Preaching Morals

“An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.”
—Anonymous; often attributed to M. Gandhi

Like many of you, I am sure, I have been thinking and praying and reading a lot this week about the situation in Israel and the Gaza Strip. In a story from CNN.com this morning, I read this:

Israel’s Energy Minister Israel Katz said on Thursday that supplies would remain cut off until hostages being held by Hamas are freed.

"No electrical switch will be turned on, no water hydrant will be opened, and no fuel truck will enter until the Israeli abductees are returned home. Humanitarian for humanitarian. And no one will preach us morals," Katz said on social media.

This comes in the context of grim warnings that starvation conditions are imminent for the two million residents of Gaza, a narrow strip of land that has been compared to an open-air prison because of the blockade Israel has enforced by both land and sea since Hamas won political control of the area in 2007. Starvation is a real possibility for countless civilians, including many vulnerable children, because the conditions have been dire for the last sixteen years. Israel helped create the fragile state of affairs in Gaza, and Israel’s energy minister is now threatening to kick the rickety structure over completely.

Let me say clearly that I care about the security of Israel as an ally of our country, and in no way do I condone the reckless surprise attack that Hamas fighters initiated last Saturday. But at the same time I feel we have to acknowledge that Israel’s hands are in no way clean. They not only practice a form of apartheid when it comes to the Palestinian territories, but they have also steadily encroached on those lands through the building of illegal settlements, the diverting of water and other resources, and many other provocations and micro-aggressions aimed at the Palestinian people. I decry the violence, but it is understandable in a situation in which a bully (a nuclear-armed bully, by the way) keeps pushing and pushing a little more each day.

And now Israel Katz has the gall to issue a statement pledging to deny electricity, fuel, and water from these highly vulnerable people. He says, “Humanitarian for humanitarian,” which, if I can decipher it correctly, is his way of drawing an equivalence between the inhumane abduction of a handful of Israeli hostages and the inhumane promise to shut off water and power to two million people. Hamas is wrong to have committed these kidnappings, but the response seems incommensurate, to put it mildly.

The main problem for the people of Gaza is that they are led by a group that refuses to renounce violence and that much of the world considers a terrorist organization. Hamas has embarked on a violent course of action that has caused them both to surrender any moral high ground they might have claimed and to give Israel an excuse to launch all-out war against not just Hamas but the innocent children of the Gaza Strip. As we will explore in worship this Sunday, Jesus utterly rejects the notion of “an eye for an eye,” and calls instead for us to love our enemies. The Galileans and Judeans of his day were balanced on a knife point, with loud voices calling for violent resistance to the Roman occupation. He knew that violence solves nothing, and urged his people to choose the other alternative. Forty years after his death and resurrection, they chose the path of violence and paid an unutterably terrible price in the destruction of Jerusalem by the Roman legions. If only they had listened. If only we would listen.

But Hamas is not listening. Israel Katz is not listening. Instead, he brazenly declares that “no one will preach us morals.” Rabbi Jesus could teach them, but they are not willing to listen.

Are we?

Grace and peace,
bob