Martin Clay watched the film last week and has written this review:
Film Review
With God On Our Side
Director Porter Speakman Film and DVD
Screened at Christchurch, Virginia Water on Sunday 28th February. Explains some of the background to the conflict refutes the arguments of Christian Zionism that have taken root in the US and which are also present in the UK.
Beginning with Joshuah Ch 5 (Joshua asks a shadowy figure "whose side are you on - ours or our enemies") the film explores the question of whose side we should be on. The answer to the question he poses is by the way - "neither". The warrior says he is on God's side, and of course therein lies the rub. If God is on the side of anyone it is on the side of the dispossessed is what this film argues.
However the Christian Zionists strongly disagree. They do believe that God is on the side of the Jews and that the battles of the Old Testament are still being fought for possession of the land.
Christian Zionism is something to worry about becasue it has a strong influence on the influental evangelical movement. Without a strong grasp of either recent history or a nuanced view of the Biblical history CZ offers beleivers the vicarious pleasure of taking sides in what in their mind is a holy war.
Never mind that Israel was founded as a secular state, or that the Bible is full of references to the Jews as chosen to be the bringer of the messiah to the WHOLE world. These CZ's stick to the narrowest and most divisive interpretation of the chosen people as a conquering army and a precursor to the literal kingdom to come of a conquering messiah.
It is in short an imperialistic vision that feeds into the imperial status (and insecurity?) of the US as a world power with a mythic structure that goes with this.
The difficulty for Christians is that significant elements of this story have been bought into by large swathes of the Evangelical church. While I would say that there is a much more nuanced story, and one that is not exclusive in its theology, many evangelical go along with an exclusive view of religious identity in which there is an elect and a damned, however sorry they are about it, this is their reading of the Bible.
Sadly this vision has a long tail, with our own Lloyd George glibly praising the foundation of a state of Israel as being from "Dan to Beersheba" and wilfully ignoring the history and geography of the land in the early 20th Century.
At its limited "best" Zionism holds a romance for both the Christian's of late Victorian England and in the US today, and aruably a fig leaf with which to cover the church's historic anti-semitism. At its worst it is a macabre and wholly unchristian set of claims that give succour to people who are seeking a saviour who will give them assurance of an exclusive place in heaven and one which for which they are willing to make victims of others.
The film takes a measured but very serious view of this with trenchant views from Salim Munayeer and othera not only in the church such as notable critic of Christian Zionism Stephen Sizer and the historian Ilan Pappe, shown in counterpoint to the views of Zionist proponents of the secular state of Israel and of an vicarious apocalyptic struggle on behalf of the US and the Western world. It also shows young Israeli Jews mobbing the Old City in Hebron and terrorizing the local citizens with chants of "Death to the Arabs". They can, the film explains, do this with impunity because if a settler drops litter and debris on the people below their settlement all they can do is seek shelter whereas if they throw a stone back, then the Israeli military who are looking on all the while will shoot them.
We have to take their word for this in the film but the situation is one attested to elsewhere in both films and books. What speaks volumes is when we hear in it that not only the 30,000 local inhabitants live in fear of the 500 settlers, but the Israeli soldiers themselves who protect the settlers are also we are told frightened by them.
Another film recently made by the Amos Trust, Garth Hewitt interviews the Christians who have gone to the Holy Land and Hebron to monitor these acts and they say the same thing.
The extreme views of Christian Zionism are as I say echoed and in my view nourished by the inertia of the church in the UK which tries to tread a middle path between the extremes but which in so doing gives credence to them. This is a result in my view of our inability to tolerate conflict between things that we hold dear. Are the Palestinians sufferings - yes, but its okay becasue its their fault and history is made to fit the story. Moreover these cherished beliefs are less to do with the story of Israel than they are to do with our own story and taming of our own faith so as to make it compatible with our own ease, standard of living and well being. A Jesus that truly sides with the poor, befriends the victim, and consorts with prostitutes and tax collectors is not the kind of Jesus that we really want to associate oursleves with.
So our poor must come in unpoliticised colours, they need to be starving and help-able, preferably African, not vilified and called terrorists.What takes work is unpacking the words and seeing what the substance is. Is Palestinian synonymous with terrorist and Israel with making the desert bloom or are these vacuous but emotive stereotypes to enable us to stay in our comfort zone.
(C) Martin Clay
