by Ncamisile Pamela Ngubane*

For most of my life, the Bible has informed my understanding of the Palestine/Israel issue.

In Genesis 17:8, God’s covenant with Abraham is recorded: “The Lord made a covenant with Abraham, saying, “And I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger, all the land of Canaan for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God.’”

According to this Christian Zionist reading of Genesis, God chose Abraham to birth a nation through which He could redeem the world. To do this, He gave them a land on which to establish this chosen nation. This nation was Israel, and Jews were the chosen people.

I, and so many other Christian Zionists, have never asked what the covenant consisted of, to whom the promise had been made, or if the Lord’s choice was unconditional. Nevertheless, we proclaimed that the Bible was Israel’s mandate and Palestine was given to Israel by God.

In Genesis 12:3, we were reminded: “And I will bless those who bless you, and curse those who curse you.” Isaiah 2:2-3 and Psalm 122 tell us that all nations shall flow to Jerusalem, and those who love Israel and heed the call to pray for Jerusalem “shall prosper”.

I became a Christian Zionist, and later a passionate pro-Israel advocate, based on these distorted readings of the Bible.

The message for me was simple: pray for Israel and you will be blessed because the State of Israel is special to God and a fulfilment of Biblical prophecy.

Criticize Israel, and you will be cursed by God. But let me put this in a different way. These verses are often used as the Biblical mandate to pray for Israel’s continued existence on occupied Palestinian land.

The 1948 “rebirth” of the state of Israel, I would read in the Christian Zionist literature I consumed voraciously, was a manifestation of God’s promise to the Jewish people that the land of Canaan would be theirs for eternity.

We were to pray for the peace of Jerusalem – a peace that would only materialise when the world agreed that Jerusalem was the eternal and undivided capital of the Jewish state.

Why were so many people in opposition to this glorious message, I wondered. Why were the Palestinians stubbornly refusing to live in peace with the Jews?

Was it not their own fault that they had lost the war with Israel in 1948? How can God’s Will be regarded as a Nakba (catastrophe)? Was it not God’s Will that Israel also won the war of 1967?

I had basked in the magic and the miracle that was Israel – until my illusions were shattered by the ascension to power of Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government at the end of last year.

“The most right-wing,” the pundits declared.  “Extremist”, “settler”, “racist” were the words being used to describe Israel’s political leadership. Surely this fascist coalition was just an anomaly? Maybe things would get back to normal, when Israel’s electorate realised their mistake?

But this was no mistake. The analysis I was looking at explained that Israeli society had been increasingly embracing right-wing politicians since the coming to power of the Menachem Begin-led Likud party in the 1970s.

It had encouraged the establishment of settlements in the occupied West Bank which were – and remain – illegal under international law. Netanyahu’s government is ratcheting up settlement construction even more.

“Israel Repeals Disengagement Law” the headlines announced. In one fell swoop, Israel had put the final nail in Oslo’s coffin and jettisoned the two-state solution.

Where did that leave me as the spokesperson of an Israel advocacy group? What was I supposed to say to anyone who asked me about the madness gripping Israel’s government?

I was shattered.

But I am an idealistic optimist. I wanted to build a campaign to promote dialogues for peace between supporters of Israel and Palestine. The aim was to drive a campaign that would convince Africans that we could bring the two sides together in the embrace of ubuntu – achieving the reconciliation and peace that had eluded so many others.

To do this, I needed to understand the Palestinian side of the story – which I had simply ignored up until then. I wish I had prepared myself for what I would learn: that the Israel I had been a cheerleader for, for the past two years, was nothing but a fantasy.

Amongst many disturbing possibilities I have had to consider is that Israel’s humanitarian work in Africa is simply a cynical diplomatic tool. I’ve argued that Israel has been eager to share its technological advancements with its African brothers to help solve the continent’s issues of poverty and food insecurity. I’ve since realised that this is not the case.

If Israel’s agricultural and water projects were really products of the noble Jewish ethos of tikkun olam (repairing the world), then surely Palestinians in besieged Gaza would be the first to receive technologies to provide them with clean drinking water?

People in the occupied West Bank would not be daily waiting for the earth to shake as Israeli bulldozers come to destroy their homes and olive trees.

If Israel was a state based on Jewish principles, then Palestinian women would not be giving birth at checkpoints. Anger at Israel’s cold cruelty would not be driving Palestinians to the destructive acts of attacking and killing Jewish Israelis.

Children would not be blinded after being shot in the eyes by Israel Defence Force (IDF) soldiers. Palestinians cannot simply be reduced to “terrorists”.  There is a reason they are angry.  

Were these daily violations of the Palestinian peoples’ dignity and human rights the actions of the people God had commissioned to be a Light unto Nations? Was Israel really a Jewish state, or was it actually a Zionist state?

Judaism is a religion based on the word of God, while Zionism is a political ideology created by men and women. Like so many Christian Zionists, I have never reflected on the difference between the two. It was inconvenient to do so.

I have realized that Christian Zionism silences Christ’s teachings and supplants them with a misleading reading of the Bible. I am no longer with the Israel advocacy organisation that I previously represented so proudly.

Since Christian Zionism is the motivating ethos of that organisation, I couldn’t be true to my obligations to my Saviour and to my conscience if I stayed on.

I am ashamed that I tried to justify the expulsion of the residents of Sheikh Jarrah and Masafer Yatta. I repent for calling Palestinians and their supporters anti-Semitic.

I remain burdened with the guilt of turning a blind eye to the suffering of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, including my own Christian sisters and brothers there.

I must now ask myself at what point did I become complicit in Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians – such as the arrest and imprisonment of children as young as ten years old – all in the fear that criticising Israel would bring upon me God’s curses?

Didn’t God tell us that we show our understanding of Him by loving mercy and justice? Is God really putting His seal of approval on Israel’s violations of international law in the West Bank and Gaza?

Is it really a manifestation of God’s system of order when IDF troops enter Al-Aqsa Mosque and desecrate that holy place, ostensibly to enforce laws that do not even fall within the IDF’s jurisdiction?

This is a highly complex situation with political failings on both the Israeli and Palestinian sides, but I sense that Christian Zionism is the greatest failure here. How have we allowed ourselves to ignore, excuse and even embrace Zionism when it has clearly been the ideological force behind the ethnic cleansing of Palestine?

How do we justify Zionism, when it is clearly an ideology driven by fear? Didn’t Paul tell us in 2 Timothy 1:7 that “God has not given us a spirit of fear, but one of love, power and a sound mind?”

So it behoves us to counsel our Zionist and blindly pro-Israel friends that the Israel project is doomed to failure.

For so long I have ignored the voices of Palestinian Christians, which is best represented by the Kairos Palestine Document. Like my Palestinian Christian brothers and sisters, I do not believe that Zionism reflects the hearts of all Jewish people.

I am grateful that Jews are some of the most ardent defenders of Palestine’s right to freedom and self-determination.

I believed that it was my Christian duty to support Israel. But did I also not have a Christian duty to have compassion for the Palestinians, especially because it is undeniable that Israel is not a partner for peace?

I love God, and I know He loves me, the flawed, emotional, idealistic optimist that I am. I truly believe that one day, His prophecies of justice, love and truth becoming law will come to fruition.

This new reality won’t magically appear; we must consistently choose it. Many have been doing so for millennia, centuries and decades. I am grateful to be joining them now.

• Ncamisile Pamela Ngubane is a South African Christian and History teacher, and was the former spokesperson of South African Friends of Israel (SAFI). Find her on Twitter: @Africa4Humanity