Alan Ireland

Palestinian Refugees from Lydda and Ramle, 1948

Murray Dixon and the specter of Christian Zionism

PART FOUR - Theology and fraud

Needless to say, it is not that "the Arab" is not an individual, but that the Christian Zionists are determined not to see him as one. As a non-person, as "a naughty child who throws stones", his subordination can be made to seem essential — as can the firm, paternalistic hand that ensures he accepts, but remains relatively harmless in, his assigned role of Ishmael. This is the role of the violent outsider (Gen. 16:12) and wanderer (Gen. 37:25) who, ipso facto, cannot be attached to land, and whose claims of attachment must therefore be a subterfuge. For this eternal reprobate, this sensual antagonist of the more favored, intellectual Isaac, there can be no peace except the peace of capitulation. At every turn, he is to be policed by prurient scholars, draconian bureaucrats and casually callous soldiers of the Israel Defence Forces. Even his awareness of himself is to be shaped by the definitions of others.

But the Christian Zionists have another reason for ignoring the individual: With their eyes on the Tribulation, the Rapture, the Battle of Armageddon and other chiliastic events, they have little time for minutiae. They prefer the panorama — the cosmic, inexorable scheme of things, in which the individual is subsumed. They talk grandiloquently of peoples and "nations": those abstract entities that will be collectively rewarded if they act to Israel's benefit and collectively punished if they don't. (I put the latter term in quotation marks because the biblical idea of a nation is not analogous to the modern concept of a state.)

There is little room for law in all this, because legislation tends to deal with discrete, concrete cases. The last person a Christian Zionist wants to know about is poor, dispossessed Abdullah from, say, Shatila refugee camp in Lebanon, who still treasures the deeds of his property in Palestine (as it was until 1948) and the key to his now non-existent front door. So he elevates the whole issue of land ownership in Israel / Palestine to the rarefied level of theology. Hence the reference to the Israelis' and Palestinians' "strong but conflicting theologies of the land" in ITAC's press release, dated July 29, 2006, dissociating itself from the Anglican Peace and Justice Network's call for (among other things) "the withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from all occupied areas . . . [and] the immediate dismantling of the separation wall . . . wherever the wall violates West Bank land."

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Alan Ireland

Murray Dixon and the specter of Christian Zionism

PART THREE - Twisting the history of the Middle East

In view of the deep-seated contempt for Islam, it is not surprising that someone like Murray Dixon invariably comes up with the worst possible interpretation of Arab / Muslim actions. For instance, in the Page 1 article in the Manawatu Standard on July 26, 2006, on the reaction of Lebanese people to the Israeli leaflets telling them to flee their homes, he said: "And we've seen on television — you may have too — they have these leaflets and have just torn them up and laughed (emphasis added)."

Where others, myself included, saw the actions as gestures of contempt or defiance — perfectly understandable feelings in the circumstances — Dixon professed to see only inappropriate levity. Elsewhere in the article, he drew a distinction between Hezb Allah and the Lebanese by saying that when Israel pulled out of the south of Lebanon a "few years ago", Hezb Allah moved into the "vacuum" and then proceeded "to [push] Lebanese out of their homes". In reality, the members of Hezb Allah are Lebanese, and were in south Lebanon throughout the Israeli occupation of 1982-2000. It is also highly ironic that Dixon leveled the charge of evicting civilians against Hezb Allah at a time when hundreds of thousands of Lebanese were being driven from their homes by the Israelis. He claims that Israel launched its assault partly because — in the words of the article — it "has had rockets being fired over the border for a long time and has had enough". But only four of the 19 border incidents listed by the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs between May 2000 and July 2006 involved the (localized) use of rockets by guerrillas in Lebanon; and as Nazareth-based British journalist Jonathan Cook pointed out in his article in Al-Ahram Weekly, August 3-9, 2006, Hezb Allah "paused five days, while Israel wrecked Lebanon with aerial bombardment, fulfilling its promise to 'turn the clock back 20 years', before raining down its rockets on Haifa".

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Alan Ireland

John Laffin

Murray Dixon and the specter of Christian Zionism

PART TWO -Semantics in the service of polemics

As New Zealand entered the 1980s, the country was more concerned about apartheid in South Africa than about Islam. Islam was sometimes in the news, but was not a big issue. All that changed in 1986, when local Christian Zionists declared war on their perceived enemy in the interminable struggle against "demonized flesh" and the "father of lies".

I realized that something was afoot on July 13, when a letter from a "Dr John Laffin", of Monomark House, London [4], appeared in the letters columns of the Tribune — a free, weekly, Palmerston North newspaper that doesn't normally find its way to Wellington, let alone London. The letter began: "As a recognized world authority on Islam I cannot allow to go unchallenged and uncorrected some comments made by Dr Ashraf Choudhary [5] in your issue of June 23." (This issue had carried an article by Jim Marr about the contributions that Muslims could make to New Zealand society.) The letter went on to make such sweeping statements as "Islam is a religion of pride while Christianity is a religion of humility". Laffin then took Choudhary to task for saying that "Islam" means "peace", and claimed that "No authority on Islam, whether Muslim or not, construes or translates 'Islam' to mean 'peace' ".

Puzzled by this alacritous outbust from an "authority" in London, I went to see the editor of the Tribune. But she only added to the mystery: The letter had been posted in Palmerston North, not London. "Yes," we thought it was a little strange," she said, "so we kept the envelope." She produced it for me. And there, in the top left-hand corner, were the words "International Christian Embassy (Jerusalem)". There was also a Palmerston North telephone number, which I called.

The telephone was answered by Murray Dixon, to whom I introduced myself as a person who was "interested in religion". Could he tell me what "International Christian Embassy" was all about? He certainly could. He spent about 10 minutes explaining the principles of Christian Zionism, although he did not, of course, use that term. I thanked him, and hung up.

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Alan Ireland

The myth of nation: American Progress by
John Gast, circa 1872.

Murray Dixon and the specter of Christian Zionism

PART ONE - Christian Zionism: a 'heresy' defined

If Israel falls so does our salvation. ~ Dennis McLeod, director, Christian Friends of Israel NZ, in Challenge Weekly, August 7, 2006.

We are in a fight for our lives and with each passing day the world comes against us with more venom and hatred. There is a lying spirit at work in the world and in your nation that is demonizing Israel and perversly calling Palestinian terrorists innocent victims. We are fighting not only demonized flesh but powers and principalities, the father of lies. — Appeal by Christians in Israel.

But for the mention of Israel and Palestinian terrorists, one could be forgiven for thinking the above passage, with its reference to "demonized flesh", was written during the witch-hunting hysteria of the 17th century. In reality, it was written by a group of Christian Zionists in April 2002, to solicit demonstrative support for Israel in "it's (sic) hour of need". The 45 signatories to the appeal included Murray Dixon, of Israel Trust of the Anglican Church (ITAC). Among the others were representatives of such organizations as Jews for Jesus, Intercessors for Israel, and Trumpet of Salvation.

Readers of the Manawatu Standard in Palmerston North, New Zealand, have been introduced to Dixon on several occasions.

He is one of the people the paper turns to when it wants a comment from a local person or former local person with expertise in, or a personal connection to, a topic of interest or current event. On July 26, 2006, the paper described him as "rector of Christ Church, an Anglican church in the old city of Jerusalem". By July 28, he had become "vicar of a Jerusalem church". On both days, he was able to provide the paper with what were presented as glimpses of life in Israel during the opening days of the fighting with Hezb Allah in southern Lebanon.

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