Desmond Tutu, Liberation Theology, and Anti-Semitism

The South African clergyman Desmond Tutu has made himself the patron of the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center, a Christian organization whose goal is to encourage churches to boycott Israel. Christine Williams explains the theological roots of this particular form of hatred for the Jewish state:

Liberation theology is a radical movement that originally developed in South America before making its way to South Africa. The movement was apparently created in response to poverty and ill-treatment of ordinary people. It was caricatured in the phrase, “If Jesus Christ were on earth today, he would be a Marxist revolutionary.”

Liberation theology subsequently became influential in the churches under South African apartheid. Black theologians, to answer the religious questions of the poor and oppressed, confronted the theology of the Christian status quo, which tended to align with the prevailing institutions of power. . . . To [these] theologians, [liberation theology] was a challenge to the church to rise up against apartheid. [However,] what was once crafted as a just challenge to the Church in 1985 . . . became warped into [anti-Israel] propaganda in 2009. . . .

As the patron of Sabeel Center, Tutu . . . disregards the countless Christians being slaughtered in Muslim states, the black slaves still being held in Muslim states such as Mauritania, the forcible taking of “infidel” slaves and sex slaves by Boko Haram and Islamic State, the racist genocide in Darfur, and the millions of Muslims slaughtered by other Muslims since 1948.

Read more at Gatestone

More about: Anti-Semitism, Israel & Zionism, Jewish-Christian relations, Liberation theology, Middle East Christianity, South Africa

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF