There was a type of cynicism that came with my New Zealand High School education. We would stand back from certain issues, laugh at the greed and lust for power that undergirded much foreign policy, and shake our heads in self-righteous dismay at the persistent violence and corruption in our world.  

The Israel/Palestine conflict was one such issue. Time and again the ‘eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth’ approach of both sides resulted in mutual blindness and bloodied mouths. We, with our teenage insight and arrogance, knew that this violent interchange wouldn’t produce peace, and nothing short of a miracle would. Such teenage cynicism often transmutes into adult feelings of indifference or despondency.

In those High School years I was also exposed to a form of Christianity that extolled the wonders of the birth of the Israel and how it was allegedly part of God’s master plan. This was blended with lashings of fiction, imagined to be fact, by the likes of Leon Uris and other authors. It was easy to empathize with the hardy Jews who survived the Nazis and by sheer grit and determination fashioned a future inthe so-called ‘desolate wasteland’ of what was once ancient Israel.

Of course that ‘desolate wasteland’ was someone else’s home. Canaanite, Hittite and Philistine peoples (Palestine being a derivative of Philistia) once dwelt there. The independent entity called the Kingdom of Israel, founded by Saul, lasted for only less than 100years as an united kingdom (c. 1050-920 BCE) before splitting into two, Judah and Israel. 200 years later (722-740 BCE) Israelite independence was ended by the Assyrians and the population dispersed and exiled. Judah suffered a similar fate under the Babylonians two centuries later with the conquest of Jerusalem in 586 BCE. Even when Cyrus, the Persian King, allowed Jews to return to Jerusalem in 537 BCE, only a few, such as Nehemiah and Ezra, chose to return.

Following the exile, the so-called ‘promised land’ was occupied by successive foreign powers – Babylonia, Achaemenid Persia, the Seleucids, Rome, the Byzantines, the Arabs, and then successive Islamic kingdoms down to the Turkish Ottomans. Except for just under two centuries of European Christian rule, namely the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem (1099-1291), from 638 CE until 1919 the region today called the State of Israel was ruled by successive Muslim rulers and kingdoms. During the First World War Palestine was occupied by British forces and became part of the Mandate under the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916 that carved up the Near East between the French and British.

During the period of Muslim governance, Jews and Christians were allowed freedom to practice their faith as ‘People of the Book’ (Ahl al-Kitab). During this period the notion of a Jewish homeland or state was an aspirational vision amongst some exiled Jews, linked to the coming of the Messiah.

A Jewish state, however, was not something that was part of Christian European policy. Jews in Europe were heavily discriminated against, far more than in Muslim states. Christian views on a Jewish homeland only rose to prominence during the early nineteenth century under the influence of a millenarian movement led by Dutch and British Evangelicals, who believed that prior to Christ’s physical return to earth, all Jews had to become Christians. As part of this process, they also had to have their own state with Jerusalem as its capital. This is the same theology/ideology that Brian Tamaki’s followers and many of Donald Trump’s ‘base’ have been influenced by. Sometimes called Christian Zionism.

Of course, the complexities of the current conflict in Israel/Palestine are rooted in religion as well as race. Jews have been treated with fear and suspicion, and unbelievable oppression(mostly notably the Holocaust). Furthermore, Jesus was a Jew as were his early followers. He lived in Palestine and died in Jerusalem. In that land there are holy places sacred to Christians, Jews and Muslims. And the Church has persecuted Jews for most of its history, laying the ground for the Holocaust, and creating the circumstances that made the creation of the State of Israel necessary. Meanwhile there’ve been Christians living in Israel/Palestine continuously since the first century. And those Christians, like everyone whose ancestors have lived in the land, are Palestinians.

In political terms, the notion of a homeland for (European) Jews was only formally recognised by a major European power in 1917 with the British Balfour Declaration. Even so, this declaration stated that ‘nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.’

The origin of the present conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is rooted not so much in Palestinian demands for a state but in the dispossession of Palestinians, both Muslim and Christian, from their land. Prior to 1948 Palestinians were the lawful owners and occupiers of lands within the agreed frontiers of the State of Israel as defined by the UN’s 1947 declaration. These Palestinians held land tenure documents issued by the Ottomans and many of them had owned these lands for many generations.  

In spite of this, many Palestinians were forcibly driven from their lands and houses, notably during the 1948 Nakba (disaster). Radical Jewish groups such as the Stern Gang and Irgun forcibly extended Jewish frontiers in violation of the UN agreement and dispossessed Palestinians of their lands and goods. Later, some Zionists propagated the myth that all these Palestinians voluntarily abandoned their lands. Today, the process of dispossession of Palestinian lands continues in violation of many UN agreements. The erection and extension of Jewish settlements on Palestinian land on the West Bank and the construction of the so-called “security fence” are but two examples. And, of course, there is now Gaza.

In response to the killing of 1,200 people, primarily Israeli citizens, on October 7^th 2023, by Hamas militants from Gaza, Israel declared itself in a state of war, and have since killed in response more than 58,400 Palestinian citizens (80% of whom are civilians, and 1,400 are healthcare workers). Furthermore many Palestinians in Gaza are now, following food blockades by the Israeli government, suffering from malnutrition and starving. This is why a number of international groups, including the UN and Amnesty International, are calling this a genocide. Unlike other invasions of Gaza by Israeli forces, this conflict has moved far beyond any rational assessment of retributive justice or disabling potential military threats. It seems for the far right-wing coalition that Netanyahu (Israeli’s Prime Minister) is driving, security for Israel will only come if the people of Gaza are starved, killed, or displaced.

In short, unfolding before the eyes of the world, we are witnessing a deliberate, planned, and executed genocide. As Amnesty’s report said, “whether in parallel with, or as a means to achieve, its military goal of destroying Hamas, Israel’s intent is the physical destruction of Palestinians in Gaza.”

As a twenty-year-old I went and lived in Israel. I stayed and worked at a kibbutz on the Israel-Lebanon border. It was in the months before an invasion of Lebanon. Even then, there were rockets being fired into Israel on a number of evenings. There was no loss of life from these rockets in the time I was there. And, on the mornings after, Israeli F15 fighters, supplied by the Americans, flew over the border and bombed Lebanese villages where the so-called ‘terrorists’ were said to reside. There were many fatalities, mostly civilian.

Yet my abiding memory of that time wasn’t the rockets, but the attitudes of the kibbutzniks among whom I worked. On the one hand they were the backbone of the army. On the other, they were solidly Labour voters and saw the wisdom in trading land for peace. However it was the pervasive and blatant racism that shocked me the most. I remember once, for example, returning from the fields at lunchtime having heard that a young child had drowned at the nearby beach and sharing the mutual concern of this small rural community for the child’s family. A community leader however stood up and announced in the dining room that no one should worry for it was ‘only an Arab.’

The other thing I discovered while in Israel was the strength of the national peace movement. There are many Israelis, let alone other Jews around the world, who were opposed to the strategies and goals of militant Zionism. Organisations like ‘Jewish Voice for Peace’ and ‘Union for Reform Judaism.’

Avigail Allan, an Israeli Jew living in New Zealand, wrote about the Gaza conflict saying: “Many Jews desperately want freedom for Palestinians, many of us desire to live alongsideour brothers and sisters in peace. Many of us want to right the wrongs done tothem. It’s the right thing to do, it’s the Jewish thing to do, and it’s the only thing that will guarantee our people a future in the land between the river and the sea. There is no symmetry of power in Palestine. Israel has the upper hand. The responsibility lies with the (Israeli Government) to shape the security situation in the region. And in their response to the Hamas attack, I feel that they have betrayed us. Slaughtering Gazans by the thousands is not a legitimate response; it is not politics, but an absence of politics. It is barbaric, genocidal violence. They have abandoned peace and doomed us all, Palestinians and Israelis, to unending death and despair. If we really love that land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, we have to see a different way.”[i]

As the history of Israel has shown since 1948, the so-called ‘problem’ of the Palestinian dispossession and resistance cannot be solved by force. Despite the deployment of the overwhelming firepower of the Israeli military, the rockets will, given time, continue to be fired into Israeli territory. Each new military incursion merely provides a new generation of militants as people seek some retribution for the death of family members and the devastation of their homes and livelihoods. The triumvirate of fear, hate, and violence does not create wellbeing, peace, and security. Rather it replicates itself.

Those who have the greater power have the greater responsibility to desist from warfare and initiate peace. Peace requires one to invest in the wellbeing of one’s enemy.

So, what needs to happen for the sake of peace? The simple version firstly is stop killing and destroying, and then work towards what is the greatest good for all who live in that land. That will involve, on the one hand, Jews being able to live without fear of massacre or subtler forms of oppression and threat. The world has to understand that October 7 2023 embodied the worst fear of Jews and recognize the trauma of that day has littered with landmines many reasoned paths to peace. On the other hand, Palestinian aspirations to dignity, respect, humanity, and life itself continue. It’s hard to imagine any peace emerging that does not involve Palestinians having an identity and security and economy that comes through an independent geographical state. Better ideas may exist; but they have yet to appear in 77 years of imagining. Unless progress is made on this agenda, there will be no soil in which moderate Palestinian leadership can grow, and Palestinian authorities will be at the mercy of foreign backers that may not have their best interests at heart.[ii]

As I’ve grown older, I realize that one of the spiritual disciplines needed in our time is the ability to counter cynicism. It is not hard to shield yourself with indifference to keep despondency at bay. To look the other way about these events that happen overseas, that murder innocents, and seem impossible to solve. This cynicism can reach almost epidemic proportions in a country like Aotearoa New Zealand far far away at the bottom of the world. To stand up and express our opposition to killing, and to believe that peace might one day be possible, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, is to align ourselves with people of wisdom and courage whose only counter to cynicism is the lived prayer of faith, hope, and action.

[i]https://thespinoff.co.nz/opinion/02-11-2023/i-am-an-israeli-jew-in-aotearoa-i-want-palestine-to-be-free

[ii] In this paragraph I’ve drawn on a sermon by Rev Sam Stubbs https://www.stmartin-in-the-fields.org/eyeless-in-gaza/

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