THE OTHER ANTI-SEMITISM
The Plight of the Christians of the Middle East:
A Personal and Historical Perspective
By Dr Emil Saleem Shehadeh
Austin Macauley Publishers. 367 pages. £8.99
ISBN 978 1 784 552 039
There are no ‘good’ books about the Israel/Palestine problem. Pro-Arab works are rubbished by pro-Zionists and vice versa with knobs on. Those pursuing some sort of middle ground are universally condemned!
This book is by an Arab Israeli who is also an evangelical Christian, and it will certainly be rubbished by someone. However, crammed as it is with largely accurate information, it will disturb pro-Arab and pro-Zionist readers in turn.
It is, nevertheless, a book with some few stylistic challenges. Two of them are probably more to do with the author’s Middle Eastern mindset than anything else. Although he is a medical practitioner who trained and has practised ever since in the UK, Dr Shehadeh drifts at times from reason to rhetoric, as an Arab frustrated with Israeli attitudes; and he has a way of jumping from one issue to another before he has fully explained them, as would a Western academic. Of more importance is the fact that fuller information was needed about his sources for those who want to dig deeper, a serious problem when the subject matter is so often controversial (as is every book about this issue).
Rare degree of knowledge
Nevertheless, Dr Shehadeh tackles major issues with a rare degree of knowledge, frankness, intelligence, passion and sometimes real originality. He includes discussions of Arab-Jewish tensions in Israel, the influence of Christian Zionism, the needs of Israeli believers for international support, the future of Christianity in the Middle East, and even the largely unknown hate-speech against Christianity recorded in both the Qur’an and in the ancient Jewish writings known as the Talmud.
Dr Shehadeh will shock readers. Westerners who have a complacent view of Israel’s democratic principles will be shocked. Arab evangelicals will be shocked by his accusations of their compromise with Muslim culture. Jewish readers will be shocked by his rejection of any continuing ‘chosen’ status for Israel, and by his unwillingness to give them national absolution because of the Holocaust.
Having entered boldly into so many controversies, the author ends rather anti-climactically, because his last word is to dream some dreams – some will say fantasies. For example, he wants Israeli Arabs to end their boycott of joining the Israeli armed forces and accept the possibility of fighting for Israel against fellow Arabs. He wants Israel to risk Jews becoming outnumbered by Arabs through ending its opposition to the right of return for Arabs displaced by the 1948 War of Independence. Yet who knows? Someone’s dreams must come true, because the current political answers have been weighed and found wanting over and again.
