On the Wrong Side of the Clash of Civilizations
An Excellent Article
By JONATHAN COOK
CounterPunch
Nazareth.
".....For tourists and pilgrims, getting in or out of Bethlehem has been made reasonably straightforward, presumably to conceal from international visitors the realities of Palestinian life. I was even offered a festive chocolate Santa Claus by the Israeli soldiers who control access to the city where Jesus was supposedly born.
Seemingly oblivious to the distressing historical parallels, however, Israel forces foreigners to pass through a "border crossing" -- a gap in the menacing grey concrete wall -- that recalls the stark black and white images of the entrance to Auschwitz.
The gates of Auschwitz offered a duplicitious motto, "Arbeit macht frei" (Work makes you free), and so does Israel's gateway to Bethlehem. "Peace be with you" is written in English, Hebrew and Arabic on a colourful large notice covering part of the grey concrete. The people of Bethlehem have scrawled their own, more realistic assessments of the wall across much of its length.
Foreign visitors can leave, while Bethlehem's Palestinians are now sealed into their ghetto. As long as these Palestinian cities are not turned into death camps, the West appears ready to turn a blind eye. Mere concentration camps, it seems, are acceptable.....
Certainly, the continuing fall in the number of Christians in the Holy Land concerns Israel's leadership almost as keenly as the patriarchs and bishops who visit Bethlehem at Christmas -- but for quite the opposite reason. Israel is happy to see Christians leave, at least of the indigenous Palestinian variety.
(More welcome are the crazed fundamentalist Christian Zionists from the United States who have been arriving to help engineer the departure of Palestinians, Muslims and Christians alike, in the belief that, once the Jews have dominion over the whole of the Holy Land, Armageddon and the "End Times" will draw closer.)....
Such sensationalist misrepresentations of Palestinian life are now a staple of the local and American media. Support for Hamas, for example, is presented as proof of jihadism run amok in Palestinian society rather than as evidence of despair at Fatah's corruption and collaboration with Israel and ordinary Palestinians' determination to find leaders prepared to counter Israel's terminal cynicism with proper resistance.
The clash of civilisations thesis is usually ascribed to a clutch of American intellectuals, most notably Samuel Huntingdon, the title of whose book gave the idea popular currency, and the Orientalist academic Bernard Lewis. But alongside them have been the guiding lights of the neocon movement, a group of thinkers deeply embedded in the centres of American power who were recently described by Ynet as mainly comprising "Jews who share a love for Israel".
In fact, the idea of a clash of civilisations grew out of a worldview that was shaped by Israel's own interpretation of its experiences in the Middle East. An alliance between the neocons and Israeli leaders was cemented in the mid-1990s with the publication of a document called "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm". It offered a US foreign policy tailor-made to suit Israel's interests, including plans for an invasion of Iraq, authored by leading necons and approved by the Israeli prime minister of the day, Binyamin Netanyahu....
Paradoxically, this vision of our future, set out by American and Israeli Jews, is steeped in fundamentalist Christian religious symbolism, from the promotion of a civilised West's crusade against the Muslim hordes to the implication that the final confrontation between these civilisations (a nuclear attack on Iran?) may be the End Times itself -- and thereby lead to the return of the Messiah.
If this clash is to be realised, it must be convincing at its most necessary confrontation line: the Middle East and more specifically the Holy Land. The clash of civilisations must be embodied in Israel's experience as a civilised, democratic state fighting for its very survival against its barbarian Muslim neighbours.
There is only one problem in selling this image to the West: the minority of Christian Palestinians who have happily lived under Muslim rule in the Holy Land for centuries. Today, in a way quite infuriating to Israel, these Christians confuse the picture by continuing to take a leading role in defining Palestinian nationalism and resistance to Israel's occupation. They prefer to side with the Muslim "fanatics" than with Israel, the Middle East's only outpost of Judeo-Christian "civilisation".
The presence of Palestinian Christians reminds us that the supposed "clash of civilisations" in the Holy Land is not really a war of religions but a clash of nationalisms, between the natives and European colonial settlers.
Inside Israel, for example, Christians have been the backbone of the Communist party, the only non-Zionist party Israel allowed for several decades. Many of the Palestinian artists and intellectuals who are most critical of Israel are Christians, including the late novelist Emile Habibi; the writer Anton Shammas and film-makers Elia Suleiman and Hany Abu Assad (all now living in exile); and the journalist Antoine Shalhat (who, for reasons unknown, has been placed under a loose house arrest, unable to leave Israel). The most notorious Palestinian nationalist politician inside Israel is Azmi Bishara, yet another Christian, who has been put on trial and is regularly abused by his colleagues in the Knesset.
Similarly, Christians have been at the core of the wider secular Palestinian national movement, helping to define its struggle. They range from exiled professors such as the late Edward Said to human rights activists in the occupied territories such as Raja Shehadeh. The founders of the most militant wings of the national movement, the Democratic and Popular Fronts for the Liberation of Palestine, were Nayif Hawatmeh and George Habash, both Christians.
This intimate involvement of Palestinian Christians in the Palestinian national struggle is one of the reasons why Israel has been so keen to find ways to encourage their departure -- and then blame it on intimidation by, and violence from, Muslims......
From Israel's point of view, the loss of Palestinian Christians is all to the good. It will happier still if all of them leave, and Bethlehem and Nazareth pass into the effective custodianship of the international Churches.
Without Palestinian Christians confusing the picture, it will be much easier for Israel to persuade the West that the Jewish state is facing a monolithic enemy, fanatical Islam, and that the Palestinian national struggle is really both a cover for jihad and a distraction from the clash of civilisations against which Israel is the ultimate bulwark. Israel's hands will be freed....."
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