As Israel fights an implacable enemy — and faces ominous threats in other areas — several American religious leaders stubbornly choose to blame the victim.
In short, American Christian leaders are no longer “automatic” when it comes to support for Israel. The situation is even described as dire by some. One such reason for the gloomy forecast is the disdain for truth exhibited by alleged peaceniks like Brian McLaren.
The former Maryland pastor (now a prominent author and speaker) routinely sides with leftists and Muslim sources when Israel is the subject. From his July 31, 2014 blog, McLaren cited Rabbi Henry Siegman, who has said:
"When one thinks that this is what is necessary for Israel to survive, that the Zionist dream is based on the repeated slaughter of innocents on a scale that we’re watching these days on television, that is really a profound, profound crisis — and should be a profound crisis in the thinking of all of us who were committed to the establishment of the state and to its success."
This repulsive view is becoming mainstream at an alarming rate, in part because of the legitimacy given it by commentators like McLaren. It calls to mind the words of Isaiah (5:20)—
“Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.”
McLaren (who has lavished praise on a letter sent from Naim Ateek to the Archbishop of Canterbury, in which Ateek claimed that “Jewish and Western Christian Zionists” constitute a more dangerous threat than “extremist Islamists.”) never misses an opportunity to invert truth where the Arab-Israeli conflict is concerned. Listen, if you can, to his further elaboration on the rabbi’s comments:
“It's easy to get depressed reading some of the comments (over on my Facebook page) to my previous two postings on this subject. They make the above quote from a leading American rabbi all the more impressive. I encourage readers to listen to his entire interview, here.
“In any win-lose scenario, neither Israelis nor Palestinians have a chance for what they both truly want and need - which is peace, security, freedom, and the chance to build sustainable prosperity for themselves and their descendants, in peace with their neighbors. In other words, short-term win-lose scenarios are long-term lose-lose scenarios. The long-term well-being of each is bound up with the well-being of the other.”
All this demonstrates that McLaren, who is happy to be identified as an “evangelical” but in reality is no different from leftists in the mainline churches, knows very little about the conflict. It is particularly galling that leaders like him do not condemn the gruesome terror war waged daily by Hamas and other jihadist groups against Jewish citizens of Israel.
It seems there is no shortage of willing dupes in America today.