The Arab-Israel conflict is not a dispute over land, but a battle between cultures and values. And in that struggle, Christians in Europe and the United States are the “natural allies” of Israel and the Jewish community.
So contended Rabbi Eugene Korn, Ph.D., former national director of interfaith affairs for the Anti-Defamation League, in a talk at Congregation Sinai last week.
Korn, adjunct professor of Jewish thought at Seton Hall University, defined the conflict as between a Western vision of society that is “pluralistic, celebrates religious diversity, has religious freedom and human rights,” versus that of “traditional Arab and Muslim society,” which denies “civil and religious equality” to non-Muslims.
Korn argued that the Arab and Muslim world for the most part hates Israel because “Israel represents the principle that Jews can live in the Middle East as equals to Muslims” and “not be dependent on Muslim benevolence and tolerance.”
“This is a radical idea in traditional Muslim society” which sees the Middle East “as a Muslim region” in which the “only authority should reside in Muslims,” he told an audience of about 50.
But it is not just Israel and Jews that suffer from this Muslim attitude, Korn said. The Muslim world is also hostile to Christianity and persecutes Christians living in Muslim countries; and that is “one of the best kept secrets” in the United States.
Among his examples, he pointed out that:
• In Sudan, a civil war is raging between the Muslim-dominated north of the country and the Christian and animist south, in which an estimated 500,000 Christians have been “killed or sold into slavery by Muslims.”
• In Egypt, the some 11 million Coptic Christians endure persecution and “one periodically hears of massacres” there.
• Lebanon used to have a Christian majority; today, said Korn, the country is run by Muslim Syria, which has some 30,000 troops there, and some 80 percent of the Christian population has left.
• In Saudi Arabia, which has numerous Christian foreigners living and working on its soil, Christian Bibles are confiscated, no one is allowed to wear a cross or other sign of Christianity and no open Christian celebrations or observances are allowed, Korn said.
• In the Palestinian Authority, Christians are leaving because of Muslim hostility. Under Israeli rule, for example, Bethlehem’s population had been 62 percent Christian; under P.A. rule the proportion has fallen to 20 percent, Korn said.
In fact, the hostility is such that “the number of Christians in every Arab country has decreased in the last 50 years,” he said. The only Middle Eastern country in which the number of Christians has increased is Israel, from 34,000 in 1948 to 180,000 now, he said.
“The demographics speak volumes about where it is and isn’t safe” to live as a Christian in the Middle East, Korn said.
Yet these facts are not well known in the United States, and some Christian denominational groups — Korn said predominantly “mainline Protestantism” — are more sympathetic to the Palestinians.
He said reasons for this include the lack of freedom of speech in the Muslim world and the intimidation of vulnerable populations and their leaders, which prevents accurate information about the plights of Christian communities from spreading.
Nevertheless, a “brighter future” is possible in the region. “If the security of Israel” is upheld, then “pluralism is strengthened for everyone,” Korn said. “The survival of Israel can be a catalyst for a new Middle East that will help all of us.”
Korn also said, in response to a question, that “the problem is not Islam, per se. Any religion is defined by how people live it at a given moment.” At present, “the voices of extremism and intolerance are loudest in the Muslim world,” but that, he suggested, could change.
Still, he acknowledged that will not happen soon. “A few brave Muslims are arguing for a Muslim enlightenment,” he said, but they are “a tiny minority” and their views “cut little ice in Muslim society today.”
Korn’s talk was sponsored by the Milwaukee Jewish Council for Community Relations, a constituent agency of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation.
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