MY ENEMY, MY FRIEND:
STORIES OF PALESTINIAN AND ISRAELI CHRISTIANS WORKING FOR PEACE IN THE HOLY LAND
BY ELLIE PHILPOTT
2002 Kent, England: Sovereign World (www.sovereign-world.org), 112 pages
TMCCC Library
A Book Review by Joseph Ng
June 2003
The 2003 Mideast Roadmap to Peace by the George W. Bush administration is but one in a long series of attempts to bring peace to a troublous region. The plan, which calls for the removal of illegal Jewish settlements and the cessation of suicide attacks, is opposed by both the Islamic militants bent on subverting all solutions that include any land for Israel and Christian Zionists that regard it as a sellout of biblical prophecy. It is the latter that evangelical Christians should be most concerned about, as they are most closely related to our theology and sphere of interaction.
Beyond the propaganda of the Israeli, Palestinian, and American media, what is it really like and what is really going on in the Holy Land? Ellie Philpott’s up-to-date and unbiased travelogue takes us through the borders and checkpoints, the storefronts and thresholds, the hearts and minds of both Palestinian and Israeli alike. More importantly, she relates the experiences and opinions of Christians like us living across a very complicated and painful divide.
DESCRIPTION
My Enemy, My Friend is introduced by Brother Andrew (God’s Smuggler and The Calling) and proceeds with six chapters:
1. Fraternizing with the Enemy
2. Survivors
3. Growing up in Gaza
4. The Seeds That God Has Planted
5. The Red Stones
6. The Garden Tomb
The reader is introduced in a very approachable manner to the basic framework of the current conflict, from the British Mandate on down to the Oslo Accords and the second Intifada. More important that just relating the experience from both sides of the barbed wire and roadblocks, Philpott interviews Christians in both tortured communities, Palestinian seminary workers, displaced and orphaned children, ex-Israel Defence Forces soldiers, Messianic Jews. Some of these live where tour buses don’t go—deep in the refugee camps of Gaza and bullet-racked junctions in Bethlehem, for instance.
For me, it was eye-opening to hear about Musalaha, an organization that tries to bring reconciliation between Palestinian and Jewish Christians, taking them on mini survivor trips in the desert and engendering mutual understanding and forgiveness of one another, and the sins of the fathers. Hope, no matter how small and fragile, is still hope, and in this case, it is built on the biblical principle of Christian brotherhood. May it ever grow to bring light and peace in that part of the world, one changed heart at a time, one loving embrace, one penitent soul, until the light and the salt have worked their way, all the way, into the Land.
CRITIQUE
There’s far more to commend in My Enemy, My Friend than to criticize, and I’m immensely thankful for the Toronto Director of Open Door’s gift of the book to me. It’s an easy read as far as the narrative goes, and it certainly brought back many memories and impressions of my trips there in 1998 and 2000, around the time Philpott visited. But its brutal honesty may offend some, especially those who have been steeped in Christian Zionist doctrine.
Christian Zionists are those who believe that today’s Israeli regime are the fulfillment of the Bible’s prophecies of the Return of Jews to their homeland; that the State of Israel has, therefore, an inalienable right to all the land in that region; and that Christians are obligated to assist and to defend the Jewish State at all costs. Their organizations sometimes evangelize the Jews and sometimes don’t, such as the International Christian Embassy of Jerusalem, which exists only to funnel money collected from Christians around the world to show friendship and solidarity with Jewish people, or charismatic shows that urge sponsorship of Jewish migrants from Russia to Israel. Many Christians and churches have bought into their beliefs regarding the “chosen people” to the extent of “becoming oblivious to the injustices committed against the Palestinians, among whom there are a number of godly Christians” (p. 99).
And this is where I feel lies the one weak point of this book: its failure to address and rebut the false theological assumption of Christian Zionism. While we all agree that every single prophecy of Scripture will happen as God decreed and revealed it, there is nothing that assures us that the 1948 establishment of Israel was a fulfillment of prophecy any more than the IDF withdrawal from Lebanon, the assassination of Presidents Rabin and Sadat, or the razing of Chairman Arafat’s compound. It is a leap of both faith and logic to read the papers and selectively identify “fulfillments” for pulpit announcements or fundraising.
But looking more closely at the biblical data, not only is nothing said for a 20th century fulfillment, but indeed the Bible itself clearly opposes the notion of that fulfillment. The crux interpretum is found in Romans 11:25, where Paul, having described Israel’s replacement in the current dispensation by the church, goes on to assure the Roman Christians that God would someday reinstate national Israel into its original position. He uses the illustration of an olive tree that has its original branches hacked off (Messiah-rejecting Israel) and implanted by branches from wild olive trees (the church, comprising us Gentiles), and finally a regrafting of those original branches into their former position. The question is when “all Israel” is saved (Romans 11:26), to which Paul says in no uncertain terms that Israel’s heart hardening will last only “until the full number of the Gentiles has come in.” In other words, when the “full number” of Gentiles to be saved is up—and only God knows that full count—all our efforts to usher in the millennial reign of David’s Son, to prop up the Zionist state, to raise money to fly in the Jews is not only futile but a lamentable waste of precious resources. Viewed from the perspective of the Great Commission, Christian Zionism in effect denies the need for world evangelism, if indeed its assumption that the “full number” of Gentiles has already come in and that we’ve been recommissioned for pro-Israeli political activism.
Philpott’s dissuasion from trumpeting either the Zionist or the Palestinian cause is wise; Jesus reminds us that His kingdom is—for the present time—not of this world. It is hoped that readers of this great little book would get this message and direct their energies and lives to the commission that hasn’t expired yet, the Great Commission. And to one other commandment, to love one another, not only our brethren who are Messianic Jews that we’ve heard so much about, but also those who are Palestinians, that the Christian media have for too long ignored, if not betrayed.
ADDITIONAL REFERENCES
http://www.salam.org/policy/falwell.html – February 1, 1998, open letter to Jerry Falwell, a Christian Zionist, by 12 Palestinian pastors protesting his “the cause of Christ here in the Holy Land, throughout the Arab World (the home of about 250 million people), and throughout the Islamic world (over one billion people).”
http://jewsnotzionists.org – orthodox Jews who oppose carnal efforts to restore the Davidic Kingdom and Israelite nation
http://www.bobmay.info/nasserlandcase.htm – a close-up of how Palestinians, Christian and Muslim alike, like Naboth of old are losing their land
http://www.flumc.org/sept11/rte15.htm – Palestinian Christians condemn the September 11 terrorist attacks
http://www.christian-aid.org.uk/video/204isrp2/0422mon.htm – audio and video of activities in the West Bank