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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, AUGUST 13, 1982
PAGE 7
of American foreign policy? In the case of Operation Peace for
Galilee, Israel has already and will continue to pay a price for
the manner in which American journalism, and especially TV jour
nalism, presented this war. It was indeed a camera, used however
for e olitical pornography rather than for intellectually or pro
fessionally respectable purposes.
One of the clearest efforts to explain the Israeli-P.L.O. death struggle
appeared in the August 7, 1982 issue of Britain's newsweekly, THE ECONO
MIST. Its lead editorial was advertised on the front cover with the title,
"And the children of Israel went out with an high hand." THE ECONOMIST
editorial shows that the so-called "Christian" Western world has a lot of
difficulty understanding Israel and the way it goes to war against its
sworn enemies.
President Reagan, like many other people, has still not under
stood what makes Israel behave the way it does. When he told the
visiting Israeli foreign minister this week that there should be
a "complete end to the hostilities in and around Beirut," Mr.
Reagan missed the point••••The P.L.O. will not leave unless it
has to•••.
To think that Israelis will flinch from this logic is to misun
derstand the two things which have made them what they are. The
first is that the Israelis� still, for good reason, people of
the Old Testament. For people of the New Testament, this is not
easy to grasp1 and "people of the New Testament" means not only
ChristTan and ex-Christian Americans and Europeans, but also peo
ple in other parts of the world to whom the European empires of
the nineteenth century brought at least a veneer of European
ideas and attitudes [ shaped, one might add, by the false
church ]••••
It is suggested that you compromise with your adversaries? Thou
shalt make no covenant with them, nor show mercy unto them (Deut
eronomy). You are worried about the odds against you? Five of
you shall chase an hundred, and an hundred of you shall put ten
thousand to flight (Leviticus). A city gets in your way? The
people went up into the city, every man straight before him, and
they took the city (Joshua). To what end?
Israel then shall
dwell in safety alone (Deuteronomy)..••
The majority of today's Israelis...would certainly deny that they
think the Old Testament is a literal guide for behaviour in the
late twentieth century. But the old words ring in their ears,
and the circumstances of their life since 1948 have brought out
much of the old quality. The fact that in 1982 more than half of
the population of Israel has its rootsin the Middle EastTmean'=
ing Sephardic Jews and younger generations born in Israel],
rather than in Europe .Q.! America, sharpens the difference between
Golders Green [a Jewish-populated London suburb] and Tel Aviv.
Anyone who has seen lean, sun-blackened Israeli soldiers on road
block duty in the West Bank, or watched an Israeli tank column on
the move, knows that he has seen a gleam of the Old Testament in
the modern world.