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introduction Personal motives for tackling a particular subject are not always fully elucidated in the introduction to an academic book, although understanding of motives can give the reader an insight into the mind of the author. The seeds of curiosity about the subject of this book were planted in my adolescence. One of my high school history classes was devoted to the Crusades. The story fascinated me, but my enthusiasm for the topic was tempered by frustration when I was unable to answer the teacher’s question about the concept of the Holy Trinity, which was not explained in our textbook. For years I remembered her surprised reaction at this lacuna in my knowledge and the scolding she gave me. The familiarity I gained over the years with the Christian world did not alleviate my sense of ignorance, nor was it remedied during my academic studies . In this regard, then, this book is an attempt to answer some of the questions I was asked some forty years ago. However, it seems that I was not alone in my ignorance. On the eve of the Third Millennium, Israeli high school students’ knowledge of Jesus was examined in several articles. Most of the students knew nothing, not even basic details such as when and where he was born, where he lived and preached, when and how he died. Their ignorance is hardly surprising, since the current curriculum of the state education system refers to Jesus at best once, and then only cursorily. The state religious education system makes no mention whatsoever because, as the superintendent of that system has explained, “it is impossible to ignore what Christianity did to the Jews.” Professor Michael Harsegor, a prominent historian, has stated bluntly that “the schools are still afraid that teaching anything about Jesus would be associated with missionizing .”1 This being so, examination of the roots of Israel’s policy toward the Church during the early years of statehood may possibly facilitate understanding components of the national psyche that have remained at the margins of Israeli public awareness. As a historian of international relations, my personal interest in the subject stemmed from two additional sources: current research into developments in Bialer, Cross on the Star 6/9/05 8:43 AM Page ix the domain of international relations, and the new historiography of Israel’s foreign policy during the first two decades of its existence. In the past decade increasing attention has been paid to the growing weight in international relations of economic and political “non-government organizations .” Whereas, up to the Second World War, nation-states were the almost exclusive exponents of diplomacy, supranational bodies and organizations , such as international corporations and international cultural-social organizations, have since become significantly involved and exerted influence in international politics. This involvement and influence were reinforced by developments in the media, which have created the need to address issues relating to the changing identity of the international actors in the global system , patterns of relations between them, and their differential weight. Indeed, in recent years the theoretical literature in the field has assigned an important place to these questions. Although the present study does not presume to offer a new hypothesis in the field, its focus on the relations between Israel and the Christian world, which involved a number of “supranational actors,” is congruent with a general tendency in disciplinary research and provides new empirical material. Over the past decade, research on Israeli foreign policy has also undergone an important revolution. Since the early 1980s, previously classified political documents have gradually become available, enabling a systematic and orderly approach to a large array of issues and adding new depths and breadths to previous knowledge.One can now examine political,military,social,and economic cycles of activity relating to the first decade and a half of Israel’s existence by perusing state documents. Not surprisingly, most of the early works that took advantage of the new documentation dealt mainly with theArab-Israeli conflict. The existing harvest of research, however, goes beyond that framework.2 Although the military and political conflict with the Arab states and the Palestinians was indeed the major concern of the country’s leaders from Israel’s early years, they also focused on other important political issues and used Israel’s foreign policy to promote the relevant goals. We have thus seen innovative studies of the “great immigration waves” of the late 1940s and early 1950s and their political contexts; Israel’s efforts to...

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