3-Jul-13: Stonewalling? The Christian Century and the thundering silence

Do mainstream American Protestants
share Wall's terror-worshipping adoration of our daughter's
killer? Do his editors? Screenshot of James M. Wall's website

Nearly a year ago, we wrote here ["23-Aug-12: Theology and sociopaths"] about James M. Wall who

is not marginal to the public discourse of the United States. Nor is he regarded (as far as we can tell) as a shrieking crank or a red-neck. He served as editor of a prominent journal called The Christian Century for 27 years, from 1972 to 1999. Wikipedia calls it "the flagship magazine of U.S. mainline Protestantism" [source]. He continued there as a regular columnist until a few years ago, even after his retirement. Though it appears he has stopped writing for it, his name remains on the masthead as Senior Contributing Editor.

Over at CAMERA  they have been looking at some of Mr Wall's more recent writings and associations, and have connected him [see more background here] to some of the vilest, most primitive Jew hatred you are likely to see outside of Iran, Egypt and Gaza. (No benefit in our repeating the disclosures. See CAMERA's report to appreciate the baseness of those whose company he seeks.)

Today, they publish a post reporting that, despite the depths to which his work output has descended, Wall

will remain on the masthead of Christian Century, a magazine that caters to mainline Protestant clergy and intellectuals in the United States. That’s the verdict from Christian Century’s executive editor, David Heim, who described Wall’s work as “prophetic”. [CAMERA today]

Here's what got him onto our radar screen. In October 2011, Wall posted a lengthy article to coincide with the extorted release from prison of Ahlam Tamimi, our child's murderer. At about the time he wrote it, in October 2011, an Arab newspaper dotingly quoted Tamimi - a confessed mass murderer - making this statement: 

“I have never regretted what I have done, and if given another chance I’ll do it again” [source]. 

Yet extraordinarily, Wall lionizes her. (Lionize is the term used by the clear-eyed Christian analyst who pointed us to it). With loving attention to the human aspects of her story, Wall urges his readers to resist the Israeli view of the Jordanian woman's "crimes"; note that those quote marks around the word crimes appear in Wall's essay. 

Wall leaves readers in little doubt that the atrocities to which Tamimi confessed in court - atrocities to which she confesses afresh frequently, proudly and in public over and again - were not crimes at all but something far more benign. Some excerpts from Wall's rambling article entitled “Ahlam and Nezar, A Palestinian Couple Released in The Prisoner Exchange” capture the logic of his case:

• “This bias against Palestinians [in the news reports about Israel freeing 1,027 killers and terrorists] was so blatant that… Noam Chomsky was moved to accuse the media of treating the released Palestinian prisoners as “unpeople”. It is time to tell their stories, and to do so without apology.”
• “The Palestinians who were sent to jail… saw themselves as resisting an occupying army, taking actions they believed appropriate to deal with that occupation. What Israel did is what all occupying, colonizing armies do. They punished those who resisted their colonizing... What this comes down to is a conflict of narratives, based on who is telling the story, the military occupiers or those who are resisting occupation/colonization.”
• “From Israel’s perspective, Ahlam played a role in causing a massive act of murder [but] she saw it, initially, as an act of war. And of course, war itself is organized, sanctioned murder.
• “[Tamimi’s] crime, for which she was sentenced by a military court for multiple life terms, was for “choosing the location and securing transportation to reach that location”.

Concerning that last bullet, Wall probably missed out on reading the court papers. Tamimi was indicted on 23 charges. One is for possession of explosives and three concern related offences. 19 relate to deliberate killing and conspiracy to kill. She pleaded guilty to them all. As prisoners in this country may, she addressed the court:

"The deed which I did… leaves me happy. Why? The anger expressed in your faces regarding what I did is the same anger that lies within me and within the entire Palestinian people and is surely even greater than that. 15 killed, 122 injured, this is a small number relative to the many, large numbers of those who are gone, because of you." [From our translation of the Hebrew transcript]

Wall must also have missed a blog post of ours a few weeks back ["5-May-13: Self-confessed jihadist murderer: "With my media card, I was able to enter back and forth, undetected..." in which we said of Wall that

he engages in  advocacy for self-admitted murderers and their deeds. In open societies like the US and Israel, it’s something he has the right to do freely, obnoxiously and even offensively. But what does it mean that The Christian Century still has him on its masthead? Does the editorial board agree with his ‘understanding’ of the actions of people who murder children in the name of jihad? Do they disagree? Will they disavow him and them? Are his views Christian? How Christian is it to embrace the unrepentant murderer of children who says she prays for the chance to do it again?

No one, certainly not James M. Wall, can have thought this woman was framed or tortured into confessing her crimes or misquoted. Wall must have known what every other news reporter and political pundit knew: that Ahlam Tamimi was - and is - unstoppably proud of causing the deaths of Israelis. But it didn't move him.

And now, as CAMERA says, 

Wall, the associate editor of a magazine that prints polemics that come straight out of pre-Holocaust Germany, can also serve as “contributing editor” for Christian Century.

We say: still more disturbing than what Wall and his editor say is the cold absence of critical comment from their own community. Is this stone-walling? Does silence denote consent?