A Plea: Do not Speak about the Israeli/Palestinian Conflict in Ways that Exacerbate It

Please, my friends, look for ways to speak out against injustice and horror that do not promote the us/them ideologies that lie behind so much injustice and horror.

I am think now about the horror in Gaza and the horrific attack in October that triggered it. I am no expert on the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or the cultural, religious, political, and economic realities that are in play in shaping the conflict and which need to be taken into account in formulating solutions. But what I want to say does not, I think, rely on any such expertise. 

When Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, killing and violating and kidnapping innocents, I have no doubt that those who planned and carried out the attacks justified it by discounting the lives of those they harmed: people they defined wholly in terms of group membership. Being part of the wrong group was enough to morally disqualify their victims.

When I look at the Netanyahu administration’s prosecution of its war against Hamas, I see a single-minded determination to wipe out Hamas so that its members can never harm Israeli citizens again. That single-mindedness has resulted in what looks from where I stand to be a shocking indifference to the lives of Palestinian civilians. More than that, it is actively fueling a humanitarian disaster, one that has and will continue to be a source of suffering and death far beyond what bombs and bullets inflict directly, especially among the most vulnerable populations (children, the sick, and the elderly). 

In short, Israel’s prosecution of the war in Gaza relies on means and tactics that have predictably generated a death toll among Palestinian civilians dwarfing what Hamas inflicted in October—and the death toll keeps rising. It is hard to fathom a justification for this that does not involve a discounting of Palestinian lives just because they belong to “them” rather than “us.”

We’ve heard that “hate feeds hate,” but the principle is broader than this. Even absent overt hate, any way of thinking that cares mostly or only about “our” lives and morally discounts “their” lives drives patterns of conflict in which each side sees the actions of the other as a new outrage that justifies a response the other side will see as a new outrage, and so on ad infinitum.

The October 7 Hamas terrorist attacks predictably inspired a war to wipe out Hamas, a war that is causing untold suffering and death among Palestinians who were just trying to live their lives (lives that were already hard). And that war will, predictably, produce people seething with outrage against those they blame for their shattered lives—an outrage that will, predictably, inspire new recruits into terrorist organizations like Hamas (even if the original Hamas is totally wiped out), fueling more acts of terror that harm innocent people just trying to live their lives.

When we speak out against injustices and horrors, this is the reality into which we speak. And we must be mindful of this reality in choosing what to say. I don’t have good answers, nor do I claim to always know the right thing to say. But I think it is important to look for ways to speak that do not reinforce cycles of violence. 

And as someone with Jewish friends and loved ones (most of whom, by the way, are deeply disturbed by what is being done in Gaza), I urge those who raise their voices against the ongoing horrors in Gaza to speak about it in ways that do not feed into anti-Semitic ideologies. When you share memes or posts about the conflict on social media, I urge you to be careful not to amplify, however unwittingly, anti-Semitic dog whistles.

Of course, the same holds for amplifying words and ideas that demonize Palestinians or diminish the significance of their lives and rights and human beings.

Palestinians have for a long time lived under conditions no one should live under. Israel has for generations now been crouched in a defensive posture in a region filled with those who deny its legitimacy and seek its demise. A path forward, one that offers hope of a better life for everyone, is more important than parsing blame and weighing past wrongs. But anger and pain and resentment about past wrongs impede the efforts of well-meaning people to implement solutions. 

I cannot but believe that a two-state solution is the only path forward. And even if a two-state solution is no Kumbaya society in which Palestinians and Israelis share the land, living together in perfect harmony, it is a solution that requires co-existence as neighboring states. Achieving this will require unprecedented levels of ingenuity and dedication. As such, it will require that people set aside their us/them thinking, or at least enough people do so to reach a kind of tipping-point, one that allows for new policy decisions, new talking points, and mutual perspective-taking.

And this last will happen only if each of us takes responsibility for trying to speak about the conflict, the injustices and the suffering and the blinkered thinking, in ways that do not reinforce ideologies of division. 

When I say "each of us," I especially have in mind those of us who are not caught up personally in the conflict, who have at least some capacity to adopt an outsider's perspective. Because if we cannot avoid reinforcing us/them thinking and hateful ideologies, what hope is there for those closer to the conflict?

Taking such responsibility is hard work. It may mean pausing and reflecting on the content of a social media meme before clicking "share." It may mean reading reasonable and thoughtful articulations of opposing perspectives. It may mean thinking about word choice before we speak, and leaving behind the simple sound-bite in favor of something more in-depth. And it probably means an openness to hearing criticisms of what we do say, because even if we put in the work, that doesn't mean we will get things right.

But doing that work is something each of us can do, and if enough of us do it, the cumulative impact can change the cultural landscape in ways that can open up new, more hopeful possibilities.  

Iran, Jesus' Third Way, and the Notion of a Christian Nation

Iran did exactly what they said they'd do. Notice that the US threat of strong reprisals should they do this did not deter them. And when they say that should we strike back they will feel compelled to strike again, that will not deter us. In a dynamic like this, each side from its own perspective sees each escalating act by the other as a new wrong that demands a violent response: an eye taken that demands an eye be taken, a tooth knocked out that demands the knocking out of a tooth. We never reach a point where things are "even" because each side has their own moral perspective from which the other side's act of getting even is seen as a new affront that demands that we get even. That's the engine that drives escalation to all-out war.

And the entire pattern of thinking and relating that creates this engine makes the world a far worse place than it would be if we could only cultivate a "third way" of response--an alternative both to "taking it" and to "striking back in kind."

This kind of third way was what Jesus was attempting to describe in the Sermon on the Mount. As theologian Walter Wink noted, turning the other cheek was not for Jesus a call to simply endure abuse but a call for a creative third way of response that neither strikes back in kind nor meekly submits. It matters, for understanding Jesus, that he specified that if someone strikes your right cheek you turn the left cheek to them. This matters because a blow to the right cheek was the kind of back-handed blow a master would use to strike a slave. A blow to the left cheek was a blow that one struck against a perceived equal. Turning the other cheek was thus an example of a creative way to assert one's equal dignity in the face of a demeaning attack, without striking back in kind. (Wink offers a similar analysis of walking the second mile and giving all of one's clothes to the one who demands your outer garment.)

Jesus did not here offer a specific solution to be used in every conflict but rather a way of thinking about conflict, a way of approaching conflict, distinct from the eye-for-eye approach that serves as an engine of escalation. This different approach, this third way, demands thought and planning and imagination. It cannot be carried out by rote but by bringing thoughtful people to the table who understand the enemy and how our actions will affect them. Massive symbolic gestures that startle and disarm, responses that make continuing to strike culturally costly or shameful, responses where the only face-saving move is not to escalate. Responses that aren't in the script, that leave everyone momentarily stunned.

Imagine if we as a nation devoted a fraction of what we devote to the military towards the cultivation of our capacity to launch such creative third-way responses. Imagine if we were as committed to developing and implementing such responses as we are to developing and implementing effective military ones. To imagine such a thing is to imagine a nation that as a matter of national policy takes seriously Jesus' strategy for responding to violence and injustice. To imagine such a thing is, in a real sense, to imagine a Christian nation.

In this sense, the world has never seen a truly Christian nation. Perhaps we never will.

Zimmerman's Acquittal is not Ours

On the day that George Zimmerman was acquitted of homicide in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, I wrote the following words on my facebook page:

I was not in the courtroom. I did not see and hear the evidence and the testimony. I cannot speak to this verdict based on the evidence. What I can say is that if my son were black, then tonight as I looked in on his sleeping face nestled into his beddings, I would feel an adrenal rush of fear, a heightened anxiety for his future. Because he is an unthreatening shade of pink, I feel instead the shame of my own relief.

And then I fell silent. I didn't rush to this blog, as I sometimes do, to elaborate--and not just because I've been deliberately neglecting this blog this summer to focus on other priorities.

I fell silent because I didn't know what else to say. I didn't know what my perspective could add, what I could say that wasn't already being said better by others or wasn't already expressed in my earlier post in the wake of the shooting. I didn't know how to answer the question that burns for so many in this country:

What now? What do we do to move forward, to help heal the social fault-lines highlighted by this tragedy and its aftermath (including the trial and subsequent acquittal)?