sam's latest book review of Uri Bailer's ‘Cross on the Star of David: The Christian World in Israel’s Foreign Policy, 1948-1967,’ Bloomington, Indiana

Uri Bialer, ‘Cross on the Star of David: The Christian World in Israel’s Foreign Policy, 1948-1967,’ Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2005.

The author, Professor Uri Bialer holds the Maurice B. Hexter Chair in International Relations-Middle Eastern Studies at the Department of International Relations, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is a veteran diplomatic studies analyst and an academic associated with the Israeli foreign ministry, who has produced a book calculated to fill a lacunae in the way Israel perceives her Christian ‘allies’ and external (and internal) Christian interlocutors. The book is also in the author’s view, the result of the heart-felt searching of an Israeli Ashkenazi Jew for understanding and reconciliation with and from the ‘Western Christian world,’ so different and yet so similar (and necessary for the survival of the Jewish state) to the secular (and increasingly Orthodox and religious) Jewish world of Israel.

While the chapter titles in this work make very interesting reading indeed and give the cursory reader an impression of impartiality, the author is frank enough to state in the beginning that his perspective on the issue is unashamedly Israel biased. He does acknowledge that his main purpose in dealing with such an issue as Jewish-Christian relations in Israel is due to the alarming lack of knowledge of the personality of Jesus Christ among the Israeli public, ignorance almost to the point of alarm. He records how this kind of attitude was inculcated in the Israeli Jewish people as a result of the historical animosity ingrained in the older generation of Israelis, on account of Christian anti-Semitism and anti-Jewish racism manifested on the continent of Europe over the ages.

However, in the modern era, where already two generations of Israelis have grown up in the relative Western-sponsored economic and political ‘security’ of the Jewish state, there is a great need for Jews to have a responsible and sensible dialogue with Christians, past the vitriol and hate-mongering of the past. Uri Bailer seeks to place his review of Christian-Israeli diplomatic relations within the context of the wave of ‘Israel New Historiography’ writings. He sets his spectrum within the ‘Benny Morris-led’ pro-Zionist conservative angle in new Israeli historiography. Bailer’s purpose is to highlight the ‘new’ field of political action in international relations, sponsored by the growing importance of non-state actors as well as cross-national actors such as the Vatican, etc, in inter-state politics and international relations.

Bailer significantly states in his intellectually stimulating introduction to the book (p. 12-13) that initial Western Christian and in particular Vatican-Catholic hostility towards the newly formed state of Israel was largely due to the perceived ‘abandonment’ of the historic principles of the Jewish nation by the Zionists. There was a general assumption that the socialist nature of the new state masked Communist sympathies. The peculiarly deprived and desperate situation that the Christian Arab populations of mandatory Palestine were exposed to as a result of the assumption of power by the ‘new’ Israelis was also a cause of particular alarm and concern among western Christian groups and nations. The author seeks to take on himself the role of discussant as regards the, as yet, largely undocumented Israeli side of the story on the diplomacy of Jewish-Christian relations.

The author does advance a significant number of questions-theses in his introduction and claims that the book under review is meant to provide an answer to all these questions. This overall thesis is highly debatable and the book does not provide a satisfactory answer to many of the questions raised, many of which can not be answered from an Israel-centric point of view. The Author is understandably proud of the fact that his work is one of the first to use the slowly opening up world of Israeli diplomatic archives housed under different ministries as well as at the Israel State Archives. In such a major archival work, the Author does acknowledge the lack of Vatican resources, generally opened up for research only a full three quarters of a century after documentation of the incident/happening.

Lack of references to the Vatican perspective unwittingly makes this work biased in the sense that there is an excessive reliance on one side of the story to the detriment of the other side. Most of the questions raised by the Author in the research framework of this book are quite positively Israel-biased as he tries to figure out the Israeli angle to Church-State interactions in the Holy Land. One of the main problems faced by most Jewish and early Israeli interlocutors with Christian organisations and nation-states that had avowedly ‘Christian’ credentials, was the traditional animosity that the Christian Church and in particular the ‘establishment’ Catholic Church have always historically (until the last couple of decades) nurtured against the Jewish people. This, at least in the first couple of decades of the establishment of the state of Israel, was reflected in the Christian organisations as well as Western states interaction’s with the new Jewish state. Coupled with this was the simultaneous fact that most of the early generations of Israel’s leaders as well as most early Israelis came from states mainly in Eastern Europe with strong historical records of anti-Semitism and violent state collusion in the Holocaust of the Second World War.

Given such a historical record, it would be impossible to avoid bias, prejudice and a general climate of insensitivity on both sides of the vexed issue of Christian-Jewish relations, both inside and outside the state of Israel. Bialer brings up some previously unrecorded statements expressing concern by Israeli leaders including founding state premier Ben Gurion as regards the possible backlash, should the rest of the Christian Western world be aware of what had happened to many Christian monasteries and Churches during the Israeli war of independence and Israeli Jewish illegal occupation of parts of erstwhile British mandate Palestine.

This work is quite unbalanced as another reviewer has mentioned.[1] Unbalanced, as stated above, because of an entire lack of use of credible Vatican documents. A common criticism (or inadequacy of coherent long-ranging analysis as far as Christian-Jewish relations is concerned) of this book in the reviews that have surfaced so far is the cut off period mandated by the author where he pulls the plug at 1967.The return of Church property confiscated during the wars of Israeli independence by the Jewish authorities was a major issue with Western Christian bodies negotiating with Israel and their respective national authorities. The Israelis dealt in a different way with each of the churches and sought to play one church against the other in true Western colonialist style. This was particularly evidenced in the way Israeli politicians and diplomats as well as civil service officers dealt with the intransigent Greek Catholic Archbishop of the Galilee, George Hakim.

Bialer’s book provides us with fascinating archival references as regards the complexity of diplomatic negotiations that were in place to produce a verdict on the myriads of issues that were on the table between the different churches and the state of Israel. The author through his work and archival research often confirms a commonly held notion among Church historians in the Holy Land, that the Greek Orthodox Church was much more open to blackmail and the hard-nosed negotiations tactics of the Israelis, than any other of the main international churches. The Greeks had no external patron to speak of after the demise of the Tsarist Russian state in 1917. Greece, the traditional patron of the Orthodox found itself in deep financial and political trouble after the First World War and was in no position to help the Jerusalem Patriarchate of the Greek Orthodox Church. In addition, the Church had lost its traditional land holdings in Rumania and Bessarabia (today’s Moldova) after the First World War, thereby halting rent inflows from these regions.

The Jewish state was concerned first and foremost with Christian proselytisation within the new state as the Christians, mainly expatriate missionaries, had been accustomed to doing during the British mandate. Second came the almost equally important issue of ownership stakes over the large areas of landed property once controlled by the Church in the new territory of the state of Israel. Bialer also brings out quite clearly the differences between the various Israeli government ministries like the Foreign Ministry and the Interior and Religious Affairs (RA) department over the attitude to be taken towards the Christian communities, especially given the reason that a good proportion of the Arabs left in Israel proper were of the Christian faith themselves. The Foreign Ministry was on the liberal side favouring fewer controls on the Christians while the Interior and RA ministries held the opposing views. Bialer’s research vis-à-vis the Catholics and the Vatican seeks to prove that the Catholic Church’s attitude towards the Jewish state in the early years hinged quite relevantly on the future status of Jerusalem.

The Vatican was interested in a policy of ‘internationalisation’ or in the Latin tongue favoured in declarations of the Holy See, ‘Corpus Separatus,’ as a proxy to possibly acquiring added influence in the Holy City and thereby influencing the Ottoman Era Status Quo in her favour. Bialer’s work clearly describes the diplomatic history of a Christian church and a Jewish state deeply suspicious of each other due to historical wrongs done to one another other, but struggling to deal with each other on the basis of present day ‘realpolitik.’ (p. 191).

Bialer’s book brings to light some of the early influence that the Vatican had, post- World War II, to intervene in world politics and especially in the politics of the UN. This particularly came out in the negotiations that were held at the UN as regards the issue of ‘internationalisation’ of Jerusalem (p.24). Some of the archival diplomatic revelations of the pre-Vatican II period in the book are startlingly politically ‘not correct’ as in the discussion recorded between two Vatican Cardinals in which the old accusation against the Jews as the ‘killers of God’ is mentioned by one of the Cardinals and the then Secretary of State at the Vatican, as a reason for the non-recognition of the Jewish state by the Holy See (p. 63).

Generally speaking, the idea one gets from Bialer’s chapters’ (2, 3 &4) dealing with early Vatican interactions with the state of Israel is that while the Vatican refused to establish diplomatic relations due to entrenched preconceptions of the Jewish state as well as concerns about the future of Jerusalem, on the Israeli side there was just an abject lack of interest, bordering on ignorance and even contempt for the focal point of Christianity in the West. Israel’s sole interest in negotiating with the Vatican was to obtain recognition from the West of Israel’s role since 1948 as the official claimant to a unified Jerusalem and as a result, simultaneously, a say in the implementation of the Status Quo for Jerusalem. The Author reveals with irony the shock on the part of the ‘secular’ Israeli elite, at the influence that the Holy See could actually exhibit and use as a tool to subvert the interest of the new Jewish state in the UN as was revealed during the UN General Assembly resolution in 1949 ratifying the internationalisation of Jerusalem (p. 22-23).

Bialer sets his entire book in the context of the 1949 non-binding UN resolution that advocated the internationalisation of Jerusalem. This, in the Israeli view, was mainly achieved by the pressure that the Vatican sought to put on its mainly Catholic majority countrymen to vote against Israel and for the ‘internationalisation’ of Jerusalem as the best course for the Catholics of the Holy Land. The unmistakable focus of Bialer’s book is towards the Vatican-the Catholic Church in Israel and secondarily towards the Greek Orthodox Church. As far as the author was concerned, many studies have been undertaken of the impact of the Christian world on the Church in the Holy Land, the Jews and the State of Israel since the early twentieth century, but little work has been done on the Israeli attitudes towards the Church.

Bialer raises the issue of the Second Papal encyclical (letter) on Palestine, Redemptoris Nostri, which on 15 April 1949, set out in clear statements what the Pope and the Vatican expected from the state of Israel as regards the future and well-being of the Christian community in the Holy Land (p.14). The issuance of this document was a wake-up call for the Israeli administration as regards their interactions and future deliberations with Vatican and the Catholic Church within Israel. Bialer also raises the massive problems that the new Jewish state had with Catholic and Christian educational endeavours in general in the Holy Land (p.105).

Bialer’s book is unique in the extent to which it goes in the analysis of background material as regards the Jewish question in the Vatican II summit of the Catholic Church that went on from 1962-1965 and partly spanned the rule of two popes. The Jewish boycott of the summit discussions is marked in Bialer’s work. It shows a time-period that would appear strange in today’s world where Jews and Christians have had over four decades of largely amicable existence since the theological-political changes of Vatican II. The inner works of Vatican diplomacy as revealed by Bialer’s book are fascinating as are the prejudices that jump to the front as a manifestation of the inherent ‘racism’ of that era. Bialer is inherently fascinated by the interactions between the Vatican and the state of Israel and especially that indefatigable Anglo-Israel diplomat Maurice Fisher who did so much to foster cooperation between the two states, and between the Catholic Church as a whole and the Jewish people.

Bialer quite consecutively proves that diplomacy is one that enshrines many tools in it and not just formal black-tie events. To prove this, Bialer very interestingly and amusingly titles one of his book chapter’s as ‘Chicken and Goat’ diplomacy. Reading Bialer’s book, one is left in no doubt that the attitude of the founding fathers of the state of Israel towards the Christian communities was profoundly contemptuous in the first instance, but was stationed on the basis of real-politik and the need to have a kind of dialogue with the Christian world as a major stake holder in the Holy Land. He clearly brings out the differences in nuances between the attitude that the Israeli state took towards the all-powerful Catholic Church that the fledgling state could in no measure seek to displease without facing a back-lash and the case of the Lutheran and other smaller Protestant Churches that Israel could more afford to bully.

Against the Lutherans in particular, Israel was quite willing to use the German Nazi heritage of many German Christians in the British mandated Holy Land to deny them their land and properties that had been confiscated in West Jerusalem following the 1948 war. The Germans on their part used all measures to protect their property including trying to involve the newly formed Lutheran World Federation as well as the Vatican as the spokesperson of the German Catholic congregations in the Holy Land. Bialer raises the issue of Konrad Adenauer, post–war West Germany’s first Chancellor and an avowed Catholic who had spent almost the entire war years locked up in a monastery.

Bialer raises many interesting stories along the way of German priests and nuns who were unwilling to vacate their posts in Israeli occupied and often hazardous frontier territories in the Jerusalem region during the early period before 1967. Of particular interest in this book is the negotiation report of the internal talks and memoranda between the Israeli government and the State of Germany over many confiscated plots of land, Churches and schools and other educational, and commercial institutions in the Holy Land that had now come under the anvil of the Israeli authorities.

Bialer’s work is short on the Orthodox. This is a common problem with most Church and diplomatic historians of the Holy Land as the Orthodox inevitably dealt with which ever state that was in authority in the Holy Land, in a not so transparent or organised way. The Orthodox more accustomed to under-hand dealing acquired during the long years under the Ottomans and even during the short British mandate was the easiest to bribe or out rightly be pressured by the Israelis to compromise and cede their rights over property as Bialer’s quite revealing notes tell us. As Bialer himself opines, the decentralised system of the Greek Orthodox Church no doubt played a major role in this as bereft of effective outside support (as was not the case with the Catholic Church and the Vatican) and subject to all forms of blackmail from the Israeli authorities, the Greek Church quickly capitulated as regards the issue of various landed property owned by the Church in different parts of Jerusalem and the Holy Land in general. Accountability had always been a major problem with the Greek Church, a problem that has persisted to this day, especially as regards property issues in the Holy Land.

Finally, Bialer reveals some of the crazy fears that the early Israeli state suffered from as regards tourist arrivals in the Holy Land. Christian tourists in the 1950s were seen as a veritable third column that would be a threat to the Jewish nature of the new state as well as a thorn in the side of the rapidly rebuilding ‘new’ Jewish nation. The conclusion of the book gives us a telling introduction into the issue of pilgrimages to the Holy Land and the ‘fear’ situation in the early 1950s, when tourist and pilgrim travel to Israel and the Holy Land was at a very minimum. One cannot help but contrast the situation, then and now when literally millions of tourist-pilgrims visit the Holy Land every year (p.188-189).

The author refers in passing to Israel’s interactions with Levantine Christian communities which began well before the foundation of the state of Israel in 1948. Bialer includes a quote from early Israeli diplomat Gideon Raphael who specifically critiques the Maronites of Lebanon as an intransigent set of ‘turncoats’ (p.191). The author describes how the early Jewish settlers came to realise that the Levantine Christians were not trustworthy and could be relied to stab them in the back should the situation be so conducive.

In short, the early Yishuv was aware that the Levantine Christians and in particular the Maronite Christians of Lebanon saw the Jewish settlers just as a tool to be used against the Muslims should a power contest take place, as did indeed happen in Lebanon in later years. In the end, the Israelis through their early interactions with the international Christian Church, and in particular the Vatican, realised that the Christians as a group, whether Catholic, Protestant or Orthodox, expatriate or internal were a people that they could only ignore at their own peril. Particularly in an age where Arab Nationalism, Soviet Communism and reviving Islamic movements posed an immediate positioned threat to the Jewish state, the early Israeli leaders believed that it was incumbent on them to ally themselves with Western Christianity against the forces of ‘Eastern revanchism.’

Bialer reveals himself as an author quite typically willing to use material and books that are demonstrably biased towards the Israelis, including works by Authors who are self-confessedly Christian Zionist and pro-Israeli, as well as remarkably anti-Arab. However in the long-run, what shines out of this work is its remarkable professionalism in the use of archival resources. This is obviously a work that has been produced by an expert and a proven archival studies expert at that. The author’s ability to synthesize and link up various archival fragments into a single, coherent and collective whole must be recognised and commended.



[1] Simon Davis, Review of ‘Cross on the Star of David: The Christian World in Israel's Foreign Policy, 1948-1967 By Uri Bialer,’ History, Volume 92, Number 307, July 2007 , pp. 371-372(2)