Bradley Burston : No, Jesus was not a Jewish settler. He was a rabbi for human rights


 
 
 
 
If Jesus were alive today, living in the Holy Land, where would you go about looking for him? Michael Oren quoted as saying Jesus today would be...
haaretz.com|Di Bradley Burston



If Jesus were alive today, living in the Holy Land, where would you go about looking for him?
I raise the question because of a session last week of the Knesset Christian Allies Caucus. One of the speakers was author, historian, and former Israel ambassador to Washington Michael Oren, a freshman lawmaker and member of Benjamin Netanyahu's ruling coalition.
Oren was quoted as telling the caucus that, were Jesus alive today, he would be seen as a Jewish settler in the West Bank.
"U.S.-Israel relations go back to spiritual ties." Oren said in remarks quoted by the Jerusalem Post.
"God speaks only one language, and it's the language in which we are yelling at each other in the next hall.
"Jesus, Mary, and John the Baptist would today be considered Jewish settlers in Bethlehem," he continued, adding that "We are on a holy mission to ensure the Jewish state remains strong and beloved."
For the moment, let's leave aside the concept that God speaks only one language - high-volume, low-tolerance Hebrew.
Instead, let's revisit the scenario Michael Oren has sketched, the question of what Jesus might be doing, were he alive in this place, in our day.
I believe that if Jesus were living here, he would feel at home with us. Not comfortable. Not at all at peace. But very much at home.
This was a man, after all, who was born into a Holy Land living under the weight and the violence and the rebellion and the injustice and the corruption of occupation.
This was a man who was raised in a Holy Land living under the humiliation and the disorder and the misrule and the property destruction and the legal larceny and the forced family disintegration and the spilled blood and the jail without due process and the searing fears and the ingrained denial and the bogus religiosity, of occupation.
Where would you look for such a man?
You might look for the rabbi of the Sermon on the Mount. You might look for the believer who preaches a radical doctrine of non-violence.
These days, you might expect to find him in Susya.
Not the Jewish settlement founded in the '80s, but the much, much older Palestinian village. The Palestinian village whose people have been evicted from their homes, stripped of their lands, physically assaulted by settler youths, and forced to resettle in a place where they are now under imminent threat of wholesale house demolition and mass expulsion by the dictates of settler leaders to the occupation officials who serve them.
You would expect to find him in the Palestinian village of Susya because Jesus was not a Jewish settler. He was a rabbi for human rights.
You would expect to find Jesus working with the villagers. You would expect to find him standing up to the authorities who have vowed to demolish the village despite everything – despite unusually pointed warnings by the U.S. State Department and the personal involvement of representatives of all 28 EU member states with consulates in Jerusalem.
You would expect to find him standing up to Israel's disgrace of a deputy defense minister, Eli Ben-Dahan, the same Ben Dahan who once described Palestinians as "inhuman beasts."
You would expect Jesus to respond with grace and passion and facts, to Ben Dahan's astoundingly Orwellian declaration to the Knesset, the same day Oren spoke of Jesus the Jewish Settler:
"There has never been an Arab village called Susya," Ben Dahan said. "This is a mechtaf [underhanded opportunistic ploy] by leftist groups to take over Area C by building permanent structures," a reference to the settler-dominated 60 percent of the West Bank which is under full Israeli security and civil control, and in which Palestinians are routinely denied building permits, even if they have lived on their land for generations and have documentation of land ownership.
These days in the Holy Land, you'd expect to find Jesus feeling right at home. Overturning the tables of a corrupt-to-the-bone religious-political priesthood. Addressing the deepening social needs of providing for the hungry and the ailing. Turning the other cheek in place of putting out an eye for an eye. Loving his neighbor.
These days, you would expect to find Jesus in Susya, standing with B'Tselem, with Breaking the Silence, with Adalah, with All That's Left – Anti-Occupation Collective, with Combatants for Peace, with Ta'ayush, with Peace Now.
And, yes, and perhaps particularly, with Rabbis for Human Rights

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