Introduction
Some readers may be surprised by this fusion of Marxism and Christianity. Others, and not just Christians, are well aware of it. In fact, if we take the Church of England specifically, we can say that it has included people who were actively pro-Communist (or pro-Soviet Union) more or less from the 1917 Revolution onwards. Many of these Christian Marxists or Communists turned out to be out-and-out traitors.
But let’s get up to date here.
Let us see the proudly anti-Zionist New Statesman. Let’s hear some gross exaggerations and hyperbolic crap from John Pilger. He wrote that the
‘Zionist state remains the cause of more regional grievance and sheer terror than all the Muslim states combined… the equivalent of Madrid’s horror week after week, month after month, in occupied Palestine… Moreover, the Israeli army, a terrorist organisation by any reasonable measure.’
The Six Day War, Yasser Arafat and Ethnic Cleansing
Christian Marxists (or Marxist Christians), or ‘progressives’, need to make their anti-Jewish and anti-Israel ideologies religious or theological in tone. After all, they are supposed to be Christians too.
Take Dr Barry Morgan, who, in 2003 (when he was archbishop of Wales), had the following to say about what he called ‘Messianic Zionism’. According to Morgan:
‘Messianic Zionism came to the fore after the Six Day War in 1967 when, “Biblical territories were reconquered’, and so began a policing of cleansing the Promised Land of all Arabs and non-Jews rather than co-existing with them.’
Almost all of that passage is either blatantly false or evidently prejudiced.
For a start, the Six Day War was a defensive war in which all Israel’s Arab neighbours were gearing up to a policy of the annihilation of Israel and the ‘driving of the Jews into the sea’. This would mean that any Israeli expansionists would have had to wait for a war in order to ‘occupy’ what has been called ‘the occupied territories’ (the ‘disputed territories’).
What if there had been no build up of Arab forces, as well as no acts of Arab terrorism prior the Six Day War? This would have meant no war; which itself would have meant no ‘seizing’ of ‘Biblical territories’ by the state of Israel. This would have been equivalent to the Nazis, under Hitler, having to wait for the Czechs or the Poles to become aggressive towards Germany or even their being intent on invading Germany. This most certainly didn’t happen. The Germans were exclusively the aggressors, just as the Arab states were in 1967.
As for ‘ethnic cleansing’.
If Israel was/is intent of ethnic cleansing, why has it allowed its own non-Jewish (mainly Arab) population to grow to over a million? (The growth has been even more drastic in the disputed territories.) Think about it.
On one hand, Dr Morgan accuses the Israelis of ‘ethnic cleansing’ the disputed territories in 1967 and after. On the other hand, that same Israel has allowed the Arab population of Israel itself to grow to over a million. It doesn’t make sense.
There were, however, aggressors at this time (as well as expansionists). One such aggressor was a ‘Messianic’ Muslim Arab. His name was Yasser Arafat.
This man was a killer, a terrorist and also deeply corrupt. Yet our very own Dr Barry Morgan said that Yasser Arafat ‘has given his life to the cause of the Palestinian people.’
Morgan goes on to confess that
‘when he heard the news of his death this morning, my initial reaction was to pray that in death Yasser Arafat will find that peace which only God can give and which was denied to him in life’
Here we have a Christian clergyman crying tears over the death of a corrupt terrorist and supporter of Israel’s annihilation.
Dr Morgan is not the only Christian Marxist defender of Arab/Islamic terrorism and Yasser Arafat. Take the case of Ben White.
In 2009, Ben White (an evangelical Christian) said that Palestinians terrorism was simply a case of ‘decolonisation and liberation from occupation and Zionist apartheid’.
These are the words of a Christian who is completely indebted to Marx - as well as to the actual vocabulary of Marxism. ‘Decolonisation’, ‘liberation’ and ‘Zionist apartheid’ are all terms from the lexicon of the Marxist left. Quite simply, Ben White could not have said what he said, in these precise terms, had he not already been deeply enmeshed in Marxist ideology (or ‘liberation theology’). Indeed White is not someone who is influenced by Marxism. This is Marxism. Thus this also makes White an out-and-out Marxist; even if a Christian one.
In order to be a Marxist, the Marxist has to demonise all his enemies; as well as disparaging all contradictory or alternative ideologies. This is where terms like ‘Nazi’, ‘colonialist’, ‘bigot’ and ‘apartheid’ come into the picture.
Ben White says that Israel ‘has an ideology of racial supremacy’. That’s why leftists today always say that Israel is a ‘Nazi state’. After all, only Nazis/fascists believe in ‘racial supremacy’ and thus ‘apartheid’.
Of course Israel was never a colonialist state; not even, strangely enough, on a strictly Marxist/Leninist interpretation.
That doesn’t matter because it is the words - the word-weapons - themselves which really matter to leftist activists, whether Christian or not.
Israel could never have been colonialist in the classical sense. Israel did not take the productive land and goods of another people specifically for socio-political ends. There was no modern economy in most of Palestine before 1948. Israelis never used Arabs as free or forced labour. In fact Israel brought wealth and health to the Arabs of this part of the word.
Neither is Israel racist.
How can Israel be racist with a non-white and non-European population of well over one million? The proportion of Arab Muslims in Israel is much higher than the proportion of Muslims to non-Muslims in the UK.
In strictly racial terms, an Israeli can be of African, Asian or even Arab origin. Indeed the exact same can be said about being Jewish. If anything, Israel is one of the most multicultural states on earth.
None of this matters.
Both Dr Morgan and Ben White probably know, in their hearts, that such hyperbolic descriptions of Israel and its actions help the main goal of all this - the annihilation of Israel as a state. If words like ‘Nazi’, ‘racist’ and ‘colonialist’ energise people into revolutionary or radical activism, then these people will use them! It doesn’t matter if the words are false or over-the-top as long as they do the revolutionary business. Only radical or revolutionary rhetoric will do the business of destroying Israel ‘once and for all’. Namby-pamby talk is for ‘peace processes’. But this isn’t about peace, peace processes or any kind of accommodation. It is about destroying Israel.
The World Council of Churches (WCC) and Others
This Marxist Christian hotchpotch is pretty much all-encompassing when it comes to certain ‘progressive’ Christian denominations and their ideologies/theologies.
For example, the World Council of Churches (WCC) called the PLO a ‘liberation army’ which was required to ‘make Palestine free’ of ‘colonial aggressors’.
And Canon Andrew White also makes explicit this adherence to Marxism as it is interpreted to suit the Israel/Palestine conflict.
The Canon goes in for a bit of rhetorical self-questioning here.
To start with. He views the Palestinians as being ‘the oppressed’ (another word or notion almost peculiar to Marxist leftism). He begins:
‘Who is their [the Palestinians] oppressor?
‘The state of Israel.
‘Who is Israel?
‘The Jews.’
For a start, at least Canon Andrew White makes it explicit that it is not just ‘Zionists’ he is talking about here - but also ‘the Jews’! (‘Who is Israel? The Jews.’)
Just as these Christians are essentially Marxist in ideological terms, so one would expect them to put a Marxist slant on Israel and the Jews themselves. That slant turns the Israelis into ‘colonialists’, ‘racists’, ‘Nazis’ and whatnot.
Thus we have another Marxist interpretation of he Israel/Palestine conflict from another Christian. In this case it is Stephen Sizer, the vicar of Christ Church, Virginia Water in Surrey.
He has said that Israel is ‘fundamentally an apartheid state because it is based on race’.
Not only that. He believes that the Israel case is ‘even worse than South Africa’.
Based on race? Strictly speaking, as I’ve already said, there is no Jewish race. Jews can be found all over the world, from Ethiopia to Europe. (Formerly, Jews could also be found in many Arab states. That is, before they were ethnically cleansed. 850,000 Jews were forced to leave the Arab Middle East, primarily in the period 1948 onwards. However, the persecution of Jews, and periodic acts of ethnic cleansing, date back to the foundation of Islam.)
Even the 20th century idea of human rights is smuggled into this Christian-Marxist theology. For example, Stephen Sizer argues that the ‘covenant between Jews and God was conditional on their respect for human rights’. This is the most ridiculous kind of retrospectivism - or projection - of 20/21th century notions onto the Old Testament I’ve ever heard.
Sizer doesn’t stop there. He attempts to derive some hefty Marxist, anti-Semitic conclusions from all this. For example, he concurs with Marx himself when he says that the Jews
‘were expelled from the land [because] they were more interested in money and power and treated the poor and aliens with contempt’.
So perhaps it would be wise to finish here with Marx’s own take on the Jews and their ‘intrinsic nature’:
‘What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly God? Money... We recognise in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time... Money is the jealous god of Israel...’ - Karl Marx, On the Jewish Question, 1844
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