Political cartoonist MacKay features Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel, and the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ali Hosseini Khamenei attempting to twist off the wings from the dove of peace while standing on the skeletons of thousands. Who can understand their motivations or their end goals. Who can unbraid the knot of violence that begets violence?

In this month to consider the place of violence in our times, we are burdened with the war in the Middle East. By now who can support the egregious retaliation of Israel that surely amounts to war crimes where as of this post over 44,000 Palestinians have been killed under the euphemism of collateral damage, while Hamas terrorists refuse to release the hostages they took over a year ago. Alas, as the adage goes, “the death of one is a tragedy… the death of 44,000 is a statistic.”

But who can side with terrorists whose only raison d’être has been to genocide the people of Israel from the start? Some have called Hamas terrorists freedom fighters – equating them to the French Resistance during World War II. To say this is to conveniently forget that true freedom fighters were those who attacked combatants, targeted military infrastructure, and had a clear end goal. The French Resistance did not indiscriminately lob thousand of missiles on non-combantants as Hamas persists to do.

No one should conflate the victimized Palestinians with Hamas, as if the two groups were synonymous. While some liken the Gaza Strip to being imprisoned by Israel, the other co-existent reality is that Gazans have been held hostage by a terrorist organization that resists the call to negotiations or democratic vote ever since they began to govern in 2007, and who’s unyielding power means the unending violence visited upon those who dearly wish, along with Israel, that Hamas was no longer in power in Palestine.

Beside Iran and their proxy warriors acted through Hamas and Hezbollah, there is a curious silence of other Middle Eastern countries who wish Iran would stay home and for Hamas’ reign of terror would end. Even Qatar, who has been the slithery host to Hamas leadership, has recently asked Hamas officials to leave their country, and have backed out of trying to mediate the Israel-Hamas talks.

But the other curious outcome from this war has been to expose one’s inner terrorist – your own desire for revenge or your own siding with one unspeakably violent leader over another. The appeal of your inner terrorist coaxes you to try to locate yourself on the ever elusive “right side of history.”

There is no right side of history here.

Recently I was challenged with:

What would you do?

I was asked to walk in the shoes of a Palestinian (interestingly, I was not asked to walk in the shoes of an Israeli).

I was asked this, rhetorically, as if the person asking could think of no other alternative to violence but more violence.

I was asked – as if to appeal to my inner terrorist – for a rhetorical question like this pre-supposes ruthless retribution to be “natural” and therefore inevitable.

I reject this notion completely.

It takes a supernatural power to overcome the natural desire for revenge… but that’s the point: ascend on the power of the Prince of Peace rather than descend to our basest level.

As an ancient scripture teaches:

Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited.

Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s righteous wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord. On the contrary:

“If your enemy is hungry, feed him;
if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.

In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

An Imagination of Peace?

In a conflict where neither side embraces a world-view of peace, the entrenchment of cruelty seems unengulfable.

But imagine a world-view of peace: there can be negotiation; there can be avoiding, evading, even moving away (though Mennonites and other Anabaptist groups responded like this in the face of persecution, I am not suggesting Palestinians must leave. Instead they are being displaced onto the peace-loving shores of countries like Canada, and tragically – some start all over again as anti-semitic threats and acts have exploded in the Western world. For more see: Thoughts on War by a Quaker). With a world-view of peace there can be actions other than brutality.

Instead the calculus of 44,000 dead Palestinians does not equal 200 Israeli hostages. Israel will not stop fighting to get their citizens back, and Hamas will not let them go. This intractable conflict doesn’t have an endpoint without a world-view of peace.

The Wall Street Journal noted:

“Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar sought to remake the Middle East with last year’s attack on Israel, dragging Iran, Lebanon’s Hezbollah and much of the region into what he foresaw as a decisive battle ending in the Jewish state’s demise.

The region, and the world’s balance of power, have indeed been decisively altered in the aftermath of that carnage, which killed some 1,200 Israelis.

Violence betrays the lack of imagination – the imagination of peace.

Blessed are the Peacemakers

In the words of Jesus Christ,

Blessed are the peacemakers,
    for they will be called children of God.

It is an intriguing fact that as early Christians were being rounded up, killed, and persecuted, there was not a hint of a whisper of raising a militia, or forming a violent response. Despite living in the midst of abuse and oppression, one cannot find in the New Testament an appeal to respond with retaliation as that would be an anathema to followers of the person and teaching of Christ who himself died at the hands of injustice.

It wasn’t till the late fourth century when Emperor Constantine converted that his military resources was now at the disposal of his emperorial powers. And every political power thereafter has been tempted to misuse it toward violence.

The fact that the powerful West harbours and supplies Israel with resources against terrorists funded by Iran who excites innumerable attacks, should not suggest one is more right than the other, or less wrong than the other. There is blood on everyone’s hands in this conflict.

It would be better if Christ-followers would actually take Christ’s words to heart in order to live and die as peace-makers rather than as war-mongers.

This is more enigma than dogma…