The urgency of maturity in the Middle East and the U.S. Congress

Moderation and centrism in such a volatile moment is not weakness, but strength. And our words matter at such a dangerous time.

On his one-day trip to Israel, President Joe Biden secured humanitarian aid for the people of Gaza, which many of us were hoping and praying for. He also, characteristically, was able to show his genuine pastoral love and care for the deep pain of so many, meeting with victims’ families and survivors – more than Israeli PM Netanyahu has done since the Hamas atrocities. 

Biden also showed wisdom, understanding the “deep rage” of Israelis, but counseling them not to be “consumed by it.” With age comes wisdom; and from the experience of pain comes the capacity for real support and grace. It’s ironic that, at a time when the United States desperately needs senior statesmen and stateswomen, Biden is often discounted and doubted because of his age.

Instead, immature extremism and violence mount on both sides. Many of us faith leaders have expressed deep concern for the protection of Palestinians in Gaza who are not responsible for the brutality of Hamas – and where civilian casualties have risen massively as a consequence of Israel’s counter-attacks.

But some on the left in America couldn’t contain themselves. Using words like “resistance” and “liberation” for the barbarous brutality of Hamas is completely and morally inexcusable.  Even two Members of Congress, Reps Rashida Talib and Ilhan Omar, quickly and irresponsibly accepted the Hamas accusation of an Israeli strike on a hospital in Gaza City before any evidence for such. 

According to U.S. intelligence agencies, it was apparently an accident – a rocket misfired by another armed group inside Gaza – but both sides were quick to blame the other, rather than share in mutual grief for the hundreds of lives lost. We are in a place and time where evidence just doesn’t matter anymore, as deep hatred overwhelms the facts.

Strident calls for unlimited violence in Gaza erupted from conservative, pro-Israel members of Congress and, most tragically for many of us, from white right-wing evangelical preachers. Could somebody please tell megachurch pastors like Greg Locke and Robert Jeffress to shut their ignorant and violence-filled mouths in situations like this!?

Many people who have been critical of Israeli government policies have been accused of anti-Semitism when they are clearly not. But it also must be said that anti-Semitism is real and is again coming to the surface from both the right and the left. 

Regardless of differing political views as to how peace can be established in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – and it certainly must now after such horrific violence – anti-Semitism must be morally and religiously rejected absolutely by all people of faith.

It’s time for religious and political leaders who reject extremism to step up for truth and peace, and with the deepest compassion for those who are suffering – on all sides – right now. Leadership must move beyond blaming and hatred to genuine problem solving for the sake of the peace that can only come with justice.

(And speaking of extremists, in the United States we have Jim Jordan, who tried to become House Speaker this week. It was well-past time for responsible Republicans to stand up for democracy against the election-denying, coup-plotting, conspiracy-spinning and violence-promoting insurrectionists who have taken over their party. It is heartening that, after years of aiding and abetting Donald Trump’s lies and crimes, some members of the Republican Party in the House of Representatives are finally stopping at least one of the extremists in their midst.)

But there are many other extremists, on both sides. From the conservatives calling for “bombing Gaza back to the Stone Age” to the talk-radio hosts who allegedly provoked a bigot to murder Wadea Al Fayoume, an innocent 6-year-old Palestinian-American boy; from rampant anti-Semites in Palestine to those on the far Left who roost on college campuses in America and seem to believe that innocent Iraelis deserve to die.

It is time for the rest of us to say an absolute NO to hatred and violence. Unequivocally. Moderation and centrism in such a volatile moment is not weakness, but strength. And our words matter at such a dangerous time.

For some of us here at Georgetown, a poem by the Irish poet William Butler Years came to mind this week:

The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre   

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst   

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.   

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out   

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert   

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,   

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,   

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it   

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.   

The darkness drops again; but now I know   

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,   

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,   

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

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