In this last post in November, the month I dedicate to considering the place of violence in our times, what can be said about the Israeli-Hamas war? We sit on the eve of Advent when the Christians considers the birth of the Prince of Peace in the very place where not much peace has been for two millennia.

I confess I don’t have sufficient wisdom to apply either to the Hamas massacre, nor the Israeli response, nor the conditions that led to this tinderbox to explode. People are taking sides, and trying to shame others into taking their side, but no side willingly lends itself to peace; there will be no peace in Palestine this Christmas.

For contrast see “When Silence is not Golden” where I confess to my wrestling with the provocative assertion by Elie Wiesel, Romanian born Jewish Holocaust survivor:

We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.

The question is: who is the tormentor in Palestine when everyone around Israel, including Israel, appear to torment each other. And far from ever eliminating the random terrorist attacks by Hamas et al, I am afraid Israel has simply seeded the Middle East with the next generation of terrorists. Violence only begets violence.

For more on this see Israeli journalist Gideon Levy’s article, “Israel is Fostering the Next Generation of Hatred against Itself.”

Oversimplifying the story of the Middle East

Recently Scott White posted this in “The Conversation“:

“A bomb struck the complex of the historic Church of Saint Porphyrius in Gaza on Oct. 19, 2023, killing more than a dozen of the hundreds of Christians and Muslims taking shelter inside and wounding others.

As a historian of Roman Christianity who focuses on the Eastern Mediterranean, I am often confronted by the complexity of this region. Many Christian and Muslim families in Gaza today were displaced in 1948, after the United Nations divided this formerly Ottoman land into new Arab and Jewish states. Today’s Palestinian Christians occupy a complicated place in this contested land.

The Church of Saint Porphyrius, or Porphyry, is named for a fifth-century bishop remembered for building a church in the city… While the number of Christians in Gaza dwindled to a little over a thousand in 2022, with roughly 50,000 more in the West Bank and Jerusalem, the 1922 census of the British Mandate of Palestine reported over 73,000 in this region where Christians have lived ever since Christianity began… Most Palestinian Christians today are Arab Christians…

In oversimplifying the story of the Middle East to binary categories – Muslims and Jews, right and wrong, terrorists and innocent – we lose the ability to understand the deeply layered history of this complex region. Meanwhile, the land of Gaza itself is in mourning under a thick ashen shroud.”

Dualistic Thinking got us into this mess

Dualistic Thinking will not get us out

As White put it, “in oversimplifying the story of the Middle East to binary categories we lose the ability to understand…”

Taking sides is nearly meaningless: I was horrified by Hamas’ massacre, and I am horrified by the near wanton disregard of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) as it rolls over bystanders on their way to get to Hamas terrorists.  I understand there is context, and I understand sides have reasons, but I don’t understand oversimplifying the issues in such a way as to never intend to understand further.

Peace: something different than “no conflict”?

I am left to contemplate that peace must be something different than just a state where there is no conflict. As the world seethes around us the Psalmist sings, “why do the nations rage,” or as The Message puts it:

Why the big noise, nations?
Why the mean plots, peoples?
Earth-leaders push for position,
Demagogues and delegates meet for summit talks,
The God-deniers, the Messiah-defiers:
“Let’s get free of God!
Cast loose from Messiah!

May We contemplate True Peace in a Time of War

Of course the hope for peace is fantastical, impractical, ridiculous in an intractable war.  But the only way to counter evil violence is to not become a violent evil oneself. I know it is considered madness to suggest this because I speak into a culture where justice is self referenced, and into an era in which we think our lives are only lived in this moment – therefore we must do everything we can to preserve it.

I clearly don’t believe that; and being free from the fantasy of a secular worldview, I trust what the world thinks is an appalling fantasy of hope – namely that death is not the worst thing for me, and that living and dying with Christ is eternally superior than living for myself and dying in self-perpetuating violence.

May the Peace of Christ be with you