An excerpt from Ismat Mangla’s AnalystNews interview with Zachary Foster, a historian and Rutgers University senior fellow. The full interview is well worth reading multiple times. You can follow Foster on Twitter here. In this excerpt, Mangla asks Foster about what made him move away from the Zionist beliefs.
I grew up in a very “exotic” suburb of Detroit, went to Jewish schools, Jewish summer camps, Jewish youth groups — all of which were Zionist. I went to Israel as a study abroad student in undergrad. That was the beginning of my transition from Zionist to non-Zionist to anti-Zionist, getting exposed to what day-to-day life was like for Palestinians in Jerusalem.
You don’t go from a Zionist household to speaking out publicly, frequently advocating for Palestinian human rights, overnight. It’s a process.
When I discovered that Palestinian Americans — who identify strongly with Palestine, whose parents and grandparents are from Palestine — are not allowed to go move to or visit Palestine, while I — an American Jew who may speak zero Arabic or Hebrew, who may have zero family in the country, who may literally not be able to identify it on a map or even ever heard of it — have a right to claim citizenship because I’m Jewish? Does that make any sense to you? That’s insane. That was a real lightbulb moment for me, meeting Palestinians and understanding the trauma of ’48 — and understanding that while I have rights there, they don’t.
The more you study Palestinian history and Israeli history, the more pro-Palestinian you become. You can’t study the history of Zionism and not be horrified. It’s as simple as that.
Note: I shared the comments below on the gospel reading for the First Sunday in Advent (Dec 3, 2023) as part of Creation Justice Ministries’ “Green Lectionary” podcast. You can hear my whole conversation with Derrick Weston & Debra Rienstra here.(above image: “All the stars in the sky will be dissolved and the heavens rolled up like a scroll,” Elena Markova, U.S., 2022; image found here)
Apocalyptic texts tend to make churchgoers nervous. In every lectionary cycle, however, the penultimate Sunday of Ordinary Time and first Sunday of Advent turn to what I call the “apocalyptic season” that bridges the end and beginning of the liturgical year. The gospel reading for First Advent always comes from the “synoptic apocalypse” (Mt 24, Mk 13, or Lk 21), before turning to the ministry of John the Baptist in Second Advent. This Year B we have the second half of Mark’s “Little Apocalypse” (13:24-37); the first part occurs at the end of Ordinary time. The lectionary’s brief apocalyptic focus functions to help us look at the “end of the world” as we prepare for it to be “born anew” in Advent and Christmastide.
Here are some brief thoughts (especially on the underlined phrases) on Sunday’s reading, with our ecological crisis in mind.
Mk 13:24-25: “But in those days, after that suffering, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.
For us, apocalyptic images of the cosmos falling apart obviously correlate with the climate catastrophe that is upon us. Interestingly, the root of our term “disaster” comes from aster, or stars in Greek; we are indeed amidst a disaster. But too often we still apprehend ecological disaster as something happening to us, rather than engineered by us. In fact, the biblical idea of nature in revolt does not actually originate with apocalyptic literature, but with the Exodus liberation story. In that old wise tale, enslaved Hebrews are struggling for liberation against Pharaoh’s oppressive regime, an obvious mismatch. But the Creator has animated this movement, so Creation aligns against the empire in a series of escalating plagues that ultimately force the tyrant to relent (if you haven’t had a chance to look at my longer piece “Nature Against Empire: Exodus Plagues, Climate Crisis and Hard Heartedness,” go here). This profound framing lies in the background of Jesus’ vision here, and it’s not too difficult to see its relevance for our moment of imperial oppression of both people and Creation—in which we are each and all deeply implicated.
Honestly, I never thought much about Israel before college. Then, during my sophomore year, a prominent New Testament studies scholar had been invited to speak on campus; after it came to light that they were openly critical of the state of Israel, they were summarily disinvited. A few other students and I were still able to meet with the scholar, and we were shocked by the language they were using to describe the conditions in Israel for the Palestinians: “Second-class citizens,” “genocide,” and “apartheid” were the terms that struck me most.
“It can’t be as bad as what Black people have faced in the United States or what they faced in South Africa,” I remember saying to the scholar. “Go and see,” they admonished. And so, one year later, that’s exactly what I did.
In 2012, three other students and I had been invited to attend a conference at Bethlehem Bible College called Christ at the Checkpoint. The mission of this conference, which will be convening for the seventh time in May 2024, was to invite evangelicals to think about Israel and Palestine in ways that prioritized “peace, justice, and reconciliation,” while also explicitly giving voice to Palestinian Christians. And while I’m grateful that I was introduced to authors, theologians, and activists like Munther Isaac, Jonathan Kuttab, and Salim Munayer, nothing was quite as transformational as experiencing a checkpoint for myself.
I’d been stopped at police checkpoints in the United States multiple times — either alone or with friends or my dad. During those stops, humiliation, pain, or death always seemed to be a likely outcome. So when I was preparing to pass through one of the checkpoints at Israel’s apartheid wall, I imagined the Israel Defense Forces soldiers would hassle me the same as the Chicago police. But there was no hassling. I handed them my blue U.S. passport and waltzed through the checkpoint. “I feel like the scholar exaggerated a bit,” I thought to myself. But as soon as that thought crossed my mind, I turned around to see a long line of Palestinians, each of them being hassled by an IDF soldier. When I looked into the eyes of those Palestinians, I saw that they, too, felt humiliation, pain, or death was a likely outcome.
To read the interview go to Sojourners Magazine here.
Jewish Voice for Peace and Showing Up for Racial Justice are hosting a free webinar called Understanding Christian Zionism on Wednesday, November 29 at 8:00pmEST. You can register for it here.
What is Christian Zionism, how is it showing up in this moment, and why is understanding it important in our efforts to demand a ceasefire and an end to the violence in Gaza? Join SURJ and Jewish Voice for Peace for a mass teach-in about Christian Zionism. We’ll hear from an expert panel– Palestinian Christian activist Jonathan Brenneman, Jewish researcher and writer Aiden Orly, and scholar of pentecostalism and the Christian far right Elle Hardy– who will share their analysis of how we got here and how our strategies to demand a ceasefire and fight for Palestinian liberation can be aided by a deeper understanding of the forces we’re up against. Live ASL interpretation will be available on the call. If the Zoom reaches capacity, we will be livestreaming on SURJ and JVP’s Facebook pages. Register to receive the recording if you’re unable to make the call.
How Do We Celebrate Christmas While Bombs Drop in Gaza?
Jesus was born in a context of occupation, political violence, and militant resistance. As much as we try to wrap the “Christmas story” in innocent, Hallmark-card imagery, the biblical texts describing the coming of Jesus are making powerful assertions about the politics of the Bible that speak very much to our contemporary global crises – including the current violence in Israel and Palestine.
Once again this year, the Alternative Seminary is offering their annual Advent gathering “Peace on Earth and the Politics of Christmas.” In this virtual program, we will explore the “nativity narratives” in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke to see how they express core biblical themes of justice and liberation. We will “un-domesticate” these stories and reflect on how they are truly challenging us to a revolutionary discipleship – an especially urgent need as we witness more violence in Jesus’ homeland. This program will be facilitated by Will O’Brien, coordinator of The Alternative Seminary and contributor to Radical Discipleship.
An excerpt from Mosab Abu Toha’s November 6 essay in The New Yorker. Toha is a renowned Palestinian author who was kidnapped by Israeli forces, just a few days ago, at a military checkpoint along with about 200 other Palestinian men.
My brother-in-law Ahmad suggests that we set out on our bikes to find my father. After only three hundred metres, we see him, his head tilted downward while he pedals.
My father tells me later that debris covered every inch of the street that led to our house. He did not feed his fifteen ducks, thirty hens, five rabbits, and six pigeons. “Maybe some are alive and stuck under the rubble,” he says. But, after he saw the bombed house and heard the frightening whirring of drones, he headed back to the camp.
When we get “home,” we all sit on the floor. It’s not until later that I start to realize: I lost not only my house and its rooms but also my new clothes and shoes and watches. My books, too.
From Ahmed Alnaouq (above), a Palestinian journalist based in London and the co-founder of We Are Not Numbers. Originally posted to Twitter on November 17, 2023.
I will never ever forget you. I will never forgive your killers. And I will keep your memory alive.
By Zeina Azzam, a Palestinian American poet, writer, editor, and community activist. Thank you to Linda Sarsour for posting on social media.
Write my name on my leg, Mama Use the black permanent marker with the ink that doesn’t bleed if it gets wet, the one that doesn’t melt if it’s exposed to heat
Write my name on my leg, Mama Make the lines thick and clear Add your special flourishes so I can take comfort in seeing my mama’s handwriting when I go to sleep
a little Palestinian boy, walking to school in Gaza encountered an Israeli soldier driving a U.S. – made tank Looking up into the soldier’s eyes, the little boy said, “Mr. American President, when you look at me, would you say he could have been my son, like President Obama said of Trayvon Martin
meanwhile, a little black girl, in a studio apartment in north St. Louis waiting for her father to pour milk into her bowl of captain crunch cereal, turned her gaze toward the tv, where images of fire and smoke rained down on gaza “daddy,” she said, “is god blue?”
Radical Discipleship 