Trump fails to learn from history, and the Bible
When Donald Trump was sworn in as the 47th US President, he did not put his left hand on either of the two Bibles held by his wife.
Despite the usual torrent of conspiracies, this was probably just an oversight, as being anointed leader of a superpower must be an otherworldly experience.
But if the President has ever read either Lincoln’s Bible or the one gifted by his mother, then there was no evidence of it when he said we should “learn from history” as he floated taking control of Gaza.
Because if you take one geostrategic lesson from the Bible it is that foreign powers should hit pause before declaring a desire to occupy any part of the Holy Land.
The man who promised to get the US out of “forever wars” has now more deeply entangled America in one of history’s longest running conflicts – 3000 years of shifting battles over the Holy Land.
The Old Testament records more than 40 battles spanning conquest, defence, rebellion and exile. There was also civil war when the land was divided between Israel and Judah after the death of King Solomon.
The external powers fought by the Jews include the Philistines, Assyrians, Babylonians and Greeks.
The New Testament is set against the backdrop of Roman occupation. Some of Jesus’s followers believed he was a revolutionary warrior king who would drive out the occupier and restore Jewish independence. But he demurred, saying his kingdom was not of this world. Even so, he was crucified under Roman law on the charge of treason.
Luke 23:2 says: “We found this man inciting our people to revolt, opposing payment of the tribute to Caesar, and claiming to be Christ, a king.”
In Trump’s defence, it’s likely both his Bibles were missing the books of Maccabees, which tell of the Jewish revolt against Greek occupation. Those two books are included in Catholic and Orthodox Bibles but omitted from Protestant and Jewish canons because they were written later and in Greek.
Maccabees holds a grim warning for would-be foreign occupiers. Its opening would have appealed to Trump because it begins with the conquest of the region by a leader he would judge as an equal – Alexander the Great. The first book of Maccabees says Alexander “ … advanced to the end of the earth, plundering nation after nation; the earth grew silent before him and his ambitious heart swelled with pride”.
The Greeks ruled Israel for about 170 years, from 332 BCE. Greek king Antiochus IV Epiphanes persecuted the Jews, tried to Hellenise them and desecrated their temple. It ended in tears after an insurgency, led by Judas Maccabaeus, retook Jerusalem and rededicated the Temple. This victory is celebrated every year in the Jewish Festival of Lights, Hanukkah.
And what of Antiochus? Maccabees 6:8 tells us that “When the king heard this news he was amazed and profoundly shaken; he threw himself on his bed and fell into a lethargy from acute disappointment, because things had not turned out for him as he had planned”.
Things rarely go to plan in the Middle East.
It’s intriguing that those who speak of Jewish “colonialism” start the occupation clock very late. In the biblical tradition the Jews took what is now Israel from the Canaanites in about 1400 BCE; that’s what Joshua was doing when he fought that battle of Jericho.
The archaeological records support some of the biblical accounts and differ with others. But there is no doubt about the Jewish connection with the land from antiquity. The Jews were in Jerusalem 1638 years before the Muslims took the city from the Christian Byzantine empire. They have never ceded their land rights, no matter how many overlords have come and gone.
Islam’s Dome of the Rock was built on the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism, where the Second Temple stood. The destruction of that temple by the Romans in 70 CE is a defining moment in history. The Jewish revolts against Rome ended in defeat in 135 CE when Hadrian expelled Jews from Jerusalem, renamed Judea as Syria Palaestina, and sought to erase Jewish identity from the region. While many Jews were dispersed across the Roman empire, significant communities remained in the Galilee and beyond.
The diaspora never forgot their homeland, or lost their desire to return. That longing was embedded in their liturgy in the phrase, “Next year in Jerusalem”.
And here is the greatest lesson from history. You can kill thousands of your enemies, reduce their buildings to rubble and banish them from their homeland, and still not defeat them.
The Palestinian Muslims, and remnant Christians in Gaza and the West Bank, also have a long history with the land. And you can be a strong friend of Israel, as I am, and still counsel that the Palestinians have a moral claim to their own state and self-determination.
Anyone who thinks the forced expulsion of a people will end their desire to go home, or extinguish their will to fight, understands neither history, the lessons of the Bible or the human heart.
The children of Israel should know this better than any other people on Earth. Expelled by the Babylonians for 70 years, they returned to their homeland. Banished by the Romans for 1800 years, they returned.
Why would we imagine the Palestinians feel any less of a spiritual bond with their ancestral home?
The Israelis and Palestinians are fated to live together on the most contested patch of dirt in human history. It is sacred to the three great monotheistic religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. They may not read the same Bible, but all believe Abraham is the father of their faith and they all worship the same God. But too often in their prayers, as Abraham Lincoln might have observed, “each invokes His aid against the other”.
There can be no peace in Israel until the Palestinians have a homeland, no matter how remote that possibility now seems or how galling it might be to some.
As is always the case with Trump, everyone is now trying to discern the signal from the noise in his audacious bid to be a peacemaker. Who could possibly say if there was some grand plan or bargain afoot, or if it was just another headline without a story. The latter seems the most likely but words have consequences, particularly when uttered by the President of the United States. The profound danger is that his words will echo in the mouths of other ambitious leaders, in Moscow and Beijing, who have their own land claims. And what is America’s argument against them now?
As Proverbs 18 warns: “Death and life are in the power of the tongue.”
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