When two young boys square off in the school playground, they will often appeal to higher powers. “My big brother can beat up your big brother!” they cry out as a scare tactic. Even if the two kids don’t come to blows, one will still try to impress the other by claiming that his elder brother is stronger, richer, or more successful.
I pray for the day when the scales fall from our leaders’ eyes, they expiate their political sins, and Washington is wholly transfigured.
American foreign policy is built on a deep foundation of Christian theology. Drawing from the teachings of Reinhold Niebuhr, which applied the notion of original sin to the conduct of foreign relations, neoconservative thinkers believe that organized religion is the most effective institution in promoting moral absolutes and self-control and staving off a rising tide of moral relativism that is breaking down the bulwarks of social order.
This past Wednesday, I was among a group of American religious leaders and scholars who met with Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in New York. In what was billed as an inter-faith dialogue, we frankly shared our strong opposition to certain Iranian government policies and provocative statements made by the Iranian president. At the same time, we avoided the insulting language employed by Columbia University president Lee Bollinger before a public audience two days earlier.
American foreign policy is built on a deep foundation of Christian theology. Some of the people who make our foreign policy may understand that foundation. Most probably aren’t even aware of it. But foundations are hidden underground. You can stand above them, and even take a strong stand upon them, without knowing they are there. When it comes to foreign policy, we are all influenced by theological foundations that we rarely see.
The majority of Israelis, like me, can no longer use the term "Zionist" to define what we believe in. "Zionism" has been hijacked by the movement of settlers who have built hundreds of settlements in the West Bank and are the primary obstacle to making peace with our Palestinian neighbors on the basis of the two-states-for-two-people solution. As I’ve argued in The Jerusalem Post, we need a new definition. We need a neo-Zionism.
The hijacking of Zionism is not a new phenomenon. It is at least as old as the occupation itself – 40 years. What is new is the realization that we may be facing the final opportunity to divide historic Palestine into two sovereign states. The settlement movement has changed the reality of the West Bank so deeply that many question the very possibility of creating a viable Palestinian state today.
War grabs the headlines, and anti-war art grabs our attention. They do so with some of the same tools: guns, bombs, and body counts. Does the visual jujitsu of anti-war art expose the horrors of violence or inadvertently reinforce our collective fascination with bloodletting?
According to the compromise proposal of UN special envoy Martti Ahtisaari, the international community was to grant “supervised independence” to Kosovo, the largely Albanian enclave in southern Serbia. This compromise plan provided Kosovo with its own constitution,its own national anthem, and perhaps most symbolically, its own flag.
With the Bush administration continuing to threaten Iran, what do to has become a hot topic for the presidential candidates. As the American presidential race moves forward, the topic of Iran will likely remain a fixture in an election dominated by issues of national security and foreign policy.