Reflections for Pastors on the Violence
In Palestine and Israel
October 12, 2023
Members of United Church of Christ congregations, along with their neighbors, are shocked, deeply troubled, and profoundly demoralized by the level of violence unleashed over recent days in Palestine and Israel that has left thousands dead, many more wounded, and some held as hostages. As Israel’s retaliatory assault on Gaza continues, the suffering will inevitably intensify while the grieving over the loss of loved ones in Israel and Gaza becomes a long season of agonizing sorrow and fear. We are awash in commentary from the media, politicians, and partisans. Congregations expect, however, to hear from their pastors as well. What shall we say? The situation is complex. But complexity is no excuse for silence. The situation is frequently framed as ancient, intractable religious rivalries and hatreds. But the conflict of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries is primarily a political one based on political decisions made by political actors for political purposes. More often than not, religion has been the rationale used to justify political acts. And the situation invites despair. Yet our long-standing Palestinian partners, Christian and Muslim, as well as many Jewish Israelis and American Jews with whom we as a church are in relationship, consistently call us to hope as the durable foundation for courage in the struggle for justice and peace. So, what shall we say?
First, we must reject the current violence and refuse to grant it any legitimacy. The assault on civilian lives in Israel by Hamas, and now the indiscriminate violence launched by Israel and applauded by many in the international community including the United States against the residents of Gaza, along with the denial of access to water, electricity, and critical medical supplies, cannot be condoned. Understood, yes. Justified, no. Our lament and prayers for the bereaved, the besieged, and the captive are a meaningful expression of our Christian faith that calls us to compassion for and solidarity with the vulnerable. But they must be coupled with clear calls for a cessation of violence and the safe return of hostages even if those calls seem drowned out by cries for revenge or the adoption of violent strategies aimed at future political advantage whether embraced by Hamas, Israel, or foreign powers including the United States.
Second, our prayers must name both Israeli and Palestinian victims equally. And we must resist the temptation to assign gradations of suffering based on which “side” has endured higher numbers of deaths or injured. Grief is not experienced in the aggregate, but by individual loved ones – partners, children, grandchildren, parents. A common humanity invites equal and shared compassion and respect regardless of the flag under which someone lives. Collective demonization dishonors the God who is creator of all. Further, while we understandably grieve, pray, and fear for dead, injured, and vulnerable civilians, soldiers also require our prayers. They, too, have loved ones. They, too, have hopes and dreams and fears. The lives of all combatants will be changed and, in many cases shadowed by the events of this and coming weeks.
Third we must seek to understand. The current violence is horrible. But it was entirely predictable. We must understand that the creation of the state of Israel was never negotiated with the Arab population that had lived in Palestine for centuries. Rather it was imposed on them by a series of decisions going back to the end of World War I made primarily by European colonial powers and ultimate supported by the United States and the United Nations. A brief war of resistance ended in victory for the Israeli army, the destruction of over five hundred Palestinian villages, and the creation of a Palestinian refugee population of 750,000 that today lives in Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza and numbers 5.6 million people. Palestinians refer to these events as “the Nakba,” the Catastrophe.
We must understand that twenty years later, following the Six Day War in 1967, Israel occupied the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and took control of Gaza, all territory that had been promised to Palestinians as the basis for a sovereign state. Over the ensuing forty plus years of occupation Israel has imposed on Palestinians humiliating and disruptive restrictions on travel, employment, home building, and religious observance. During this period a Separation Barrier was erected dividing Palestinians from Israelis, appropriating more Palestinian land, and separating many Palestinians from their families, their work, and their agricultural fields. Over 125 Israeli settlements – illegal under international law - have been established in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and over 100 unauthorized settlements have been established as well. Large portions of the West Bank are off limits to Palestinians, and a separate road system for settlement residents further divides Palestinians from one another. Security checkpoints throughout the West Bank, and a pass system, disrupt travel for many and make it impossible for others. In 2005 Israel left the Gaza strip. In 2007 Hamas gained political control and Israel imposed a land and sea blockade that severely restricts access to jobs and to the traditional fishing industry. Unemployment in Gaza approaches 50%. The economy is largely dependent on foreign aid administered by the UN. Today Gazans live in deplorable and demoralizing conditions often described as a “large, outdoor prison.”
Finally, we must understand the impact of contemporary events on the Palestinian community. They have watched settlements grow throughout the West Bank and in Jerusalem with no accountability demanded by the international community. They have watched as their children are arrested, detained, and tried in Israeli military courts. They have watched the United States continue to contribute billions of dollars to Israel without exacting any pledges that might lead toward ending the Occupation or the establishment of a Palestinian state. They have watched military incursions into their cities that have led to the deaths of countless Palestinians. They have watched Democratic and Republican administrations endorse Israeli policies, move the US embassy to Jerusalem, and midwife the so-called Abrahamic Accords with Arab nations without exacting any binding commitments to the Palestinians. And they have now watched a far-right Israeli cabinet installed that includes members calling for annexation of the entire West Bank and changes to the judicial system that threaten to undermine one of the last moderating influences on settlement expansion.
Palestinians are admonished to be non-violent in their struggle for justice. Yet non-violent resistance by Palestinians and their international supporters in the form of protests, truth forums, human rights reports, or economic pressure through the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement have been suppressed, named anti-Semitic, or declared illegal in Israel and even in the United States. Peaceful civil society groups in Israel calling for more just treatment of Palestinians are sanctioned. Even non-violent pro-Palestinian gatherings in response to the current violence are vilified and declared illegitimate. Armed resistance throughout the years has been met with overwhelming Israeli military force and devastating human and economic consequences for Gaza. Patience is encouraged, but results merely in acquiescence to an unacceptable status quo. Negotiations have been premised on impossible prerequisite demands. In the face of dispossession and expulsion, the failure to achieve a sovereign state with the prospect of an enduring second class citizenship within an Israeli controlled establishment, the sense of permanence in the refugee status of so many of their fellow Palestinians, the daily humiliations of the Occupation, the lack of personal economic opportunity, and the inability to worship at holy sites, we must understand why some Palestinians see violence as the only viable option even if it means inevitable and overwhelming retaliation, destruction, hardship, and death.
To identify the conditions that allow us to predict a violent future is not to condone or justify that violence. It is to warn us that failure to change those conditions sentences both Israelis and Palestinians to a grim future. Historical context and contemporary challenges provide us with critical understanding surrounding the decision by some Palestinians to resort to the violence we have seen this month. But that understanding also serves as a warning. Absent meaningful movement toward an end of the Occupation and negotiations that lead to a just peace marked by adherence to acceptable standards of human rights and the rules of international law, violence affecting the lives of both Palestinians and Israelis will be a predictable mark of the future. Kairos Palestine, a Christian ecumenical movement for non-violent action and a United Church of Christ global partner, offers this prophetic interpretation of the violence we are watching today. Speaking to their Israeli neighbors, the writers remind us,
This war came to say that weapons do not protect, and the strong who underestimate the weak will not protect themselves nor will they find security. Safe hearts are safe strongholds. Palestinian hearts, if their full freedom, dignity, and state are returned to them, are your only protection.
