Holocaust

American Christian Zionism is pushing the U.S. government to support Israeli policies that our international friends find immoral and illegal.

We have come to believe that Christian Zionism underwrites theft of Palestinian land and oppresses Palestinian people, helps create the conditions for an explosion of violence, and pushes US policy in a destructive direction that violates our nation's commitment to universal human rights.

We write as evangelical Christians committed to Israel's security. We worry about your support for policies that violate biblical warnings about injustice and may lead to the destruction of Israel.

Shakespeare said a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. Maybe, but a Stink Rose by any other name (say... garlic?) might get more play.

On July 19, Campus Crusade for Christ announced its plan to officially change its name to Cru in early 2012.

Brown v. Board of Education had not yet been fought in the Supreme Court when Bill and Vonetta Bright christened their evangelical campus-based ministry Campus Crusade for Christ in 1951. The evangelical church context was overwhelmingly white, middle class, and suburban. The nation and the church had not yet been pressed to look its racist past and present in the face. The world had not yet been rocked by the international fall of colonialism, the rise of the Civil Rights movement, the disillusionment of the Vietnam War, the burnt bras of the women's liberation movement, the fall of the Berlin Wall, or the rise of the Black middle class (more African Americans now live in the suburbs than in inner cities). In short, theirs was not the world we live in today. So, the name Campus Crusade for Christ smelled sweet. Over the past 20 years, though, it has become a Stink Rose ... warding off many who might otherwise have come near.

Between July 30 and August 3, a reign of terror was released upon villages in the Congo's eastern mining districts.

For 2,000 years, everywhere Jewish people went, they have suffered. They have been discriminated against. They have been attacked. You can think of all the things that they’ve experienced, leading up to the Holocaust. For me, as a Palestinian, my engagement in nonviolence should also be to address the issues that prevent Israelis from being what they should be, to be able to see themselves as humans who have dignity, who should have respect in the international community.

It has not been an easy process for me to engage in this. It led me to Auschwitz and Birkenau, where I have visited twice. Once, outside of Birkenau, we were sitting in the grass in a circle and reflecting on our experience. Busloads of Israeli children came in, because every Israeli child of 13 to 16 years gets the chance to come and visit Auschwitz with his or her school. They got off the bus and began walking on the railroad track with their Israeli guides. They had big Israeli flags wrapped around them, and they were singing nationalistic Hebrew songs.

After they finished visiting the different sites, they came back and sat in circles, and they began talking about what they’d experienced. The Israeli guides were standing in the middle of the circles, and all of them were saying the same thing. They were saying, “See what happened to us? You see what the Nazis did to us?” Many of these children probably had their grandparents or great uncles and aunts killed in these camps. Afterward, when they’re sitting in the circle, you can see how the experience was very traumatizing for them. You would assume that these guides would take this as an opportunity to say, “Never again.” But their message was: “You see what the Germans did to us? Well, guess what? It’s not over. If they have a chance, the Palestinians will do exactly the same thing to us as the Nazis did.”

Several sources have recommended this commentary by M.J. Rosenberg at Media Matters as a helpful analysis of the new "Obama Peace Plan" for the Middle East.