and Amossy 2016: 777). Messianic lead-

ers make the further claim that land for peace is bad also for Christian

Arabs.

Another similarity between Netanyahu and most of our Messianic

interviewees sets them both apart from the Zionist Union (Kleczewski

and Amossy 2016: 774ff): they avoid discussing the demographic con-

sequences of a one-state solution. Moreover, some of our interviewees

were even more radical than Netanyahu when they not only explicitly

demanded the West Bank, but were also hesitant to grant Israeli citi-

zenship to the Palestinians living there. In the context of mainstream

right-wing Israeli politics, the Messianic movement does not appear

radical.

Human Rights Standards asPoint ofReference

The political philosophies advanced by Locke, Montesquieu, Rousseau,

and other Enlightenment thinkers, along with the establishment of the

USA in 1776 and the French Republic in 1789, indirectly implied a sepa-

ration of political power and religion in the West. The subsequent gradual

secularization of society diminished religion as a basis for politics and

merged Western democracy with the separation of powers, representative

institutions of decision-making, and rule of law as codied in the 1993 EU

‘Copenhagen criteria’. These criteria also include respect for human rights

as enshrined in the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights

(UDHR). Taking these two sets of norms, the Copenhagen criteria and

UDHR, as an absolute vantage point enables us to assess the positions

taken by the Israeli Messianic leadership.

First, most interviewees had a pessimistic understanding of Arabs and

Muslims. In contrast to Enlightenment ideas on human capacity and abil-

ity to change guided by free choice and perfectibility through reason, the

Messianic stance implied that Islam and Muslims cannot reform, change,

and improve since they seem to appear unable to benet from ethically

inspired teaching and education. They are assumed to be stuck in irratio-

nal conict-generating behaviour. This pessimism leads to fatalism and

little hope for future prosperity and progress.

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Second, since human rights assume universal validity, it is problematic,

to say the least, to structurally exclude members of a political community

from access to resources and participation in decision-making on the

grounds of religion or ethnicity. The UDHR ascribes to individual rational

human beings and human communities huge autonomy in creating their

own destiny. The fact that none of the interviewees preferred a two-state

solution would not necessarily contradict human rights if everyone under

Israeli rule were given citizenship and equal individual and collective

rights. Most interviewees supported granting Israeli citizenship to

Palestinians, but only in theory. Some interviewees rejected the idea cate-

gorically and those who accepted Palestinian citizenship imposed so many

strict reservations that the actual effect was that almost all interviewees

supported policies that in practice would lead to an apartheid-like society

with restricted access to decision-making and resources.

All in all, by suggesting a subordinate position for Palestinians in a

greater Israel, most Messianic leaders supported a political solution that

runs contrary to equality and dignity of man. Moreover, since they denied

Palestinians an equal position in Israel and rejected an independent

Palestinian state, these Messianic leaders effectively denied Palestinian

popular sovereignty. In the interviews, they seemed unaware of this con-

sequence of their political agenda. This lack of consequential analysis is

characteristic of populist movements pushing for radical social change

(based on the popular vote) in which the implications of boldly stated

policies are rarely assessed in terms of for viability and sustainability.

Third, the notion that human progress (such as peace) or societal strife

(such as war) is divinely predetermined runs contrary to the idea of human

liberty and freedom of choice. Half the interviewees believed that the con-

icts would inevitably escalate and depicted peace as beyond human

agency and in the hands of a transcendent deity. Some interviewees

believed that peace would come only with the return of Christ; some even

argued against working for peace, fearing that it might lead to a false peace

under the Antichrist. Such notions directly contradict core Enlightenment

values, so in this context Messianic Judaism seems a clearly radical

movement.

Christian Zionism asPoint ofReference

Using Christian Zionism as an international point of reference, we can-

not claim that the Israeli Messianic movement has adopted a radical ide-

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ology. First, Israeli Messianic Judaism more or less reects Christian

Zionist pessimism about peace, probably because both movements are

inuenced by dispensationalism.18 Christian Zionism may have an even

more elaborate pessimistic discourse (Weber 2004: 45; Steiner and

Lundberg 2015: 125).

Second, Christian Zionism and Israeli Messianic Judaism make the

same analysis of origins and essence of the Middle Eastern conicts. Both

movements claim that the conicts are ancient, dating back to Abraham

(Steiner 2013: 12, 14), and that their essence lies in demonic forces and

Muslim territorial domination.

Third, Christian Zionism repeatedly generalizes against Arabs and

Muslims, sometimes even more negatively than our Israeli Messianic inter-

viewees. According to Christian Zionism, Muslims, and Arabs will play a

destructive part in the eschatological end-time drama (Steiner 2013: 61),

increasingly so after the end of the Cold War (Wojcik 1996: 316; Weber

2004: 207) and the September 11, 2001, attacks on the US (Cimino

2005: 166; Smith 2013: 191). Arabs are depicted as obstacles to world

peace (Spector 2009: 58) and God’s plan (Weber 2004: 219; Spector

2009: 50), who will, at the end of time, side with Satan and his plans

(Kamphausen 2013: 57). Arabs/Muslims/Islam are depicted as essen-

tially violent, brutal, fundamentalist (Cohn-Sherbok 2006: 176–177;

Spector 2009: 80, 85; Steiner and Lundberg 2015: 126), unreliable,

undemocratic (Steiner 2013: 53ff, 57ff; Steiner and Lundberg 2015:

126), underdeveloped (Carenen 2012: 80), intellectually inferior (Steiner

and Lundberg 2015: 126), an evil (Smith 2013: 8) terrorists (Smith 2013:

18), who are Satan’s army (Spector 2009: 91). Arabs and Muslims are also

portrayed as static: they cannot be transformed (Spector 2009: 51). Unlike

Israeli Messianic Judaism, Christian Zionism repeatedly praises the alleged

Jewish character. Jews are God’s chosen people, they are talented, capable,

democratic, progressive, and ethical (Steiner 2013: 54ff, 60ff; Steiner and

Lundberg 2015: 127).

Finally, like the Messianic Jews in Israel, Christian Zionism hardly ever

supports work for political peace (Spector 2009: 141). Indeed, such peace

initiatives might be against God (Frykholm 2004: 172; Steiner 2013: 64f)

and pave the way for the Antichrist (Kamphausen 2013: 59; Steiner 2013:

64f). Such a peace is false (Steiner and Lundberg 2015: 130), and peace

initiatives of this kind are regularly described as ‘appeasement’ (Spector

2009: 71) or even Satanic (Lienesch 1993: 238).

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conclusIons

How the leadership of the Messianic movement understands the Middle

Eastern conicts is interesting and perhaps even remarkable. Those inter-

viewees who explained peace as something otherworldly or awless found

it difcult to accept an imperfect political compromise. All interviewees

emphasized the complexity of the Middle East conicts, and most tended

also to emphasize their permanence, sometimes even claiming that they

are ancient, began with Abraham, Isaac, and Ishmael. And lastly, half of

the interviewees described the conicts in fatalistic and religious terms, for

instance as a covenant issue or a clash with an expanding, violent, and

unredeemable Islam.

Messianic images of out-groups are ambivalent. Christian ethics require

that Messianic believers should love Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims, but

most let their negative attitude to Islam colour their view of Muslims.

Most interviewees depicted their antagonists as inferior, intellectually

and/or morally. When Arab or Muslim immoral behaviour was discussed,

it was regularly seen as a reection of intrinsic Islamic qualities, and some-

times of demonic inuence. Except for Orthodox Jews, Jews in general

were depicted, although relatively infrequently, in a positive vein. Their

immoral behaviour, unlike that of Arabs, was systematically contextualized

and explained away. On the cognitive level, these positions intensify essen-

tialist dichotomies and strongly polarized narratives, which in turn indi-

rectly propel radicalization.

Most interviewees described Palestinian and Muslim behaviours and

attitudes, often characterized as having a demonic dimension, as the main

obstacles to peace. This pessimism about chances for peace and negative

understanding of Arabs and Muslims colour Messianic expectations about

peace; the Messianic leaders expected an escalation of the Middle Eastern

conicts, usually until the apocalypse and the return of Christ.

All interviewees chose a one-state solution as their primary option. The

majority claimed to wish to grant Palestinians citizenship, but usually only

in abstract terms. When concrete issues were discussed, most Messianic

leaders circumvented Palestinian citizenship with many reservations, most

importantly the preservation of Israel’s Jewishness.

Working for peace was rarely recommended; it was understood either as

hopeless task or as possibly leading to a false peace. Still, grass-root rela-

tionships with Arabs were encouraged, and so was social work and evan-

gelization. There were no indications that the interviewees supported

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unlawful violent actions, but they still displayed acceptance of violence as

part of an ever-escalating conict. Even though violence was not endorsed

for attaining political or religious goals, the Messianic movement afrms

and accepts violence indirectly under the auspices of the IDF or as an ulti-

mate consequence of the divine plan for Israel.

In an Israeli context, the Messianic movement cannot be dened as

radical. On the contrary, the movement is very close to the Israeli main-

stream right. Although Netanyahu, unlike most of our interviewees, uses

a secular discourse, his understanding of the conict is very like that of our

interviewees. The majority position of the Israeli Messianic leaders on the

inevitable escalation of Middle Eastern conict and the expected apoca-

lypse, motivated by ‘Christian’ fatalism, is also neither very radical nor

particularly sensational from a Christian Zionist perspective. The only

context in which Messianic Judaism appears clearly radical is when its

ideology is seen from the absolute vantage point of Enlightenment phi-

losophy, liberal democracy, and human rights. The ideas that Islam and its

followers can neither develop nor improve, and that peace is not immi-

nently attainable contradict enlightened philosophical arguments of free

will and perfectibility through reason. Some interviewees’ suggestion of

annexing the West Bank without granting citizenship to the Palestinians

living there, along with others’ suggested restrictions on possible citizen-

ship for Palestinians, is indeed a radical position from a natural rights

perspective.

Lastly, the leaders of the Israeli Messianic movement that we inter-

viewed, with very few exceptions, seemed to be deeply immersed in the

mainstream Israeli right. The Messianic movement’s following and acqui-

escing to a more general pattern of radicalization, exemplied by the

development of the Likud, presents us with an interesting situation: we

seem to have an example of a radicalized movement whose radicalization

is made less visible because it differs very little from its mainstream envi-

ronment, an important reference point.

This fact has not only made it harder for us, as outsiders, to approxi-

mate the position of the Israeli Messianic movement in terms of radical-

ism, but also made it more difcult for the movement itself to see its own

radicalization. In other words, sharing norms and values within the sur-

rounding society creates a structure of plausibility in which one’s own

worldview appears to be absolute and nothing short of natural (c.f. Berger

and Luckmann 1967). Being surrounded by like-minded voices, it is dif-

cult to see the peculiarities and shortcomings in one’s own worldview.

K. STEINER AND A.P. LUNDBERG

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Instead, facing a growing rift between themselves and the Palestinians, the

Messianic movement risks not registering its own radicalization; rather,

this rift is seen more and more as a result of a one-sided, Palestinian radi-

calization, making work for peace even more problematic.

notes

1. According to Akiva Cohen ‘a growing polarization between more evan-

gelical Messianic Jewish leaders and more Rabbinic/heritage positive

Messianic Jewish leaders has been evident in recent leadership conicts’

(Cohen 2013: 111).

2. This interviewee preferred to be anonymous.

3. This interviewee preferred to be anonymous.

4. Aliyah is the immigration of Jews living abroad to Israel.

5. In this study, the authors quoted the interviewees word by word.

Grammatical mistakes might occur and are original.

6. There are a few deviant voices. When Interviewee 2 was asked about the

commencement of the conict, he presented a very different idea: ‘The

conict started when the Jewish people rejected Christ. …The issue is our

enmity between us and God. Between Israel and its Messiah. That is the

bottom-line, all the rest is a side effect’, and therefore he does not regard

the Arabs as the main cause or origin of the conict.

7. Agreeing with God regarding His Divine order.

8. Two interviewees gave stereotypical but benign images of Arabs.

Bosharniko depicted Arabs as blessed by God and Ortiz depicted them as

hardworking.

9. Dhimmi is a protected non-Muslim living in a non-Muslim state.

10. Howard Bass is the only one who does not marginalize the negative images

of Israel and Judaism: ‘Israel is not a Christian country or non-Christian

country; it is an anti-Christian country. Islam and Judaism are both

anti-Jesus’.

11. Bosharniko was one of the Messianic leaders claiming to live in the

present.

12. Regrettably, territorial concessions were never discussed during the inter-

view with Ray Pritz.

13. Still, it must be said that none of the interviewees suggested ethnic cleans-

ing of the Palestinians.

14. Thomas told us a story about how he consulted a Palestinian leader within

the evangelical movement.

15. A detailed account of the principles behind these points of references is

given in the introduction to this volume.

16. The coalition was dissolved again in 2014.

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17. The Zionist Union is an Israeli centre-left political alliance, established in

December 2014 by the Israeli Labour Party, Hatnuah, and the Green

Movement.

18. Dispensationalism is a theological interpretative framework in which Israel

plays a decisive and redemptive role before the return of Christ and world

history is divided into seven distinct periods, called dispensations (Steiner

and Lundberg 2015: 119).

references

BIBlIography

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Nation. Foreign Affairs, July/August, 16–27.

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Önnerfors, Palgrave Macmillan US, 2017. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/malmo/detail.action?docID=5205507.

Created from malmo on 2018-09-20 07:43:36.

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2015-10-22.

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LOVING VIOLENT ARABS: ASTUDY OFRADICALISM WITHIN THEISRAELI…

Expressions of Radicalization : Global Politics, Processes and Practices, edited by Kristian Steiner, and Andreas

Önnerfors, Palgrave Macmillan US, 2017. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/malmo/detail.action?docID=5205507.

Created from malmo on 2018-09-20 07:43:36.

180

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Recorded 2015-10-20.

Kristian Steiner is Associate Professor in Peace and Conict Studies at Malmö

University, Sweden. He holds a PhD in Political Science from Lund University.

His previous research revolved around nation building and elites’ behaviour in

ethnic conicts. In recent years, he has published on the social construction of the

enemy, media constructions of Muslims, and attitude to peace within Christian

Zionism. Steiner is currently working on interview studies on the hope for peace

among different religious groups in the Middle East.

Anders P Lundberg has a PhD in Sociology from Lund University and is cur-

rently a Senior Lecturer in Social Psychology at Linnaeus University, Sweden. His

research concerns aspects of movement identity, particularly in regard to religious

movements. He has published articles on religion as a resource among young

immigrants to Sweden, on the construction of climate change as a religious issue

in the Lutheran church of Sweden, and on the meaning of ‘Israel’ to Christian

Zionists in Sweden. He is currently working on identity construction among

Messianic Jews and Arab Evangelicals in Israel.

K. STEINER AND A.P. LUNDBERG

Expressions of Radicalization : Global Politics, Processes and Practices, edited by Kristian Steiner, and Andreas

Önnerfors, Palgrave Macmillan US, 2017. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/malmo/detail.action?docID=5205507.

Created from malmo on 2018-09-20 07:43:36.

Enemy Images: Emergence, Consequences and Counteraction

Book

Aug 2024

Pragmatic and value-based argumentation in the 2015 Israeli elections

Article

Full-text available

Oct 2016

A discursive and argumentative analysis of the Israeli 2015 elections reveals how electoral strategies displayed unexpected similarities between rival parties such as the Likud and the Zionist Union, on the one hand, and the Jewish Home and Meretz, on the other hand, in their respective approaches to foreign policy and to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. While the mainstream Right and Left mainly emphasized security motives, used consequence-based arguments, and appealed to fear, the practical reasoning of the two smaller parties (Jewish Home and Meretz) competing with the Likud and the Zionist Union applied a value-based rather than a merely instrumental argumentation. This reconfiguration of the political map enlightens the peculiar dynamics of the 2015 elections.

Peace and end time expectations in christian zionism a qualitative analysis of swedish christian zionist movements

Article

Full-text available

Jan 2015

This study examines how the hope for peace in the Middle East is articulated in Swedish Christian Zionist movements, both publicly and in private interviews with leaders and speakers. The article shows that Swedish Christian Zionist movements' public lectures and sermons rarely address political issues as peace. However, they do reiterate favourable images of Jews and occasionally negative images of Muslims and Arabs. It is apparent in interviews that these leaders and speakers are pessimistic regarding peace in the Middle East. For them, it is not attainable, and, in some cases, it is described as transcendent. In some interviews, Islam, Muslims, and Arabs-in some cases specific Muslim actors-are depicted as inferior, violent, and obstacles to peace. The favourable images of Jews reoccur, and they are instrumentalized, albeit infrequently. Lastly, Christians are repeatedly discouraged to support peace, since it might be false, or to demand Israeli territorial concessions.

More Desired than Our Owne Salvation: The Roots of Christian Zionism

Book

Jul 2013

Robert Smith

Innovations in Ethnographic Methods

Article

Sep 2019

This article reviews innovations in ethnographic methods that have developed over the past 25 years, specifically the emergence of multisited and short-term fieldwork, digital ethnography, various kinds of participatory and collaborative ethnography, and the use of interviews. Ethnographic methods, once primarily employed by anthropologists, have now been embraced by many other social science practitioners. The article discusses the strengths and weaknesses of how these methods are being implemented and applied; the ethical challenges their use raises; and the kinds of novel modes of interpretation, analysis, and representations of research findings they are producing.

The end of the old Israel: How netanyahu has transformed the nation

Article

Jul 2016
FOREIGN AFF

A. Benn

Likud’s success in the 2015 elections: Netanyahu’s Hobbesian moment

Article

Oct 2016

The current article develops an explanation for Likud’s success, which goes beyond the existing structural and circumstantial accounts. It argues that Likud’s success should be sought for in the utilization of Hobbesian logic by its leader, Benjamin Netanyahu. By revealing the commonalities between Hobbes’s political thinking and Rhetoric, and Netanyahu’s political conduct, this paper sheds new light on Netanyahu’s leadership and sources of legitimation and authority in Israel, which are understudied. We demonstrate that Netanyahu’s Hobbesian dimension is best reflected in his understanding of the nature of civil and political rights in the context of an ongoing struggle for survival and self-determination.

What Social and Political Messages Appear in the Left Behind Books?

Chapter

Jan 2004

Amy Johnson Frykholm

Stories about the end of time have always been a part of Christianity. There have been stories about disaster and redemption, about Babylon and the New Jerusalem. There have been stories of violence and destruction as well as everlasting peace and overwhelming happiness. In every place and at every time these stories have been told, they not only have envisioned the end of time, but they also have instructed readers and listeners about their own time and place. This is just as true of the Left Behind series as it has been for the multiplicity of other stories Christians have told about the end of time over two millennia.

The fervent embrace: Liberal Protestants, evangelicals, and Israel

Article

Jan 2012

C. Carenen

When Israel declared its independence in 1948, Harry Truman issued a memo recognizing the Israeli government within eleven minutes. Today, the U.S. and Israel continue on as partners in an at times controversial alliance-an alliance, many argue, that is powerfully influenced by the Christian Right. In The Fervent Embrace, Caitlin Carenen chronicles the American Christian relationship with Israel, tracing first mainline Protestant and then evangelical support for Zionism. In the aftermath of the Holocaust, American liberal Protestants argued that America had a moral humanitarian duty to support Israel. Christian anti-Semitism had helped bring about the Holocaust, they declared, and so Christians must help make amends. Moreover, a stable and democratic Israel would no doubt make the Middle East a safer place for future American interests. Carenen argues that it was this mainline Protestant position that laid the foundation for the current evangelical Protestant support for Israel, which is based primarily on theological grounds. Drawing on previously unexplored archival material from the Central Zionist Archives in Israel, this volume tells the full story of the American Christian-Israel relationship, bringing the various "players"-American liberal Protestants, American Evangelicals, American Jews, and Israelis-together into one historical narrative.

Evangelicals and Israel: The Story of American Christian Zionism

Article

Apr 2009

Stephen Spector

Most observers attribute evangelical Christians' bedrock support for Israel to the apocalyptic belief that the Jews must return to Israel as a precondition for Christ's Second Coming. But the actual reasons, this book argues, are far more complicated. In Evangelicals and Israel, the book delves deeply into the Christian Zionist movement, mining information from original interviews, websites, evangelical publications, survey research, news reports, worship services, and interfaith conferences to provide a surprising look at the sources of evangelicals' alliance with Israel. He finds a complex set of motivations. In addition to end-times theology, these include gratitude to the Jews for providing the theological foundation for Christianity; remorse for the Church's past anti-Semitism; the belief that God will bless those who bless Israel and curse him who curses Israel; fear that He will judge the nations at the end of time based on how they treated the Jewish people; appreciation of Israel as a friendly democracy; and reliance on the Jewish state as the West's only firewall against Islamist terrorism. This book explores many Christian Zionists' hostility toward Islam, but also their unexpected pragmatism and flexibility concerning Israel's occupation of the West Bank. The book looks as well at George W. Bush's beliefs about the Bible and the evangelical influence on his Middle East policies.

Ethnographic Methods

Article

Aug 2004

Kevin R O'Reilly

Ethnography isn't a prescribed set of methods - it's a methodology that acknowledges the complexity of human experience and the need to research it by close and sustained observation of human behaviour. In this comprehensive, yet concise introduction, Karen O'Reilly introduces the reader to the technical, practical and philosophical issues that arise when employing traditional and innovative research methods in relation to human agents. She invites the reader to engage in reflexive and creative research that draws critically and creatively from the full range of qualitative methods. Using case studies of students' work to illustrate the dilemmas and resolutions that an ethnographic researcher may encounter, this textbook guides the reader from the initial design and planning stages through to the analysis and writing-up. It explores the historical and philosophical foundations of ethnographic research and goes on to cover a range of relevant topics such as participant observation, qualitative interviews, (focus) group interviews and visual data collection and analysis. Designed primarily for undergraduates, this book incorporates complex methodological debates which will also engage more experienced researchers, perhaps coming to ethnography for the first time.

Loving Violent Arabs: A Study of Radicalism Within the Israeli Messianic Movement

Abstract

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