Beyond the Pale

By Charlie Johnston

I have been getting increasingly disturbed by the growing anti-Israel sentiment I am finding in the ranks of traditional, pious Catholics and, to a lesser extent, among conservatives of all stripes. For a time, I interpreted this as a baffling, but growing, anti-semitism. But a dear friend who has gotten increasingly anti-Israel  corrected me, offering that it was NOT antisemitism, just increasing frustration with Israel and Zionism. I think she is mainly right about that, though I have been shocked to find some people I genuinely respect and admire who are, in fact, anti-semites.

Let’s deal with the actual anti-semites first. The explanations on why this is right and pleasing to God hearken me back to my childhood. Almost all of my older relatives were raised in the Jim Crow south. For my first three and half years, I lived in Norwood – the slum section of Birmingham, Alabama, with my Mom, Grandmother and Grandfather. Ours was one of two white families I knew of in our neighborhood. I was a very sociable pup so, as you can imagine, most of my friends were black. Shoot, my toddler mind thought white folks were the minority. For whatever reason, my Mom and Dad were never bigots…but most of the rest of the extended family was. My grandfather used to take me around to his beer joints and introduce me as his, “damn little negro-loving grandson.” (For the record, “negro” was not the actual word he used.)

Yet if he said it in mock exasperation, I could hear, even then, a certain pride in his introduction of me. Southerners admire stubborn independence, even when it contradicts their own views. I had been scolded and spanked for cavorting with black kids and, even, sharing my ice cream cone with them – but I was incorrigible and unrepentant about it and Poppo (as I called him) was pretty proud that I could not be yelled or whupped into submission. I later found that, for all his mouthiness on the subject, he was just fitting in.

Once, coming down on a surprise visit in my early 20’s, I walked in on Poppo with a black friend from work. Poppo got up to put something away and go to the washroom. While he was gone, his friend told me, “You know your Grandpa’s a fraud, don’t you?” Startled, I asked what he meant. He said he knew Poppo loved to mouth off about Negro this and Negro that…but that everyone at the plant knew that if they were short of money and hurting, come see Poppo. He would help every time, with the admonition that they don’t let other folks know he was lending money to negroes. I felt a surge of more affection for my grandpa.

But if he was a fraud on the subject, a lot of my other relatives were not. Most of them were also Bible Belt Christians, so they came up with exotic and detailed justifications for the bigotry they bore that was pretty clearly proscribed by Scripture. Usually, they claimed that black folks bore the mark of Cain – and so were to be treated as outcasts. The explanations for why this was so were utterly absurd, but given with great detail and sophistry. Alas, I was subject to them all too often because almost all knew I didn’t buy any of it – and others were eager to straighten me out. Some of them were clever enough to realize that my polite rejection of all this might be a sign of a larger rejection of their interpretation of faith entirely. They were right. Oddly, though, most still liked me.

The last few years I have gotten the same sort of long-winded, overheated explanations for why the Jews have been rejected by God entirely…from people who are more than sophisticated enough to know better. One woman approached me at a major event and asked when we were going to denounce the “fraud” that there was a Holocaust. In surprise, I replied that that is extremely well documented, so there would never be a debunking. She tried a “gotcha” by asking me why, if that was true, Dwight Eisenhower didn’t mention the Holocaust in his memoirs. Absolutely astonished, I told her that not only had he written of it extensively, but that Eisenhower was the man who ordered that what they found be filmed so no one could ever credibly deny that this happened. The woman replied that that was not what she had been told. I told her I had read the material, including Eisenhower’s memoirs…that I don’t make critical decisions based on only on what some guy said. Unrepentant, she told me she might have to quit collaborating with CORAC. I told her if she remained a Holocaust denier, I would prefer that she did leave.

That was the worst of the actual anti-semites. But I have heard lengthy explanations of how the Jews aren’t Jews anymore – and certainly not the Chosen People, that they have been rejected by God and that Catholics (or other Christians) are now the Chosen People. Yeah, it sounds like an adoptee’s fantasy, but there it is. Others have said that the Jews, having rejected Christ, have been rejected by Christ and so are entitled to no consideration. No one has successfully explained to me, then, what Romans 11 means (though some have lamely tried). In that chapter, St. Paul explains that it is a mystery that God has partially hardened the Jewish nation so that many will not acknowledge Christ as the Messiah until the “fullness of the Gentiles” has come in. Paul does not say that God has rejected the Jews, rather that for His own mysterious purposes, God has delayed recognition of the Messiah among a cohort of Jews until all the Gentiles have been evangelized – and then the remaining Jews will come in.

Though to different ends, both as a little boy and an old man I have listened to people torture and mutilate Scripture until they can get it to mean what they want it to mean. I wasn’t buying it then – and I’m not buying it now. I spent decades restlessly reading and re-reading the whole Bible to try to discern what it meant – especially to its original hearers. I will tell you, bluntly, that I am jealous of what I hope my place in heaven will be. I know to secure it requires me to discern purely what God wants of me and then to do it as best I can, not go off on some puerile  mission to force Scripture into seeming to agree with my idiosyncratic, random ideas. My method has always been to find what Scripture says that agrees with me, then find all those passages that seem to contradict it. From the dynamic tension involved emerges startling, often unexpected insights that I believe give a more authentic picture of the mystery and power of God’s word than superficial cherry-picking. It also forces me to deal with things I don’t like – at least initially. It bothers me a lot that so many people stop after finding a snippet of Scripture that seems to confirm what they already want to believe. So much of Biblical “interpretation” strikes me as a bunch of bratty kids arguing over who Dad likes best. Better to try to do His will and let him correct and guide you rather than restlessly seek to claim the crown as His favorite. I’m convinced of this: His actual favorites will be those who filled people with peace, love, and brotherhood, drawing them into closer communion with Him. He wants to draw all He has created to Him.

That about covers the actual anti-semites. Then there are those who oppose Israel on seemingly practical grounds. The most common religious refrain I hear on this is from people who are horrified that Christians have been attacked. That is true, at least for those Christians in the midst of a war zone. As William Tecumsah Sherman said, “War is hell.” That is why we should try everything we can to avoid it. Innocent non-combatants are killed in every war, either as collateral damage or when they seek to assert themselves as ersatz “peacemakers.”

I anger secularists when I voice my absolute support of the old Christian Crusades. I would no more apologize for the Crusades than I would apologize for defeating Hitler. The Crusades were NOT Christianity’s attack on innocent Islam; they were Christianity’s counter-attack against the war of extinction Islam mounted to destroy Christianity and extinguish it from the globe. The only major criticism I have is that it took so long for Christianity to respond in the first place. By the time we began, Islam had already taken all of the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal) and big parts of France, Italy and other European areas. That does not mean that I do not see that there were times when some Christian Crusaders committed actual atrocities. When you stir the elemental passions necessary to sustain a successful war, the human condition almost guarantees that will happen. The answer is to instill and enforce discipline and honor, knowing that it will never prevent all offenses – not to give up the war effort and submit your citizens to subjugation.

While some Christian communities in the Middle East have been caught up in war zones, others think themselves pacifists or peacemakers by giving the initiators of terror sanctuary from those that would defend themselves. I do not understand why some Christians think themselves enlightened by protecting killers from being held to account by the countrymen of those who were killed, but that is a reality. It eludes any coherent interpretation of the Gospels I can think of, but there is a sizable minority of Christians who think our duty is to allow ourselves and all others be killed without contest. They must have missed the 22^nd Chapter of Luke, where Jesus tells his disciples that He is leaving, and so those who do not have a sword must get themselves one. Or perhaps they think that Jesus did not know what a sword is for. Perhaps it is the common misinterpretation of Jesus’ dictum that, “He who lives by the sword will die by the sword.” That dictum cannot, under any rational interpretation, mean that no one should ever use a sword. If so, how to explain when Jesus told His disciples to get one if they didn’t already have one? To live by the sword is to seek to impose your will by force. He who seeks to impose his will by force will eventually be overthrown by force. One could even see it as a prophetic statement against Islam, which would not rise to seek to convert the world by force for another six centuries. Any coherent, complete reading of the Gospels could never see it as a ban on defense – either of self or the community. But one of the satan’s great tricks has been to addict the lazy to bumper sticker theology.

Then there is the hostile misdefinition of “Zionism.” Some opponents either maliciously or unwittingly act as if Zionism is some declaration of supremacy or privilege by Jews. Poppycock! The Zionist movement gathered force at the turn of the 20^th Century. It was simple and straightforward: the conviction that the Jews should have a defensible homeland. I believe that any large, easily identifiable ethnic or religious group should have that, particularly one that has suffered widespread persecution. So I, too, am a Zionist. Oddly enough, this position did not become terribly controversial until several years after the state of Israel came into being. For the first half of the last century, Arabs and Jews lived largely in harmony in the Palestinian region of the Middle East. Even the founding of Israel was not overly contentious after US Pres. Harry Truman first gave it diplomatic recognition. After all, the Jews were only being given a barren strip of desert that had not been worth much for millennia. The world largely thought it a good bargain to rid itself of examination of its refusal to help Jews during the Holocaust by giving them a near useless strip of desert for their very own. The controversy drew force and developed into raw hatred only after Israel astonishingly made their hunk of desert bloom and flower. Arabs hated that the Jews could so quickly make the desert that had always thwarted them into such beautiful, valuable land. There is an old principle about human nature: most men will forgive you soon enough for being wrong; few will ever forgive you for being right. That principle showed itself in growing force in the fifties, sixties and seventies, culminating in Arabs launching two (count ‘em, two!) failed wars of extinction against Israel to assuage their own resentment. Since then it has been constant harassment and terror against the tiny democracy. The world, at best, has wrongly treated aggressor and aggrieved as moral equivalents. At worst (the usual setting) it has treated the aggrieved as the offender simply for existing.

I understand some exasperation with Israel and Jews. When Jews abandon their faith for mere secular ethnicity, they have the most amazing penchant for making common cause with people who are bent on destroying them as if spouting their enemies’ ideology will somehow buy them some sort of indulgence.

I was close friends with a very conservative fellow who, for a time, was head of Catholic Social Services in a Diocese. I even did a couple of research projects for him. He often complained to me about how far-left liberal most of the board was. When Illinois made it mandatory for adoption facilitators to place children with same-sex couples, Catholic Social Services (though recognized for decades as Illinois’ premium placement contractor) was banned from the process. At the first meeting after that decision, my friend told me all the lefties on the board were shell-shocked. At some point he told them, “You thought they were only coming after me: I always knew they were coming after you, too.” There are no indulgences to be had from people who hate you, regardless of how you bow, scrape or kneel to their ideology.

To support Israel is not to agree with it in every decision or policy. I personally think the Israeli political structure is far too influenced by socialist tendencies and that the Israeli judicial system is the most corrupt in the free world (I no longer consider most of western Europe to be part of the free world). To support it is to acknowledge its legitimacy as a sovereign nation among other sovereign nations.

I think a lot of people of good will have been fooled into thinking that Israel is a constant irritant in the Middle East and the primary reason why we can’t have peace there. They are just exhausted with all the controversy – and wrongly think that if Israel was removed from the equation, there would be peace. They have been beguiled by the 80 years that Israel has served as a buffer in the Middle East and a buttress of global stability. Israel and Jews have NEVER been radical Islam’s primary target. Christianity and Western Civilization are. Israel has been the primary reason radical Islam has NOT been able to join forces in a new Ottoman Empire from which to launch a decisive attack against western Europe, much of which radical Islam considers land to be stolen from Muslims. (Understand, Islamic doctrine does NOT regard ownership as a matter of original ethnic origin. It considers any land ever owned by Muslims, whether by purchase, theft, or conquest, to be Muslim land. Therefore, the nearly third of western Europe occupied by Islam at the start of the Crusades, is Muslim-owned land.)

There is a great, but muffled, division in Islam right now – perhaps best illustrated by the dichotomy between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia encompasses a theocratic people uneasily governed by secular rulers: Iran encompasses a secular people ruled by theocratic leaders. The “moderate” Muslims, led by Saudi Arabia, want to work with and do business with the rest of the world. The radical Muslims, led by Iran, seek to be true to the Koran. They want to trigger Islamic Armageddon which they believe will turn the whole world over to Islam. I could get deeper into this and will, eventually. But the reality is that Israel is the main obstacle to Iran and radical Islam getting past the preliminaries and launching war to the death with every part of the world that is not Islamic. So your best bet, if you want comprehensive global war fought on apocalyptic Islamic lines is to abandon Israel. If you are hoping for ultimate peace, you need to disabuse yourself of the notion that Israel is the problem.

I continue to think highly of many people I know who have become anti-Israel. But I also think they do not know near as much about either history or theology as they think they do. I will NOT be joining them in their errant nostrums.

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The Supreme Court got a well-earned rebuke from the Fifth Circuit last week for acting in an utterly arbitrary and capricious manner, showing massive disrespect to both the executive branch and lower courts. The Supremes are perilously close to ruling that presidents can only do what the courts allow them to – a practice that will either spark the largest Constitutional crisis you ever dreamed of or will end the American experiment entirely. Now that the Supreme’s swagger is earning tart pushback from even the lower courts, I think maybe the Supremes might rethink the prudence of their dreams of a judicial coup.

The circumstances were compellingly presented in Jeff Childer’s blog, Coffee and Covid, last Wednesday. I reprint, below, the key passages:

“At least one federal judge is pushing back, in a darkly amusing fashion, on the Supreme Court’s decision to stay Trump’s gang member deportation plan. Yesterday, Rolling Stone ran the story headlined, “Trump Judge Slams Supreme Court, Says Courts Are ‘Not a Denny’s’.” Displaying extraordinary judicial annoyance, Fifth Circuit Appellate Judge James Ho wrote a humdinger of an order castigating the Supreme Court’s decision.

There were too many good parts to include them all in today’s post. Read the whole thing for a laugh.

Judge Ho was the lead judge in a unanimous three-judge panel who entered the original decision denying a deportation stay that the Supreme Court reversed. Ho wasn’t so much upset about their stay (but not enthusiastic, either), as much as he was annoyed that the Supreme Court criticized him and his fellow judges for waiting 14 hours to rule on the ACLU’s emergency injunction motion.

Judge Ho, warming to his theme, began by criticizing the Supreme Court for its disrespect to the lower district judge, and not least of all to President Trump:

Next, including a snappy line destined for a thousand echoing quotations, he wrote that it wasn’t his job, or any other court’s job, to keep the Executive Branch under control:

But it was the short deadline that bothered Ho the most. The Supreme Court waved aside the fact that the District Court had told the ACLU it would give the government one day (24 hours) to respond to the ACLU’s emergency motion, that it had filed just after midnight at 12:34 am. But around noon the next day, the ACLU gave the busy District judge an ultimatum—respond within 42 minutes or it would appeal to the Supreme Court.

The judge didn’t, couldn’t, meet the 42-minute deadline. So as promised, the ACLU appealed. The Supreme Court’s majority unnecessarily blamed its rare intervention on the District Court’s sloth, complaining that in 14 hours —counting from the midnight filing— it didn’t rule on the ACLU’s emergency motion. After reminding the Supremes how long they take to respond to emergency injunction motions (weeks and months), Judge Ho’s response to the 14-hour nonsense was not subtle:

 

Not a Denny’s! That’s gold. Judge Ho wondered whether the Supreme Court was creating a demanding new 14-hour response deadline for district courts. But if not, he wondered what it says about justice:

Ouch! And there was a lot more. Read it for edification and amusement.

It is often said that judges like Judge Ho on the Circuit Courts of Appeal are actually the most powerful judges in America, since the Supreme Court can only process a handful of appeals every year. So Judge Ho wasn’t just shouting into the whirlwind.

The Supreme Court deserved every bit of that withering criticism. It unfairly threw the district judge under the bus, just to create for itself an easy pretext to interfere in the case. Having said that, I should stress again that SCOTUS did not decide the merits. A new three-judge panel on the Fifth Circuit now has a chance to focus on the case, and if Judge Ho’s sentiments are any guide, the ACLU will be trying to dig itself out of a giant legal hole in the ground. It’s going to need a bigger shovel.”

 

‘Nuff said. Though it has not escaped my notice that the Supreme’s were a lot less sanguine in subsequent rulings last week about trying to dictate how the President must use Article II powers that the actual Constitution gives only to him.

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The marvelous Austin Ruse wrote one of the better retrospectives, Let the Forgetting Begin,  I have seen on the Papacy of Francis at this early stage in Leo XIV’s reign. It is well worth a look-see and some contemplation.

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