Palestine / state of Israel… where to?

Posting any comment on the above is a challenge. The history, back through the Zionist movement, the anti-Semitism of the West and then add in the Bible, or at least what we term the Old Testament adds layers upon layers. Is there a way forward? In Jesus there is always a way forward. I do not like the term ‘the better of two evils’ as an ethical frame but I do understand what is being proposed by that term. I rather would operate with ‘the most redemptive path’. It is not easy to always advocate the right response in an absolute sense, but we can consider the most redemptive route and then look at it again later and respond with a further response. I think we see that in Scripture and that is the whole basis of a theology of sanctification – ongoing, from glory to glory.

It is not possible to look at the current scenarios in the Middle East without referring to the political powers (Imperialistic colonisers) and such agreements as the Sykes–Picot Agreement of 1916. A secret treaty between the United Kingdom and France, with assent from Russia and Italy, to define their mutually agreed spheres of influence and control in an eventual partition of the Ottoman Empire. The land of Palestine was to be controlled by Britain, and then further lands carved out with no respect to ethnicity nor (flavour of) religion. Follow this up with the Balfour Declaration (1917) with the promise to work toward a Jewish state in Palestine (a land with people already within it, a people that were mainly Muslim but included Christians and a small Jewish community). A land with people living within it – who had lived there for centuries – this is so common with regard to colonisation. The common argument has been there were no people living there, or (maybe worse, but really the same) the people were not significant / less than human. Common… And wrong. Wrong historically and wrong ethically, and a blatant trespassing. Anglo-Saxon ‘christians’ going to church Sunday morning then hunting first-nation people (wrongly termed ‘aborigines’) post-church in Australia – such stories can be repeated over and over. (For a year Gayle and I tracked the horrific expulsion of Muslims from Spain; here in ever-so-kind Oliva the church records of Muslims being marched to church on Sunday and ‘converted’ then killed as they were marched out again with the proclamation of a two-fold outcome in that ‘we raised their souls to heaven and filled our own pockets’.)

I am sure that the Palestinians were the offering of appeasement on the altar for the anti-Semitism that had gone on with the pogroms of Europe that aligned with the bloodshed that went before and after with the holocaust.

In the two years following the state of Israel being established (1948) 400 cities and villages were destroyed with some 1 million people being driven violently from their homes (this was not an ’empty land’) with many of those people forced into Gaza. Such activity is in direct conflict to international law.

It is not an exaggeration to say that Palestinians continue to live in an apartheid context and that there is ongoing genocidal activity. (I am not making comments about Israeli citizens of Israel, but of the state of Israel, and I am certainly not condoning any violence that originates from Hamas. More below on that…)

In response to the Hamas attack of October 2023 Israel’s defence minister said,

I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed… We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.

Such state responses and statements abound and cannot be justified under the heading of the right of self-defence. Genocide is an appropriate term. Omer Bartov, a former Israeli soldier and a professor of Holocaust and genocide studies wrote in the Guardian that he had become convinced that,

At least since the attack by the IDF [Israel Defence Forces] on Rafah on May 6, 2024, it was no longer possible to deny that Israel was engaged in systematic war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocidal actions .

But the Bible?

Netanyahu has positioned himself as a ‘secular Jew’ but has been willing to use Scripture as justification. The ‘Amalekites’ need to be wiped out and the land promised by God restored to those to whom God gave it. Weaponising the Bible is so common by colonising powers, what greater justification does one have but being the anointed of God?

Christian Zionists such as Tim Walberg (and many, many others could be quoted) who trained at two evangelical seminaries in a town hall meeting (he is now in politics) said that bombs should be dropped on Gaza like Nagasaki and Hiroshima to get it all over with quickly. When asked about humanitarian aid he replied with ‘we should not be spending a dime on humanitarian aid’. (When he replied with those words the UN had already warned that 70% of the population was suffering from catastrophic levels of hunger.)

Random thoughts:

• Two peoples corporately traumatised rarely find a solution.
• If we dig into the OT we find the lex talionis (eye for an eye) – a restrictive law on how revenge is taken, so that any response is equal to what was committed. This is not what is governing the response.
• Jesus advocated a love response that embraced the enemy; he blessed the peacemakers. We have to read from the NT back into the OT. Any apparent change of ethical instruction does not mean that there was a different God in the OT (Marcion’s conclusion), but as followers of Jesus we insist there is no other God than a Jesus-like God. And yes for sure we have to read the OT critically – that is a huge hermeneutical task, but we cannot make God into an image that is not seen in Jesus. (In certain places it seems that Christians vote for a bully who knows how to support their agenda as their God is also a bully who forces an agenda.) ‘You have heard it say, but…’
• Paul said ‘do good to all’ and added ‘especially to the household of faith’. Do good to all… and in Palestine, and currently in Iran where there are so many coming to faith, there are ‘many of the household of faith’ being starved, tortured and killed – with the full backing and indeed encouragement of evangelical ‘Bible-believing’ people. Something is wrong!
• I do not read of any expectation of the land being restored to ‘Israel’ nor of some end-time opening of eyes with regard to the land in the NT. (I date most books prior to AD70 and Revelation late 90s – so neither before nor after the fall of Jerusalem do I find such an expectation.)
• What do I make of 1948 and ‘Israel’? If a return to the land was an act of God it was to be preceded by repentance. Repentance is not what provoked a return. I am told that statistically more Jews come to Christ outside of Israel than inside. The return to the land is a Zionist persuasion – and to be anti-Zionist is NOT to be anti-Semitic. Most Palestinians are not anti-Jews (some of course are) but they are anti-Zionist. Is God at work… for sure but I see no basis to suggest the ‘return’ is something initiated by God. I have been struck by the convivencia that was present for centuries in Palestine. Those from the 3 Abrahamic faiths lived together. That term, convivencia, is a term used of Spain prior to the Reconquista by the Christians. Prior to that the three faiths lived respecting one another in the same space. We have prayed into this often.
• God is present in every situation that we create and works ‘for good’; but the Satan is also at work. If there was one land where reconciliation would be a sign on the earth above all others it would be that piece of land in the Middle East that is in conflict. Jesus was clear that those who murder are not descended from heaven but from the devil who was a murderer from the beginning.
• I do not have answers but do not sleep easily and I long for there to be a Jesus-aligned people who are not looking for an end that is provoked by some made-up Armageddon scenario but a beginning that is in response to an empty tomb.

Gayle has many dreams. The short version of a very long and profound dream she had prior to the current genocide is of a gathering inside a marquee. Support for Palestine becomes central; two groups find commonality – those of Christian faith and those who expressed faith for humanity (humanists)and one group exited – Zionists. Many aspects followed including the appearance of flamingos (now present in Albania) which then ended with an appeal to the banking system to get rid of the professional clothing and play with the children in the grass. We have to see a major shift in the economic realm (war enriches the few) as it is willing to sacrifice the next generation for blessing now (condemned as the sin of Moloch in the OT).