Israel, Hamas, and the civilians caught between

I responded: “I think one must be categorical when it comes to the killing of civilians wherever it is.” And I believe that those who claim to love God and fellow humans must condemn such violence, even if that means condemning one’s own country’s involvement.In order to be consistent with my moral position, I must […]

I responded: “I think one must be categorical when it comes to the killing of civilians wherever it is.” And I believe that those who claim to love God and fellow humans must condemn such violence, even if that means condemning one’s own country’s involvement.
In order to be consistent with my moral position, I must first confront the injustices my own country has perpetrated. The United States was founded not only on the enslavement of Africans but also on the genocide of Native Americans by European settlers—a distressing history that is often neglected in American public education. In the 20th century, the American military dropped a nuclear bomb on the city of Hiroshima in Japan, accepting the massive loss of civilian life as the price for ending World War II. Such acceptance of “collateral damage” has continued in more recent drone campaigns, where hundreds of civilians, many of them children, have been killed in “strategic strikes” against Al Qaeda and the Taliban. To our shame, many American Christians support this violence, making an idol of political power, rather than working for the peace Jesus taught. Such ideology is extended in U.S.’ assistance to Israel—accepting the death of civilians, as long as they are not “our” civilians. As I criticize genocidal tendencies in Israel and in groups like Isis and Boko Haram, I remain aware that my critique extends also to my own country and much of Western culture built on the backs of those Europe colonized. Such history has created a power differential between, for example, Hamas as a beleaguered rebel government, and Israel with all the support of Western imperialism behind them.
Yet if we continue to accept “collateral damage” on either side, a never ending tit-for-tat, this conflict will only grow greater. There must be condemnation of violence on every side, for all human beings are capable of crimes against humanity. There is too often, in extremist groups that claim to be fighting Western imperialism, a terrible abuse of minorities and women. We saw this in Afghanistan when the Taliban massacred Hazara Shi’a and denied women basic medical care; in Iraq where ISIS has expelled some of the oldest Christian communities in the world and are currently committing genocide against the Yazidi community. At its extreme, as we also see in the case of Boko Haram, this violence becomes directed at everyone except the militants themselves. This is the end result of hatred for the other: an extreme self-righteousness that deems worthy of slaughter anyone who does not join their cult of hatred.
Such are the fears of many who oppose Hamas. Hamas has from its beginning in 1987 had as its mission the annihilation of Israel. For years, it made use of suicide bombers in targeting Israeli citizens—a tactic that should make Nigerian supporters of Hamas think twice, now that Nigeria has seen firsthand the results of the sort of ideology that leads to suicide bombs and the destruction that results from this kind of terrorism. In recent years, however, Hamas seems to have grown more moderate. In 2006, Hamas renounced suicide bombing, and spokesmen specified that they were at war with Israel, not with Jews in general. Indeed, Hamas most recently agreed to a unity government with Mahmoud Abbas’s PLO, who, according to the Washington Post, pledged “a course of nonviolence.”
While I remain wary of the extremist elements within Hamas and frustrated at the way Hamas has broken ceasefires, I support the Palestinian people and their right to a globally recognized homeland. I am appalled at the way Israel has created an apartheid state, discriminating against Arabs, Ethiopian Jews and “Others” who live in Israel.  At the way Israel has steadily encroached upon Palestinian land, at the way they have starved Gazans and cut them off from contact with the outside world. At the rhetoric of genocide that has been used by Israelis, and at the Israeli military’s bombing of known UN schools and IDP camps and shelling of other civilian targets. Human Rights Watch chronicles instances of the Israeli military firing on fleeing civilians, including the killing of the four children playing on the beach. As Rabbi Henry Seigman former head of the Synagogue Council of America put it, in an interview with Democracy Now “no people would live the way Gazans have been made to live.” If this were just a matter of self-defense, then Israel’s sophisticated Iron Dome technology, which destroys most of the rockets fired by Hamas, should be the focus of their campaign. The killing of over 1600 civilians since the beginning of this conflict, however, is a war crime, for which Israel’s leaders should be held responsible.
Rabbi Micahel Lerner, editor of Tikkun Magazine, and rabbi of Beyt Tikkun Synagogue in San Francisco and Berkely, California writes in Salon:
“While claiming that it is only interested in uprooting tunnels that could be used to attack Israel, the IDF has engaged in the same criminal behavior that the world condemns in other struggles: the intentional targeting of civilians (the same crime that Hamas has been engaged in over the years, which correctly has earned it the label as a terrorist organization). Using the excuse that Hamas is using civilians as ‘human shields’ and placing its war material in civilian apartments, Israel has managed to kill more than 1,000 civilians and wounded thousands.  The stories that have emerged from eyewitness accounts of hundreds of children being killed by Israel’s indiscriminate destructiveness, the shelling of United Nations schools and public hospitals, and finally the destruction of Gaza’s water and electricity, guaranteeing deaths from typhoid and other diseases as well as widespread hunger among the million and a half Gazans most of whom have had nothing to do with Hamas, highlights to the world an Israel that is rivaling some of the most oppressive and brutal regimes in the contemporary world.”
Rabbi Lerner mourns the way Judaism has been distorted by the state of Israel, in the same way most Muslims mourn the distortion of Islam by terrorists, pointing back to the ethical truth that is at the foundation of all three Abrahamic religions:
“The worship of power is precisely what Judaism came into being to challenge. We were the slaves, the powerless, and though the Torah talks of God using a strong arm to redeem the Israelites from Egyptian slavery, it simultaneously insists, over and over again, that when Jews go into their promised land in Canaan (not Palestine) they must “love the stranger/the Other,” have one law for the stranger and for the native born, and warns “do not oppress the stranger/the Other.” Remember, Torah reminds us, “that you were strangers/the Other in the land of Egypt” and “you know the heart of the stranger.” Later sources in Judaism even insist that a person without compassion who claims to be Jewish cannot be considered Jewish. A spirit of generosity is so integral to Torah consciousness that when Jews are told to let the land lie fallow once every seven years (the societal-wide Sabbatical Year), they must allow that which grows spontaneously from past plantings be shared with the Other/the stranger.
“The Jews are not unique in this. The basic reality is that most of humanity has always heard a voice inside themselves telling them that the best path to security and safety is to love others and show generosity, and a counter voice that tells us that the only path to security is domination and control over others. This struggle between the voice of fear and the voice of love, the voice of domination/power-over and the voice of compassion, empathy and generosity, have played out throughout history and shape contemporary political debates around the world.”
Although massacres have been a part of human history from the beginning, we now live in an age where weapons are massively more destructive. Communication broadcasting hate reverberates around the globe. It is time that we, instead, use communication technology to undermine the weapons; time to refuse to allow ourselves to be manipulated by politicians and terrorists who use ethnicity and religion to divide; time to undermine hatred, which threatens to destroy the world, with human cooperation and love. Check out the Twitter hashtag #JewsAnd ArabsRefuseToBeEnemies  If only social media could actually work this time.