Two truths and countless sorrows in Israel and Gaza

"Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good." -- Romans 12:21

Soul wrenching. Horrific. Inhuman. Grotesque. Calculated brutality. Murder. Massacre. Utter Evil. All true words. 

But words are inadequate to describe the atrocities Hamas unleashed against thousands of civilians and vulnerable families in Israel, compounded by the terror of 150 men, women and children held hostage and threatened with execution. 

I keep watching reports of the bodies being found of civilians including women, children, toddlers, and babies, slaughtered by Hamas terrorists going house to house in kibbutzim and small towns near the Gaza border in coordinated and premeditated attacks. 

And I have watched the grief of parents whose teenaged children were among the hundreds of young people gunned down or kidnapped at a music festival. No cause could ever justify such barbarism against innocent people. If you don’t feel the depth of the sorrow that was caused in Israel over the last few days, imagine your own children being mercilessly killed or kidnapped. Because the Hamas terrorists would do that to any American family and to your children, if they could, because America has supported Israel in perpetrating the oppression of the Palestinian people. But let’s be clear at this moment: the deliberate destruction of civilians, from any and all sides, is the definition of terrorism – period.

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Then there are other words that every Palestinian knows: Dehumanization, dispossession, disenfranchisement and death. Expulsion and eviction from their homes. Forced into refugee camps to live your life. Blockaded Gaza as an “open air prison.” Bulldozed houses, rockets hitting kid’s bedrooms, no free movement and literally treated like animals at checkpoints. The denial of dignity. Lack of self determination, loss of freedom, abuse of human rights, and violation of international law. Massive poverty and despair. Prevented from living decent, safe, or secure lives. Collective punishment. Blamed for all terrorism even when the actions of groups like Hamas are protested by other Palestinians.

There are not “two sides” to the barbarism of the terrorism we have just seen. Even militant activism is not the same as pure terrorism. But putting these two sets of words together is the only way to true and lasting peace. And the depth of sorrow on one side must be deeply connected to the other. 

It is entirely illusive that one’s own security can be found by refusing to accept the security of others in the same land. The depth of one people’s sorrow is not being understood or felt by the depth of the other people’s sorrow. And the depth of our problem is that the first set of words about Israeli suffering is not being deeply connected to the second set of words about Palestinian suffering, and vice versa. There are two truths here that are not being put together – but must be.

The necessity of a genuine two state solution for two peoples who share the same land was not established from the beginning of the state of Israel 75 years ago, nor in the 57 years of the brutal military occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, nor in the 16 years since the suffocating blockade of Gaza. It has never been given more than lip service, instead of the aggressive diplomacy it needs. And when the more dominant people oppress others, peace will be impossible and suffering will be a constant way of life – for both sides. 

When two peoples who belong to the same land, who literally are next to each other in a very small space, but have no effective connection to each other, there will be no peace. Both peoples must finally understand that neither can live dignified, decent, safe, and secure lives until both peoples do. And the results of denying or ignoring that truth will be fear, hate, violence and deep pain on all sides. 

And when the United States and the West allow the lack of justice to go on and on, and allow the refusal of a real two state solution be indefinitely postponed, a just peace will never come. Israelis will never live safe lives until Palestinians do, too – as deeper thinkers within the Jewish community, such as Peter Beinart, have been saying for years.

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Jesus said that violence begets violence, and that those who live by the sword will die by it. If military solutions were the answer, Israel would be safe and secure, and last weekend’s carnage would have not happened. Revenge, retribution, and brutality feed on each other.

Oppressed people, historically,  win when their leaders take a higher ground – but that is difficult, almost impossible perhaps, when pain and trauma become a way of life. Even destroying Hamas would not end the threats. There will be other organizations, guns, and attacks from angry men. Violence and hate flow generation to generation, without a change of course and direction, that deal with the conditions of oppression. 

And, as a Christian, I will also insist to my fellow white evangelicals who are calling for massive military reactions against this horrible terrorism, that Jesus is the Prince of Peace, not the Prince of Retaliation. To say that God wants Israel to own, control, and dominate the holy land and ignore, oppress, and even expel the Palestinian people is anti-biblical and anti-God. The biblical prophets make clear that rulers and governments, including ancient and modern Israel, are especially responsible for the most vulnerable in their territories.

I have been to Gaza and throughout the occupied territories, and, along with many others who know the Middle East, believe that the “flattening” and “complete siege” of the Gaza Strip – cutting off all food, water, fuel, and electricity –  will not protect or rescue hostages, but will result in more civilian deaths and terrible costs. And all of this is very personal – for Jews who are related to or know those killed or kidnapped, for the families of the reservists who have been called up to fight a brutal escalating war, and for Palestinian families whose loss of life is often overlooked and ignored.

In 1989, Christian Middle East scholar Charles Kimball and I traveled through Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza, witnessing the growing despair and anger. We came home and wrote an article for Sojourners called “The Clock Is Ticking.” 

We described increasing incidents that were not isolated events but part of a complicated web in a larger alarming context. We said, “Such is the story of the Middle East. One tragedy eclipsed by another.” Subsequent trips revealed the continually growing tension and trauma.

The clock is now pounding, and the prospect of a widening war, which Hamas would love to see happen and hoped to create with their unspeakable terrorism, is now before us. We can only pray and act in the words of a Jewish mother I heard, whose children were just taken hostage, “We just want peace.”

It is time, even and especially now, for much deeper thought, reflection, and compassion for the victims of terrorism and war. Wednesday’s column by Tom Friedman in The New York Times provides an example. He warns that “the theocratic fascists of Hamas” and their allies are eager for an Israeli overreaction that kills masses of Palestinian civilians and ends the prospects of a new dynamic in the Middle East.

Friedman also notes that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has fractured  Israeli society and the military with his right-wing judicial coup against democracy and his efforts to prevent any agreements for peace with the Palestinians – in part in an attempt to keep himself in office and forestall the consequences of his own corruption charges. Friedman compares the terrible dangers of Israeli overreaction to what the U.S. did after 9/11, with two endless and costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — “a mistake I was a part of,” Freidman admits.  

This Jewish journalist who has covered the Middle East for fifty years concludes his reflective commentary on the complicated and combustible present moment by saying:

America cannot protect Israel in the long run from the very real threats it faces unless Israel has a government that reflects the best, not the worst, of its society, and unless that government is ready to try and forge compromises with the best, not the worst, of Palestinian society.

It’s time to go deeper into compassion for all the suffering on all sides, and more forthrightly for the justice needed for true peace. A little sign on my office desk repeats the words of Pope Paul VI, “If you want peace, work for justice.” Moments like his colossal grief are a reason I keep that reminder close and in front of me every day.

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