Elephants in the Room: Israel, Palestine, and the Nature of Oppression

by David Creech

“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.”

Bishop Desmond Tutu

My natural disposition is to side with those who are oppressed. I also prefer to hear people tell their own story rather than insert my opinions from the outside. Enter the Israel-Palestine conflict.

This longstanding (Western-created) conflict reentered my thinking in late June when the Presbyterian Church (USA) very narrowly voted to divest from U.S. companies that benefit from the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. This decision was given much more attention than their equally significant (and overwhelmingly supported) decision to allow a process for gay marriage. (Quick aside: the relative silence about this decision in popular media suggests to me that, as a society, we are done with this conversation. Support of gay marriage remains an issue only in certain conservative communities. Move along, people.) The resolution was criticized by many Jewish and pro-Israel groups as tone deaf at best and anti-Semitic at worst.

*pause for deep breath*

And yet, the recent events leading up to and culminating in Israel’s so-called “Operation Protective Edge” demonstrate why the Presbyterian decision may be warranted. At the time of this writing (a running tally of the deaths is available here), Israel has launched more than 1,300 rockets into the Palestinian territories, killing at least 222 Palestinians (approximately 77% of whom are civilians) and injuring nearly 1,700 more. This in response to three Israeli teens who were (quite wrongfully) killed by Palestinian extremists. As one Palestinian advocate on Twitter put it, if a toddler bites the neighborhood bully and the bully retaliates with an axe, one is justifiably angrier about the axe.

To choose neutrality in this conflict is to side with the elephant.

Except… this is where it gets tricky. Historically, Jews have been oppressed by Christians. This previously referenced article gives a helpful history. And though the oppression spans centuries, one needn’t look far beyond Christianity’s primary documents to see the horror of anti-Semitism in its very foundations. (Quick qualifying statement: perceived anti-Semitism in the New Testament is in some ways anachronistic—the authors were members of a Jewish sect engaged in an intramural conflict.) Paul calls Jews children of a slave woman. The Gospel of Matthew unequivocally blames the Jewish people for Jesus’ death. The Gospel of John calls the Jews children of Satan. Statements such as these (and many more could be adduced) led to a horrible history of disenfranchisement, ghettoization, pogroms, and ultimately the Holocaust.

Jews are right to feel like the mouse whose tail is being crushed by an elephant.

In this context, it is fair to ask why the state of Israel was singled out by the PC(USA) for sanctions. There are a host of unjust regimes around the world, many of whom are far more vicious and cruel (Egypt, anyone?). It is also fair to ask why this conflict captures my attention and elicits more rage than those far more devastating wars in Syria and Iraq. What latent anti-Semitism may be operative in this focus on Israel?

Perhaps the PC(USA) had no holdings to divest themselves of with regard to first-tier actors in the other brutal conflicts that are unfolding.  And perhaps it was some rhetorical break with the odd pairing of American Christianity and the state of Israel that grew from a peculiar eschatology. And certainly Israel’s actions rightly cause outrage and anger. But how do we speak to this injustice when we are part of a much larger and longer history of discrimination and violence, when that history is still fresh, still continues even in many forms today?

What do you do when you realize that you are the elephant? 

David Creech is Assistant Professor of Religion at Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota. Before taking his teaching post up on the frozen tundra he worked for four years doing anti-hunger education and mobilization with ELCA World Hunger. When he is not herding cats (i.e., spending quality time with his three kids) he posts profound thoughts on Twitter @dyingsparrows.

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Brad Paisley Tries to Heal Race Relations; Fails Spectacularly

You make me miss that Nelly/Tim McGraw song.

"I get it now. I don't get it." - Stan Marsh, South Park, "With Apologies to Jesse Jackson"

by Ben Howard

I don't write a lot about race here. That's not because I don't think it's an important issue, I think its one of the most important issues facing not just Christianity but society as a whole. No, the reason I don't write about race is that I feel deeply unqualified to explore the subject. I've been trying to do better to educate myself and I'll often utilize the weekly “Best Of” column as a means to promote the voices that are helping me along that process.

So please keep in mind my ignorance and lack of qualification regarding issues of race as well as my general fallibility as a human, but something happened yesterday and I just can't let it go without talking about it.

Yesterday, Brad Paisley and LL Cool J released a, for lack of a better word, “song” called “Accidental Racist.” That's pretty much all the information you'll need to realize that this is not a very good idea, but I'll let you give it a listen if you dare.

If you couldn't stomach the whole video or if you just don't have time to listen to it right now, I'll break down the highlights. The song focuses on the tension between Paisley's southern pride, symbolized by the Confederate flag he's apparently sporting on his t-shirt, and the southern blame he feels for, ya know, owning people as property and denying them rights because of their skin color.

No.

LL Cool J (Ladies do love Cool James) then joins in with an verse directed to, "Dear Mister White Man," in which he explains that he was neither part of Sherman's March nor is he opposed to white southerners making money, which he hopes they can do without the crutch of slavery to prop up their economy.

To be honest, the song is pretty much nonsense and I've already read far better take downs of the ridiculously clumsy lyrical content than I could ever produce. However, there are two points I want to highlight because I think they're vital to any healthy conversation about race, and for that matter, they're vital for any healthy conversation about almost any difficult topic.

First, Black Culture is not a monolith, neither, for that matter, is Southern White Culture. It is harmful and a great disservice to a healthy and useful conversation to imagine that there is a universally accepted norm for any group of people, especially when that norm is based on race. Brad Paisley should not and cannot speak for Southern White Culture just like LL Cool J should not and cannot position himself as the voice for Black Culture. Stereotypes are dangerous.

Second, everything is not okay. In one section near the end of the song, LL Cool J says, "The past is the past, you feel me/Let bygones be bygones." No. Too often people hear the term racism and they think about the Civil Rights movement in the 1960's or they think about slavery. People hear "racism" and they think "history," but that simply isn't the case.

Perhaps there has been a decline in the kind of casual, socially acceptable blatant racism that we recall when we hear that word. I mean, we don't have separate drinking fountains or separate bathrooms, so we must have conquered racism, right? That's just ignorant.

So easy, a child can do it.

Not only are there still pockets of virulent racism, such as the school in Georgia who still has a segregated prom, but there are the more insidious institutionalized forms of racism. There's the oppressively high incarceration rates, longer jail sentences for black offenders than for white offenders when they commit similar crimes, the income inequality, the inequality in education, and let's not forget the tiny fact that our country elected a black president then constantly questioned his citizenship and his faith because he just couldn't be one of us.

The simple fact is that the past isn't past. It's still painfully present. I'm not sure what to do about that, but I know I need to do something. I know we all need to do something.

I'm sure that Brad Paisley and LL Cool J intended for their song as a call to unity and I'm sure their intentions are good. But good intentions don't matter if they don't change anything.

They get it, but they just don't get it.

Peace,
Ben

Ben Howard is an accidental iconoclast and generally curious individual living in Nashville, Tennessee. He is also the editor-in-chief of On Pop Theology and an avid fan of waving at strangers for no reason. You can follow him on Twitter @BenHoward87.

You can follow On Pop Theology on Twitter @OnPopTheology or like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/OnPopTheology.

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The Day I Was Called a Demon

Demon. Not Lyndsey.

by Lyndsey Graves

Four days ago, I was accused of being a demon.

A woman came from the food pantry where I work into the church office, demanding to “speak to the head pastor about a family emergency” (read: ask for money). When I offered to go with her to speak with the assistant pastor, who is equipped to handle such requests and does so with real compassion, I became the subject of a long diatribe, beginning with “You a racist” and ending with “you a demon” as the elevator doors closed to take her away.

Since moving to a predominantly black neighborhood in Syracuse, I’ve been called a racist too many times to count; and a racist is a step below a demon in most people’s books so I shouldn’t have been too shocked. And in fact I wasn’t. A lot of unrelated but truly crazy things happened to me last week, so I was already in emotional survival mode. I had no reserves on which to draw to feel hurt or sad, or to consider the woman’s mental illness, or painful past, and feel an appropriate resolve to continue on in my work righting wrongs. I only sort of cared; I didn’t even give much thought to the episode until a few days later.

After three years of intentionally joining in with the lives of my neighbors in poverty, I’ve seen a lot, but Friday felt like a new line: the day being called a demon wouldn’t faze me.

Now that I think about it, a part of me is sad that it’s so difficult to help people, and that this is the reward one gets for trying. Another part of me does want to do something more to help this woman. But overall, it’s a necessary skill in these kinds of jobs (or volunteer positions) to not care sometimes. When you’re trying to feed sixty families in two hours, you can’t worry about “troublesome” individuals while ten “normal” people get passed by for help. You just can’t. You carry on. You laugh.

A necessary coping mechanism

And on days when you’ve got the time, you ask God to send someone, someone with more to spare than you have right now, to look on that person with more compassion than you can.

I decided to write about being called a demon, and then sat down to catch up on reading. It turns out Ben posted on oppression the same day I was exorcized:

“I don’t know how to untangle the oppressive nature of societal institutions from their pragmatic necessity. I’m open to suggestions. If you know anyone involved with these communities, leave a comment, get in touch with me, I want to know them.

I want to learn from them.

But in the meantime, I’ll keep trying to grow. I’ll keep trying to become a person who sees both the redeemed person who someone can become as well as the broken person they are. I’ll keep trying to be better, to be more loving. I’ll keep trying to love man in particular, instead of the easy love of all mankind.”

He had already put words to the solution for my own frustration with my job; this jaded volunteer 

lady is asking you to hear them. Because the more time I spend around the poor, the formerly incarcerated, around government welfare systems and nonprofits, the more convinced I become that “society” only improves one life at a time. Those of us trying to change society on a large scale are consistently overwhelmed and under-resourced, but maybe we’re missing the point a little - Jesus touched people one at a time. 

Awww *sniffles*

He didn’t seem too worried with setting up a program or fixing everything for everyone; instead, he met people singly, he stopped to talk to them, he stopped to listen, and he chose to help, one at a time. Maybe Jesus knew that there is no such thing as a more “efficient” healing, that there is no lawn sprinkler to cover everyone in the kind of deep love this world longs for. There is only the touch of a hand for an infirm woman, a gaze of compassion for a rich man, a call by name for a fisherman. 

It’s so often easier to love mankind in general, than to love the individual man or woman who are its constituency.  At times, I even wonder if food pantries aren’t one of the oppressive societal institutions Ben is referencing, meant as much to maintain class separations as to lessen income disparities. On balance, I think food pantries do serve an important purpose and can contribute to positive life change. But they are only stopgap measures. 

If we want to really change the way people experience poverty, or prison, or whatever other structure contributes to injustice, we need to become more willing simply to dig in with people one at a time, to take the time to listen, and to hear, and to share, to take the time, truly, to just be friends.

Lyndsey lives and works in Syracuse, NY. She majored in theology at Lee University, which is like eating cake or listening to thunderstorms - too enjoyable to be called work. Also, no one will pay you to do it. You can follow her on Twitter @lyndseygraves and you can find more of her writing at her blog To Be Honest.

What Oppression Looks Like

This is what oppression looks like.

by Ben Howard

About a week ago I found myself listening to an economics podcast on my way home from work. That is a very nerdy sentence, but the relative nerdiness of my iPod isn’t the point of this story. The guest on the show was a sociologist from the University of Washington who studies the prison population.

I’ve heard a lot about the racial and socioeconomic injustices of our ironically named justice system, but I’ve rarely put numbers to the scale of the problem. But as I listened, I learned that on any given day, 1% of the United States population, that’s around 3 million people, is in prison or jail. Even more, 3%, nearly 9 million people, are under court supervision. And here’s the kicker, the numbers show that a black male between the ages of 18 and 25 is more likely to be imprisoned than employed.

This is what oppression looks like.

Of course, this information made me indignant.  What a crisis!  Why is no one talking about this?  Wait, why am I not talking about this?  What would I even do to make this situation better?  Am I not just as likely to demonize and misjudge someone for being a “criminal?”  Where do I get off being the champion for conceptual oppression when I can’t overcome the oppression I perpetrate?

“I love mankind”, he said, “but I find to my amazement that the more I love mankind as a whole, the less I love man in particular.”

Until my senior year of college, I was planning to be a lawyer. I took the LSAT and looked at admissions, and even started a few applications. I don’t really tell people the next part, and I’m certain I’ve never said it in public, but I remember the exact moment that I realized I could never be a lawyer.

I was in my Constitutional Law class and somehow we got onto the topic of statutory rape. As the conversation continued, I became more and more frustrated with the legality of these laws. It didn’t matter if the minor in question lied, had a fake ID, or even signed something saying they were 18 thus committing fraud, the liability always fell on the person who was over 18. The rights of the accused did not matter. It felt wrong.

Let me be clear, I’m not condoning the acts or the life choices that lead to a situation where an adult is (even unwittingly) involved with a minor, but that doesn’t make the process anymore just.

Amen.

The more I’ve explored the situation, the more I’ve discovered that registered sex offenders are a highly marginalized group of people. Many places have basically made it illegal for a registered sex offender to live in their community. We brand and stigmatize these people for an act, that while certainly heinous in nature and worthy of punishment, is not the definition of their humanity.

But this situation undoes me in just the same way as that of prisoners.  I see the concept of oppression and the symbolic nature of the group in question, but on an individual basis it’s something different entirely. Sex offenders make me sick, they make me nervous. I instinctually want to distance myself from them and keep a close eye on my loved ones. I expect the worst.

This is what oppression looks like.

“I love mankind”, he said, “but I find to my amazement that the more I love mankind as a whole, the less I love man in particular.”

There is no place for this oppression in the kingdom of God. I say that unequivocally and I will repeat it. There is no place for this oppression in the kingdom of God, in the kingdom of redemption and resurrection and renewal.

I honestly don’t know what to do about the cases I’ve mentioned above. I don’t know how to untangle the oppressive nature of societal institutions from their pragmatic necessity. I’m open to suggestions. If you know anyone involved with these communities, leave a comment, get in touch with me, I want to know them.

I want to learn from them.

But in the mean time, I’ll keep trying to grow. I’ll keep trying to become a person who sees both the redeemed person who someone can become as well as the broken person they are. I’ll keep trying to be better, to be more loving. I’ll keep trying to love man in particular, instead of the easy love of all mankind.

“Remember particularly that you cannot be a judge of anyone. For no one can judge a criminal until he recognizes that he is just such a criminal as the man standing before him, and that he perhaps is more than all men to blame for that crime. When he understands that, he will be able to be a judge.”

Peace,

Ben

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