The guilt of the Christian community for its dominant silence amid the Nazi slaughters of the Jewish people has in recent years been increasingly confessed within both Catholic and Protestant circles. Yet when within past weeks the extermination of the entire nation of Israel almost occurred, once again there was silence in the churches.

The few voices that were raised merely helped to make the general stillness louder. When at the beginning of the crisis Protestant and Catholic organizations were asked by the American Jewish community to call upon our government to stand by Israel, there was no institutional response. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops gave no word and the National Council of Churches was content to urge "compassion and concern for all the people of the Middle East" and the formulating of a solution by the United Nations. Some Christians found an element of presumptuousness in the Jewish request; they claimed it did not allow them to reach a moral judgment of their own. But the fact is that church groups either ignored the entire problem or announced a policy of neutralism.

Undoubtedly, many Christians remain genuinely perplexed over the recent events in the Middle East and the new crisis that has ensued in Jewish-Christian relations. The purpose of this essay is to contribute to the current debate, in the interests of independence of judgement, by offering one point of view on the subject.

I

The silence of the churches can hardly have derived exclusively from the principled rule that says one must refrain from making moral evaluations in a situation too complex or controversial to justify a decision. Morally speaking, the conflict in southeast Asia [Vietnam] is infinitely complex and debatable, yet this fact has not compelled Christian silence. Numerous church bodies and spokesmen have called upon the United States to cease escalating the war and to stop the bombing of North Vietnam, just as many groups have long since condemned and worked against apartheid in South Africa. Yet to our knowledge not a single church body spoke out against the publicly promised annihilation of Israel or proclaimed that nation's right to defend itself.

That Israel was able to turn the threat to her existence into a military victory has been viewed as somehow vindicating the Christian neutralists, but the conclusion is not convincing. The situation in the Middle East is as forbidding as ever, and the root question in the conflict -- the rightness or wrongness of the State of Israel's reality and claims -- remains in the forefront.

Obviously, in no human conflict is right totally on one side. The conflict before us has singularly deep historical roots. The geographical presence of the State of Israel is linked not only to positive Jewish claims but also to adverse treatment of Jews in both past and present by people other than Arabs.

Can the silence of the churches be justified by the force of historical circumstances and the weight of moral evidence? Since the possibility of such justification is at the root of much of the current debate, it is appropriate to supply reasons for our view that the evidence would normally be expected to motivate at least some church groups to the kind of expression of sympathy and support for the Israeli cause that has been readily forthcoming from secular quarters.

II

Following are some of the major elements in the case for Israel. Some of the points are necessitated by the recent disputes over Israel's rights as a nation; others are included in order to bring out prevailing points of controversy.

1. Palestine/Israel is the original homeland of the Jewish people and of no other living nation. Despite hostile and intolerant conditions, there have always been some Jews inhabiting the land. The weight of the Jew's historic territorial claim can scarcely be duplicated anywhere else on the globe. Arnold Toynbee's assertion that the "statute of limitations" invalidates Jewish claims to reoccupy the territory is a historical distortion. Down to the end of the 19th century, all Muslim rulers, Arab and Turk, acknowledged the special right of Jews to enter and settle the land, in contrast to Christians, who could for the most part only visit as pilgrims. Despite partial, recurrent exiles, the Jewish people have never ceased to work for restoration and development of their ancient land.

2. Any implicit or explicit argument against the Jewish case that resorts to citation of the right of conquest is self-invalidating, since it would have to accept the results of the recent fighting. Yet wholly to rule out the tacit moral validation of conquest would produce some extremely embarrassing consequences for most nations, which, insofar as they were to question Israel's right to exist, could not escape hypocrisy.

3. The homeland plea can never be sufficient or attain the status of absolute right -- in principle because no people can claim any land absolutely, and in application because otherwise many peoples today could be rightfully asked to pack their bags and leave their countries. Accordingly, the right of Jews to Israel as a home must also be viewed in the light of decisions by the 20th century international community,

That the Jewish prerogative in Israel rests upon a unique complex of values -- not exclusively political or social or moral or religious, but a combination of all these -- is recognized in many quarters and lies behind the United Nations' decision of 1947 (with the Soviet Union in the forefront of the campaign to provide a home for Jews). The partitioning of Palestine was carried out by the nations on the basis of earlier international decisions. The preamble to the League of Nations mandate quotes the Balfour Declaration in full; it also states that the Jewish people were being given opportunity to reconstitute their national home. Most Arab states now rejecting Israel's right to exist did not even exist themselves at the time. The Jews accepted the 1947 partition, at some cost to their own settlements. The Arabs rejected the partition, immediately initiating attacks against the Jews and declared a general war upon them when the British withdrew. (The Soviet Union labeled the war an "act of aggression" and demanded that the Arabs stop it.)

Karl Deutsch likens the United Nations' decision to an act of eminent domain at the international level, and adds the important proviso that any compensation accruing to Arabs in, for example, relocation of refugees is owed by the world community, not just Israel. (What about compensation to the many Jews who have had to flee Arab countries?)

4. The effort to achieve and maintain a sovereign state for Israel, in contrast to a quasi-political community as approved by a few Arab leaders (the latter possibility in keeping with, for example, the old Parthian millet system), is morally justified by the countless years of oppression of the Jews -- most recently in the Nazi holocaust, with the complicity of most of the rest of the world. The alternatives for most Israeli Jews have been and remain life in Israel or death; this is not true for any Arab. That the United Nations deserted the very country whose founding it sanctioned 20 years ago is among the most reprehensible deeds of this century.

5. The only prerequisite to a solution of the Middle Eastern question in its entirety (including the situation of the refugees) remains the acknowledgement of Israel's right to exist. We have recently witnessed the spectacle of many nations of the world in effect denying only to Israel the prerogative of self-protection against terrorist harassment and openly avowed politicide. The war in the Middle East was the direct result of the illegal Egyptian blockade of the Gulf of Aqaba and the announced intention of Arab leaders, with accompanying military measures, to wipe Israel from the face of the earth. Yet Israel is now taking steps towards permanent peace and reconciliation, while all that most Arab leaders offer is a promise of revenge. Considerably after the cease-fire was effected the Iraqui chief of state spoke for Arabs everywhere in proclaiming that "the existence of Israel is in itself an aggression." No real hope is in sight for a negotiated settlement, either with the Arabs or through the almost completely futile United Nations organization. If the Israelis do not insist upon taking necessary steps on their own to ensure their rights as an independent people, they run the risk of death. We must avoid the wholly unsupported assumption that if Israel will only behave as others ask or demand, her detractors will become rational and want to be friends. The only thing that would appear capable of propitiating Arabs, communists and Christians who find the Israelis guilty of "aggression" would be for the latter to lie down and be slaughtered.

III

6. The very nations that have criticized Israel for reunifying Jerusalem and who demand internationalization of the city would never permit any such decision or denial of sovereignty with respect to their own historic capitals. Israel faced the choice either of acting unilaterally to restore to unity the ancient capital she had founded or of ensuring its rupture for an indefinite future. Any plea for the unity of Jerusalem has to be grounded in the autonomy of the State of Israel, recognition of the City of David as a spiritual focus of Jewish faith, and complete religious freedom of access. Israel is pledged to this freedom. The Arabs have refused and will continue to refuse equal rights to the holy places.

7. The church can hardly betray its obligation to oppose the deplorable state of much international morality -- a condition reflected in the gulf between popular sympathy for Israel in many lands and the policies and actions of many governments and officials. Thus, in the U.N. General Assembly loud and prolonged applause greeted the speech of Jordan's King Hussein, who just a few weeks earlier was plotting with Nasser to destroy Israel and had subsequently agreed to the Big Lie of accusing the United States and Great Britain of participating militarily in the war (Britain was included at Hussein's suggestion). Has the church no conscience to condemn plotting and lying?

8. Many castigations of Israel for her alleged responsibility for the suffering of Arab refugees have been terribly one-sided and unfair. Why is so little attention paid to the fact that the original refugees in the situation were Jews fleeing the Nazi terror, people who were barred from other lands and then denied access to the one place that could give them hope? Why do we hear almost nothing of the oppression in Arab countries since 1948 of indigenous Jewish populations or of the thousands of Jewish refugees from Arab lands? Why is it hardly ever pointed out that the original and continuing cause of the Arab refugee problem and its recent aggravation has been Arab intransigence and hostility: the refusal to recognize Israel and the pledge to annihilate the Jews? There would be no refugee problem at all if the Arabs had not defied the United Nations' partition. The Arabs started the war in 1948 that forced the refugees to leave -- not to be banished from -- their homes. Israel tried to convince them to stay. Arab leaders frightened them into fleeing, with dire warnings that the Jews would persecute and destroy them.

We are frequently advised that Israel's recent military victory is the reason for the increase in refugees, but we are seldom reminded that the latest Arab campaign to destroy Israel was the sole incitement for that victory. An Arab triumph would have left not Jewish refugees but Jewish corpses. Any help Israel now grants to Arab refugees -- and she is already giving succor and beginning to offer resettlement, despite unabated Arab belligerency -- is largely a matter of either prudence or charity. The moral debt is primarily that of the Arab powers, who have callously manipulated these uprooted people to the end of a devious program to exterminate Jews.

9. Israel is neither the servant nor the apostle of "Western" interests. Arab propaganda identifying Israel as a "foreign intrusion" is belied by the facts. Today more than 65 percent of Israel's population is entirely Middle Eastern in ancestry and outlook. Of the remainder, large numbers are native-born Israelis with no experience of or ties with other countries. The birth rate in Israel among Jews from Islamic lands is much higher than that among those from Western lands. Israel is becoming more and more an Asian country, but at the same time she serves as an instrument of democratic values and technological advance. An irony of the present situation is that where Israel can be of influence, Arab people will have great opportunity for social, economic and political well-being, in contrast to unilateral control of their destiny by their own regimes. If Israel is enabled to continue and to prosper, the resulting growth in the region as a whole will promote the welfare of unnumbered human beings in Western Asia and Africa. All this is in application of the devotion of many Jews in Israel and elsewhere to the cause of Arab-Israel unity, a cause so dear to the late Martin Buber.

It is alleged that the Middle Eastern situation is so morally gray that it is wrong for the churches to take sides. We contend that this allegation is not creditable. A fundamental of ethics is the necessity to distinguish among the facts of a case where there can be no absolute right or wrong, and the responsibility to act in behalf of the side more nearly in the right. Through this all-important distinction, neutralism of action is in countless situations exposed as, if not wrong, at least irresponsible. In the particular issue under discussion we are impelled to oppose the Arab cause, but not be insinuating in any way that the Arabs have no rights in the situation. This decision is made inevitable by the announced policy and the actual behavior of these peoples themselves; otherwise it might not be possible. From the standpoint of moral assessment, Arabs certainly have grievances (as Israel openly concedes). But from the standpoint of the responsibility to act, we have no choice but to say that the Arabs are wrong in their would-be politicide against the Jewish nation. That policy is not just "partly" wrong and hence to be only "partly" opposed; it is altogether wrong and ought to be fought unqualifiedly. In brief, prevailing right is the one validation of specific moral commitments.

We are not casting about for irrefutable arguments, nor are we trying to cut off debate. We expect and we solicite responces to our documentation. (It may be interjected that philo-semitism is as disputable as anti-semitism; it is little more than Judenfeindschaft overtaken by remorse.) The Arab side must certainly be heard and given its due. Yet we feel strongly that the primary issue is one of balance and of history. Had Christendom not been in the forefront of the persecution of Jews for hundreds of years, the judgments against Israel now being heard in Christian circles would not be so disheartening. These judgments cannot be received in isolation from the age-long Christian "teaching of contempt" (Jules Isaac), and the death camps in Europe and now the unabated annihilationist intentions of Arab nations.

We submit, in sum, that the overwhelming moral force of the case for Israel makes it impossible either to explain or to justify the new silence of the churches through the contention that the evidence is either lacking or equivocal. Accordingly, we are led to seek orther reasons for the silence, a matter to be explored in Part Two of this essay.

As a point of departure in seeking an explanation for the preponderant silence of the churches before the recent threat to the State of Israel, we note that considerable sound has come from Christian sources in defense of the Arab cause. Here is a sampling of materials in a leading newspaper and two Christian publications: One writer refers to "Israeli gains through aggression" and demands "the withdrawal of all Israeli occupying forces." Another maintains that Israel should offer to repatriate all Arab refugees into Israel and contends that Christians and Jews are obligated to "reject the biblical literalism that lies behind political Zionism." A third says that the United States must show "no further favoritism toward Israel," a country guilty of the "aggressive annexation of territory." A fourth speaks of "Israel's patent acts of expansionism." Still another stresses the "just and proper claims of the Palestinian Arabs against Israel" and concludes that "the Holy City of Jerusalem has become war booty." And still another stands "aghast at Israel's onslaught, the most violent, ruthless (and successful) aggression since Hitler's Blitzkrieg . . . in the summer of 1940, aiming not at victory but at annihilation," and speaks of Israel's "callous indifference to the more than a million displaced Arabs" who have been "subjugated or driven into exile."

These writers are not official representatives of Arab or communist states. The first is a former Presbyterian missionary in Beirut, the second contributes a column to a Methodist periodical, the next three identify themselves as professors in Christian institutions, and the last is retired president of a well-known Protestant theological seminary. On the basis of letters to newspapers and periodicals -- and we have examined several hundred -- we must conclude that the majority of spokespersons who identify themselves in some way with Christianity tend to speak for the Arab side, while the majority of those who do not so identify themselves (and are not identifiable as Jews) speak largely for the Israeli cause. It is hard to think of these proportions as purely accidental.

The data cited above can be related to another, highly crucial consideration. The one unbreakable bond that unites the Arab peoples is their conviction that Israel deserves to die. But this very conviction retains a deep hold upon the Christian as well. For centuries Christendom has been indoctrinated in the identical idea: Jews have no ultimate or integral right to exist -- in their land or anywhere, as a faith or as a people.

The distinguished French historian Jules Isaac has shown how the "dispersion of the Jews" from their land as "divine punishment for the Crucifixion" (a dispersion that in plain fact never took place in toto) became a main pillar in the Christian "teaching of contempt" for Jews and Judaism. In the history of "Christian" Europe there have been three established policies in regard to the Jewish people: conversion, expulsion and annihilation. As J. Coert Rylaarsdam has written in The Christian

Century: "Over the centuries Christians have generally lived with the tacit assumption that a 'good Jew' is either a dead Jew or a Christian. So, alternately, they have consented to the death of Jews and prayed for their conversion. . . . Christians have never really said that God loves the Jew for what he is now" (which includes, of course, the Jews who live in the State of Israel). After all, have we Christians not been taught that we are the real Israel? and that original Israel is barred from Zion until or unless it accepts Christ?

I

The entire movement to re-establish the Jewish people in their ancient homeland, culminating in the reconstituting of the State of Israel in 1948, has been a traumatic experience from which the collective Christian psyche has never entirely recovered. The reaction is revealed, on the one hand, in the inability of many representatives of the churches to find any theological meaning in the drama, together with their attempted reduction of Israel to a purely "political" or "secular" phenomenon, and, on the other hand, in the contention of many that something has gone awry religiously. God could not very well have made a historical-theological miscalculation by sanctioning the "return" of the Jews before the proper time. So perhaps the whole operation was the work either of the Devil or of human idolatry, or both. How presumptuous for Israel to be "reborn" in clear violation of Christian eschatology!

Just as in 1933-45 unnumbered people in the churches were never quite convinced that the Nazis were not the unwitting allies of God -- since the Jews were "no longer" his people -- so in 1967 a powerful ideological affinity is manifest between Christian predispositions and the annihilationist designs of the Arabs.

By contrast to Jews, so the covert "Christian" rationalizing continues, Arabs shape up pretty well. They are indeed a prevailingly innocent and needy lot, rather like children. And of course multitudes of them are "refugees." Refugees from what? From Jewish sophistication, Jewish intransigence, Jewish power. Once the Assyrians were the rod of God's anger; today there is a man by the name of Nasser. We wonder . . . After all, the Arab people have never really rejected Christ. Could not they be instruments of divine judgment upon Israel? The Israelis are so worldly, so willful, so self-righteous, a stiff-necked bunch if there ever was one, and withal a "minority." But there are untold numbers of Arabs who are in "great spiritual need," and perhaps we will be strengthened to save many of them for Christ. At any rate, it is essential that we not overlook or jeopardize the safety of the Christian missionaries hard at work in Arab lands. . . .

II

If the world Jewish community has been shocked and disillusioned by the new Christian silence before Israel's plight, it must be driven to the verge of despair by the readiness of some Christian leaders to call black "white," to label as "aggressors" the targets of aggression, to identify as "annihilationists" those who barely escaped being annihilated by a foe pledged to turning them into corpses (and who are nevertheless prepared to deal righteously with their would-be slayers). There are elements of perversity, even of insanity, in these identifications. Perhaps we will next be told that the death camps were actually protective measures created by the Nazis to keep Germans from being exterminated by Jews. That many Nazis did believe this to be the purpose of the death camps offers a frightening clue as to how the above-mentioned retired seminary president can label Israel an annihil-ationist aggressor. The pathological collective unconscious of Christendom has at last come to the surface in this man: "The Jews are the enemy; the more they appear to be helpless victims, the more they are in actuality conspiring as the Devil's own agents of destruction. Before the anti-Christ conquers the world, let us expose him for what he is."

Thus an explanation is at hand for the recurring silence of the churches, revolting though that explanation is. Whenever original Israel is assailed, certain suppressed, macabre elements in the Christian soul are stirred to sympathy with the assailants. It is difficult to account in any other way for the vehemence and mendacity of some of the current Christian attacks upon Israel.

To understand the strength of Christian opposition to Jewish existence we must further bear in mind historic Christian uncertainties respecting the relation of the religious and secular domains. These uncertainties become evident in the frequently expressed Christian refusal to "take sides" because "the whole conflict is after all a political power struggle." The Christian mind has been heavily conditioned by the Greek dualism of "matter" and "spirit," in contrast to the Hebraic insistence on the unity of all life. Is not Israel -- so the dualistic line goes -- a pervasively secular state and, accordingly, is not something seriously wrong with her spiritually?

Here is another way in which the Christian conscience acts to remove the "worldly" Israelis from the scope of its obligations: in effect it reads them out of Judaism. Judaism, we are advised, is a religion. And our Christian responsibilities as a community of faith are limited to other communities of faith.

The effect of this dualistic orientation is to drive a wedge between Christians and Jews. Any implicit or explicit allegiance to a dichotomy of profane and sacred is incomprehensible to most Jews. Here is another reason why the current crisis in the Middle East was bound to create a crisis in Christian-Jewish relations.

The lengths to which various Christian apologists have been driven in order to rule out any divine authentication of the re-establishment of Israel as a state are indicative not only of their insistence that Jewish history be subjected to a Christocentric history, but also of a Christian deficiency in relating life's transcendent dimensions to the secular-political realm. There is a major ideological reason why, as one rabbi observed, American Christians simply did not appreciate the agony of anxiety that pervaded the Jewish community in the days just passed. "In order to know how we felt, you must understand the strong sense of peoplehood which unites Jews and causes every Jew to feel personally involved in the fate of all other Jews. You must also remember that we saw six million of our people slaughtered by the Nazis. Then you can begin to comprehend what it meant to hear Premier Nasser declare that he was going to exterminate the two and one-half million Jews in Israel."

III

For the vast majority of Jews, Jewish life means a faith and a people. We Christians strive manfully to construe Judaism as only a "religion," but our dualistic outlook has the double effect of annulling our obligations to the people of Israel and of separating us from Jews as human beings. Christianity is never entirely safe from the heresy of setting God above politics. For the Jew there is a divine link between faith and life, between doctrine and action, between the sacred and the secular. That link is righteousness (zedakah). The perennial Christian temptation is that of a lovely mystical universalism exempt from the duty to fight human oppression.

One hopeful sign in the current theological temper, incidentally, is the new affirmation of a "secular Christianity," which may be construed in part as a yearning in the church for a return to its Hebraic roots. Unfortunately for righteousness' sake, the fresh outlook has not as yet produced a uniquely Christian rationale for the State of Israel as a temporal fulfillment of the Covenant.

Christians are taught to say that God rescued his people from the oppression of Egypt 3,000 years ago. But what about the happenings of 1967? Something seems to have scrambled our reading of events. It appears that only a few romanticists are willing to risk the reputed foolishness of proclaiming a connection between the two deliverances. When there is no ardor for zedakah, the people fall silent.

IV

Obviously, many Christians are not willing to assign peculiarly Christian theological status to the State of Israel. Yet as Christians they are, presumably, committed to religious freedom. That commitment is here put to a basic test of strength. For multitudes of Jews, the integrity of Israel is an inherent and vital element of their faith. As Louis Cassels writes: "To Jews, Israel is the fulfillment of the biblical promise that the Jews will one day return to their homeland. Thus Israel has a mystical significance for devout Jews, and preserving its existence is a religious duty which arouses in Jewish breasts a fervor comparable to that which might inspire a Catholic if the papacy were attacked or a Protestant if the Bible were threatened with suppression." Does the Christian community intend to deny the Jewish right to the above tenet of faith? We do not deny it to Muslim peoples. This right must be placed within a much larger context than that of mere freedom of religious conscience as such. Religious freedom means little apart from the freedom of men to survive and endure as human beings, in both an individual and a collective sense. Indeed, religious freedom is a human social value only as a part of this wider dignity.

Just as the Arabs by their actions and attitudes toward Israel have thrown grave doubts on the justice of their cause, so the Christian church is hardly in a moral position to dictate or even to give counsel to Israel. In the contemporary Christian community a glaring contrast is revealed between great concern for the rights of Christians (and Arabs) and a conspicuous lack of concern for Jews and the welfare of Israel. We want privileges in the Holy Land but not at cost to ourselves.

The argument that Muslims must not be antagonized because of possible consequent dangers to Christians living among them deserves as a rejoinder H. A. Reinhold's statement concerning the nations under Hitler: "Position after position was bargained away by Christians to save their decisive resistance for a later time."

The recent behavior of our brothers in Rome has been particularly unfortunate. Silence in regard to the justified cause of Israel is bad enough; positive demand and reprimand against the Israelis are worse, especially when tainted with self-interest and hypocrisy. Any assumption that the Holy See was neutral in the recent conflict is counteracted by the Vatican's opposition to the reunification of Jerusalem. As long as Jordan held the Old City, permitting Christians to come to the holy places but forbidding Israeli Jews or Israeli Arabs to do so (in flagrant violation of the 1949 armistice guarantees), the Vatican showed no perturbation; it seemed content to condone religious discrimination in the Holy City. Yet now that this discrimination has been abolished by Israel, the Vatican has suddenly remembered its traditional call for internationalization of the entire city. Particularly reprehensible is the demand that Israel actually cede territory it possessed before the hostilities began. On June 23 the permanent observer of the Holy See at the U.N. distributed a note calling for a corpus separatum (separate territory) for all Jerusalem, under an international regime. This demand by a Christian body for the surrender of the erstwhile territory of a nation that has been subjected to wanton aggression is not only immoral; it also -- coming as it does from a religious entity that is also a secular state -- constitutes illicit intervention in the affairs of another sovereign nation. The demand would come with much more grace, though still without legitimacy, were the Vatican prepared to grant full recognition to the State of Israel. Its deficiency here makes it a poor candidate for arbitration or for giving political advice. In view of the historic Christian persecutions of Jews and the representative character of the Vatican before the world, that state should have been among the very first to recognize and support Israel.

V

Understandably, spokesmen for the World Council of Churches and other bodies have reacted with coolness to the Vatican demand that Jerusalem be entirely taken away from Israel. But subject as they themselves are to the Christian dualism referred to above, they could provide no positive theological foundation for this disagreement. They could only say that the question of Jerusalem was strictly "political" and that religious interests could not be discussed until a political settlement had been reached.

It is generally recognized that many peoples of the world would feel immeasurable guilt were they to permit the Arabs to slaughter the Jews of Israel. If the neutralism of church bodies and the anti-Israel statements of Christian spokesmen are any guide, it would appear that such a concern has no great strength in the churches.

If Christian silence is the silence of the Christian god, he is better off dead. Woe unto Israel had she waited for the god of neutralism and apolitical "love" to deliver her. Instead, she refused to die, and thus -- with lesser or greater faith, with "worldly" or "unworldly" aspirations, with "atheist" or "believing" assumptions -- was enabled to celebrate the living Lord of creation and the God of righteousness. Christians, with other residual pagans, may not wish to be disturbed by this God of justice who earns his living in wholly worldly ways.

Deep in Christian ideology is the insistence, on the one hand, that for various reasons the reputed people of God are barred from their land, and, on the other hand, that the dominant secularity of the State of Israel flouts divine authentication and makes Christian doctrinal recognition impossible. Perhaps the Christian community could never endure the tension of bringing together doctrine and politics in this matter. For once it acknowledged and confirmed theologically the unqualified right of Israel to live, it would be confronted not only with an ideological crisis but also with the moral necessity of casting its lot publicly with Israel, in opposition to unceasing Arab exterminationism. Should Christians be enabled to overcome the theological bias that predisposes them to sympathy with the enemies and detractors of Jews, they may come to see the overwhelming moral justice of Israel's cause and be willing to stand up for it with courage.

The moral tragedy is that the only tangible way open to us to atone for our historic crimes against original Israel is by assuming a special responsibility for the rights and welfare of Jews. The present refusal to bear this obligation may well reflect the Christian community's wish to exonerate itself from culpability for the long years of anti-semitism.