The New Converts

Israel has allowed its citizenship law to be hijacked by a narrow political and religious lobby. There is an urgent need for new legislation that will take into account divided Palestinian families. In order to determine its borders, Israel must also decide what it means to be a citizen

By Anshel Pfeffer
First Published 2009-12-18
Courtesy Of Middle-East-Online

JERUSALEM - Twelve thousand Ethiopians live around a compound in the city of Gondar. They left their villages for a promise of a better life in a new country. The compound is operated through the contributions of American Jews and the Ethiopians are taught Jewish customs by teachers flown in from Israel. None of them are Jews. Before reaching the compound, they never met a Jew in their lives. But if all goes according to the plan, they will undergo mass conversion and become Israeli citizens. This is part of a plan to swell the ranks of Jews between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River.

Demographers may argue over the actual date but the reality is irreversible: low numbers of immigrants and the discrepancy between Jewish and Palestinian birth-rates will lead to a situation at some point in the not too distant future where Jews are no longer the majority in the territory encompassing Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. This is one of the main reasons that a majority of Israelis support a two-state solution.

However, the strategy of some rabbis and right-wing politicians, desperate to hold on to the biblical homelands of Judea and Samaria, is to find other Jews who are willing to move to Israel.

Two decisions made by Interior Minister Eli Yishai in recent weeks are a case in point. One was the order to send back the government officials who examined the eligibility of Ethiopian citizens for emigration to Israel. A previous cabinet decision had been to end the emigration of the Falashmura, a group who believe they descended from Jews and were coerced to convert to Christianity. Yishai overturned that decision, potentially opening the way for tens of thousands of more Ethiopians to move to Israel, undergo a conversion to Judaism and become Israeli citizens. The second was Yishai’s authorisation of the emigration of over 7,000 citizens of the north-eastern Indian provinces Mizuram and Manipur to Israel. This is the same Yishai who has been the most strident opponent of allowing non-Jewish guest workers and their children to remain in Israel. Behind the scenes are a number of right-wing movements whose main objective is to bring millions of new Jews to Israel.

Since its foundation and until the end of the 1990s, Israel absorbed huge waves of immigration, but today, over ninety percent of the Jews still living outside Israel are citizens of western democracies who have no desire to move to Zion. Emigration from these countries is less than ten thousand a year. Barring an unforeseeable catastrophe or outbreak of anti-Semitism in North America, few believe that Israel will ever see another wave of mass immigration. Thus a quest for new reservoirs of Jews has gone into high gear and is likely to yield immigrants from unexpected places.

The legend of the 10 tribes of Israel, the biblical kingdom, conquered by the Assyrians in 733 BC, who were dispersed throughout the world but will one day return to the fold, was once a romantic notion. Every report of a tribe living in some far-flung corner of the globe, lighting candles on Saturday and eschewing pork fired the imagination. Lobbyists for their immigration still manage to peddle this romantic vision to the Israeli media, but by the religious right, they are seen today as a tool for preventing territorial compromise with the Palestinians.

Another potential demographic reservoir are the descendants of Spanish Jews who were forced to convert by the Inquisition 500 years ago. Some estimate their numbers at over a hundred million.

Israel’s Law of Return granting every Jew and the child or grandchild of a Jew automatic citizenship was a direct reaction to the Nazi racial laws and the centuries when persecuted Jews could not find sanctuary. Today it is being used for different purposes and the interior minister is free to interpret and enforce the law almost at will. Yishai, chairman of Shas, totally identifies with the aims of the rabbis who operate the conversion centres for these prospective citizens.

Israel has allowed its most fundamental citizenship law to be hijacked by a narrow political and religious lobby. There is an urgent need for new legislation on this matter that is not so easily manipulated by political and religious interests and that will take into account also divided Palestinian families and the hundreds of thousands of guest workers and their children and the refugees being smuggled in from the Egyptian border. Legal guidelines of eligibility for citizenship have to be specified.

As the world’s only Jewish state, Israel has a right to include affinity with the Jewish people as a consideration when granting citizenship, but the process must become more transparent. In order to determine its borders, Israel must also decide what it means to be a citizen.

Anshel Pfeffer is a correspondent for the Israeli daily, Ha’aretz. This article was written for the Common Ground News Service (CGNews).

What If The Uighurs Were Christian Rather Than Muslim?

By Glenn Greenwald
Monday July 6, 2009 08:07 EDT
Courtesy Of The Salon Media Group

(Updated Below - Update II - Update III)

According to The New York Times this morning, violent clashes between Chinese government forces and Muslim Uighurs -- that country's long-oppressed minority -- have left at least 140 people dead and close to 1,000 injured. This incident in Western China highlights an important fact about America's "War on Terror."

Just imagine if the Uighurs were a Christian -- rather than Muslim -- minority, battling against the tyrannical Communist regime in Beijing, resisting various types of persecution, and demanding religious freedom. They would be lionized by America's Right, as similar Christian minorities, oppressed by tyrannical regimes, automatically are. Episodes like these -- where a declared Tyranny like China violently acts against citizens with whom we empathize -- are ones about which, in general, the American political class loves to sermonize.

But the Uighurs are Muslim, not Christian, and hostility towards them thus easily outweighs the opportunity they present to undermine the Chinese Government. Rather than support and venerate them, we instead spent this decade declaring them to be "enemy combatants" and locking them up in Guantanamo -- despite the fact that they have never evinced any interest in doing anything other than resisting Chinese persecution, and have certainly never taken actions against the U.S. (as even the Bush administration ultimately admitted). Yet even now, both Congress and the administration actively block release into the U.S. even of those Uighurs we wrongfully imprisoned for years, while the Right screams with outrage -- and fear -- over the administration's commendable efforts to find a home for them elsewhere.

For all the Serious analysis about the War on Terror, so much of it has been driven by nothing more complex or noble than sheer hostility towards Muslims. Muslims generally -- not just Al Qaeda -- replaced Communists as our New Enemy and became the new enabling force for our endless state of War and never-ending expansions of executive power. Rather obviously, the Uighurs were swept into the Enemy category solely by virtue of their status as Muslims. What more compelling evidence of that could be imagined than the fact that we imprisoned -- and continue to imprison -- people at Guantanamo whose only political interest is in resisting oppression by the Chinese government?

UPDATE: On a related note: there is much worthwhile commentary about Joe Biden's statements yesterday that Israel is "entitled" as a sovereign nation to attack Iran and the U.S. would do nothing to stand in its way. Marc Lynch examines what Biden likely meant and did not mean, but more importantly documents that it was perceived in the Middle East -- including in Iran and Israel -- as the U.S. giving the "green light" to Israel. Digby explains the particular stupidity of the U.S. appearing to threaten Iran with an Israeli attack -- of all things -- in light of the current political turmoil inside that country. And Chris Floyd describes how the "principles" invoked by Biden apply only to the U.S. and those within "the golden circle of imperial favor," while those disfavored by the U.S. are explicitly denied such rights.

There are so many hypocrisies embedded in what Biden said that it is impossible to note all of them. Last August, Biden himself demanded that Russia -- at least as "sovereign" a country as Israel -- withdraw from Georgia and threatened recriminations if they did not. The U.S. is now demanding that sovereign Israel cease West Bank settlements. The entire effort against Iran is based on an attempt to dictate that sovereign country's nuclear policies. The whole world knows that telling other countries what to do is what the U.S. does generally, and that the massive amounts of various aid we give to Israel allows us to dictate its actions particularly. Given all the ways we enable Israeli actions -- financial, military, diplomatic -- there are very few people who would interpret an Israeli attack on Iran as being done without American approval.

All that said, I think Biden's comments yesterday were more the by-product of the unique ineptitude and plain dumbness that Biden often exhibits rather than a conscious attempt by the Obama administration to announce some new policy. I say that mostly because Biden himself repeated the same comments back in October, 2008, when he told so-called "members of the Jewish media" that whether Israel attacks Iran "is not a question for us to tell the Israelis what they can and cannot do." That's just how Biden speaks when asked about Israel, and that was true before yesterday. Still, whether intended or not, our general willingness to constantly threaten military action against Iran, and to refuse to publicly oppose Israel's threats, is rather obviously inconsistent with our attempts to depict Them -- those irrational, barbaric Muslims -- as the root of all hostility and aggression.

UPDATE II: On an entirely unrelated note: Dan Abrams, formerly of MSNBC, launched a new wesbite today devoted to reporting on the media world (Howie Kurtz profiles it here today). The site (Mediaite), among other things, maintains rankings of media influence using puportedly objective metrics. Their ranking of the top print and online columnists is here, and it ranks my "column" at # 9 (tragically just behind Charles Krauthammer's but ahead of Karl Rove's, Peggy Noonan's, David Brooks' and Kurtz's). Attempting to quantify influence this way is a dubious proposition, but since the influence (or lack thereof) of blogs is a commonly debated topic among many here (including at Salon today), it seems worth noting.

UPDATE III: So predictable: ordinarily, on the Right, there would be nothing more Satanic than a tyrannical Communist regime suppressing the religious freedom of its citizens -- except when the minority in question is Muslim, in which case they side with and adopt the propaganda of the Communist regime and disgustingly depict the regime as the victim. The Muslims resisting persecution are -- needless to say -- "terrorists."

An Emperor's Secrets

The Greatest Builder In Christian Antiquity Was One Of History's Greatest Politico-Religious Murderers

By Jill Kamil
9 - 15 April 2009
Issue No. 942
Courtesy Of Al-Ahram Weekly Online

The Byzantine emperor Justinian, far from being an enlightened patron of the arts as his reputation suggests, was a tyrant. The man famous for founding great buildings all over the Christian world, including Santa Sophia in Constantinople, San Vitale in Ravenna and the Church of the Transfiguration on the site of the Monastery of St Catherine in Sinai; this powerful leader who ruled the Eastern Roman Empire from 527 to 565, was an autocrat who

"... without hesitation... wrote decrees for the plundering of countries, sacking of cities, and slavery of whole nations for no cause whatever..." Justinian's actions were such that "... if one wished to take all the calamities which had befallen the Romans before this time, and weigh them against his crimes... it would be found that more men had been murdered by this single man then in all previous history."

I chanced upon this remarkable information while browsing the web. First, let me hasten to assure you that this is not one of my regular pastimes. My personal library contains most of the books I need for my research; I am within easy reach of many libraries. I am one of that older breed that prefers a book in hand to browsing the web.

Anyway, I thought I knew as much as I needed to know about Justinian's rule of Egypt.

I knew, for example, about his (incomplete) 13th edict, in which he tabled drastic measures to exercise political control over his richest province by appointing a governor with both military and civil power in place of a prefect who hitherto held complete control. This information was included in a chapter of my book, Christianity in the Land of the Pharaohs, in which I added that, as a result of his reorganisation, wealthy and powerful magnates emerged in Egypt who, through successive generations, filled the highest positions in the land. Such families had their private army of mercenaries (Melkites, or "emperor's men") who regarded the local population, especially itinerant monks, as fanatical heretics who did not adhere to the doctrinal decrees tabled at the Council of Chalcedon in 451. What I did not know was the extent of Justinian's misrule until, while scrolling down a long list on the World Wide Web under the key word "Justinian" last week (with view to tracing the main lines of artistic development in Mediterranean art in the sixth century), my eye fell on the words "The Secret History ".

Now, as any journalist knows, words like "secret", "clandestine", "furtive" and "underhand" are bound to catch a reader's attention. And I am no exception. I double-clicked the words, and up came a history written by one of the most important historians in the early Byzantine era. His name is Procopius, and he glossed over the facts of Justinian's rule in his early histories, finally putting the full truth to pen and paper only in his later years because he was well aware of the danger of writing "the truth about certain persons" in the certainty that, if found out, which he was sure he would be, he would inevitably be put to a "most horrible death".

I was fascinated. I printed out the document for easy reading and spent the rest of the evening in an armchair learning about Justinian's ruthless campaigns of religious tyranny throughout the Christian empire, supported by the Byzantine church-state alliance.

Procopius describes his campaign to stamp out pagans, exterminate religious dissidents, and arrest, crucify, torture or humiliate prominent citizens. The Secret History makes horrific and absorbing reading.

Justinian the great, clad in glittering robes as depicted in mosaics, carvings and icons, savagely persecuted Manichaeans, Jews, and Egyptian Christians whom he regarded as heretics, declaring of the latter that "it is enough that they are alive". Along with Gnostics (from the Greek word "gnosis" meaning knowledge) they were persecuted, anathematised and systematically and progressively oppressed. As for Gnostics, he regarded them as practitioners of sorcery, magic and idolatry "stricken with the madness of impure Hellenes", and he burned their literature and deprived them of their rights of possession, reducing them to penury. Justinian ruled an age of complete intolerance and intense persecution. According to Procopius, he was a fanatical tyrant, who conducted trials that resulted in more executions than acquittals. I must admit that I did not know of the extent of the persecution and sufferings of the Egyptian population in the sixth century until last week, when Procopius's Secret History laid bare his policy.

Back in the 1990s when I was writing my guidebook Aswan and Abu Simbel, I noted that in the year 537 Justinian sent Narses, commander of his troops in Egypt, to close the temple of Isis on Philae, the last outpost of paganism on Egyptian soil (let me add that Philae strictly belonged to Nubia). He did this by confiscating the revenue of the temple, throwing the priests into prison, and establishing garrisons between Aswan and the Second Cataract. The temple, I added, was converted into a church by Bishop Theodorus in 577. These were interesting facts, but I did not then realise that Justinian reserved especial hatred for worshippers of the "Great Goddess" Isis. He subjected her worshippers to torture or forced suicide, and Procopius describes trials behind close doors and terror descending on whole communities of pagans all over the Christian world.

As for schools of philosophy and a liberal education like those of Alexandria and Plato's academy in Athens, which were centres of philosophy, religion, humanities and literature for hundreds of years, Justinian's decrees ordered their total destruction. His malice was such that he turned against astrologers, "... whipping them on the back and parading them on camels... though they were old men, and in every way respectable, with no reproach against them except that they studied the science of the stars while living in such a city."

Justinian's policy of temple destruction also supported forced conversions and, as a result of his persecutions and pogroms, a reputed 70,000 people throughout the empire, from Syria, through Egypt as far as Spain, were forced to convert to Christianity. In Egypt, where the old Roman fortress had earlier been remodelled by Emperor Arcadius (395-408) to accommodate his Melkite forces, there is evidence that they converted to Christianity through baptism. One of the earliest surviving churches in the world, that of St Sergius, was dedicated to two Roman soldiers (Sergius and Bacchus) who were martyred in Syria in 303. It was planned in accordance with early church rituals, which is to say that Melkite candidates for baptism were first received in a small antechamber and then descended into a baptistery where they were immersed in water, and only when the rite was completed were they allowed to enter the church and receive the Eucharist.

Other churches in Old Cairo that were built in honour of foreign saints were that of St Barbara, a young martyr from western Asia who converted to Christianity and was tortured for her faith. In nearby Al-Damshiriya there is a monastery complex built in honour of a saint known as Abu Seifein, or "he of two swords", who was a Roman legionary named Mercurius who defied the emperor Decius, refused to worship idols, and suffered a martyr's death. In other words, the identities of sainted individuals to whom many churches in today's largely Coptic area of Cairo were originally dedicated were not local saints, but those from western Asia. No fewer than 42 were constructed under imperial control, and were only taken over by Egyptians after the Eastern Roman Patriarch and his Melkite army evacuated the country following the arrival of the Arab army in the seventh century.

Not surprisingly, Egypt had no shortage of political and religious activists. Samuel of Qalamun was one of them. Like saints Pachomius and Athanasius before him, he was well respected for his piety and his fame spread far beyond the semi-circle of barren land where his monastery in Middle Egypt is located. It has a large keep, built so as the monks could protect themselves. From whom? In the light of Procopius's Secret History one is encouraged to suggest that this might have been more for protection against intolerant Melkite forces than against Bedouin raiders. Samuel, and others like him, was regarded as a dissident by the imperial government, and was captured and flogged time and again. In one terrible and humiliating confrontation he lost an eye.

Justinian retaliated to such national uprisings by ordering his army put down all those with "dissenting doctrines, which are called heresies". They were ordered, time and again, to abolish their beliefs on threat of punishment for disobedience, and even loss of their right to will property to their children and other relatives. Justinian employed all available methods to impose Chalcedonian decrees on Egyptian Christians, in the mistaken belief that doctrinal differences lay at the root of the problem. However, that was not the issue at all. National feeling was intensely opposed to foreign occupation.

I am reminded of a chapter in my Christianity in the Land of the Pharaohs in which I wrote about George of Cappadocia, a cruel tyrant who hounded out and persecuted Egyptian Christians. I described how soldiers from the imperial corvees, 3,000 in number, were brought into Egypt and marched to the monasteries of Nitrea in the eastern Delta, which were then occupied by some 5,000 monks. They gave the monks the option of taking their places as loyal supporters of the imperial government and adopting their doctrinal creed, or dying. I wrote, "The monks who refused were slaughtered, and so began a scandalous period in Egyptian history when the Christian government of Constantinople, with stakes, swords and chains, attacked monasteries. Bishops hid behind the altars and terrified monks were reviled, kicked and trampled."

And so the mighty Justinian, whose lavish fabrics of silk were woven at Antinoe in the Fayoum, and who built grand churches, assumed the role of an oppressor of the first order. Multitudes were arrested by his armed forces. The Old Roman fortress of Babylon in Old Cairo became a prison. Alexandria was dominated by a Chalcedonian patriarch and his imperial forces, and Egyptian Christians were expelled from that great city where St Mark the Evangelist was martyred. The banks of the Nile and areas of the inner desert were turned into a nightmarish spectacle of horror, the population humiliated. Resentment against the foreign government erupted into riots in some areas; the nationalists were temporarily placated with promises, and then when riots broke out again, troops massacred them.

Reacting against Justinian's persecutions, and no longer able to tolerate the nightmarish saga of torture, whippings and exiling, Egyptian Christians strengthened their own ecclesiastical organisation and, in the year 570, formally broke away from the imperial church of Constantinople and founded its own national, or Coptic Church, with its own Pope and Patriarch resident at Wadi Natrun. And still the oppression continued. Egypt had two patriarchs, one representing Egyptian Christians who were deeply hostile to Byzantine rule, and the other, the patriarch Cyrus (known as Makaukis) at Alexandria, representing the Byzantine Church, who was one of the worst oppressors of Egyptian Christians.

Now, thanks to Procopius's Secret History, I know more about the drastic and merciless steps taken by Justinian to wipe out religious diversity, not only in Egypt but "to the ends of the earth", ordering expeditions of his forces into the Turkish mountains, to Lebanon and Syria, deep into the Sahara, to remote areas of the Libyan desert, and all along Egypt's Nile Valley. Procopius reveals the extent to which Justinian enforced his ruthless laws, and one can envision Egyptian Christians and emboldened zealous Egyptian monks fighting for their country's freedom from oppressive occupation. Little wonder that when the Arab general Amr Ibn Al-'As marched his army into Egypt in the seventh century, Copts (Egyptian Christians) aided him in expelling from the country, the despised foreign patriarch and his powerful Melkite army.

References:

Internet Medieval Sourcebook, Procopius, Secret History, Chicago.

Christianity in the Land of the Pharaohs, Jill Kamil (2002.) Hardback: Routledge, Paperback: The American University in Cairo Press

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