Local Activist Has Uncomfortable Realization After Organizing For Palestine I formed these perspectives while doing interfaith social justice organizing against the Iraq war in 2003-2004, followed by a Palestine solidarity divestment campaign in 2004-2005. I found that when I took a principled stance against Israeli colonization of Palestine, I was ostracized by the very same progressive interfaith activist circles I had helped build. This is because those circles accepted a fundamental tenant of Zionism: they equated Jewish destiny and heritage with a defense of the state and ruling class of Israel, suggesting that a critique of Israeli settler colonialism amounts to an attack on the Jewish religion itself….Under the pretext of atoning for historic anti-Semitism, liberal Christian Zionists used these interfaith dialogues to promote their own imperial theologies, rooted in ahistorical and naive readings of Biblical texts. These Christians overlook the fact that the wars of the early Hebrew Bible were wars of revolutionary liberation against Pharaohs empire and its Canaanite client kings; they were NOT colonial wars of conquest over the Canaanite peoples themselves. Ancient Israel emerged among the Canaanite peoples who rebelled against their kings; it was a multicultural confederation of proletarian and peasant tribes, not a nation state. aromaoftheworld.blogspot/2014/09/decolonizing-interfaith-dialogue.html ~gw
Posted on: Tue, 09 Sep 2014 22:00:01 +0000