Seek Peace; and Pursue It
Photo depicts the Israeli-constructed separation wall built on top of an Arab graveyard in Bethlehem. Not the site of current conflict, but a sign of longstanding conflict and human disregard. Photo by Jenny Whitcher
Hamas’ attacks on Israeli civilians and Israeli state-sanctioned ethnic cleansing and genocide of Palestinians are both morally corrupt violence. It is not antisemitic to say so, it's not pro-Hamas. It is anti-religious nationalism, anti-civilian deaths, anti-violence, anti-extremism, and anti-genocide. For both sides.
It’s not just this past week, but 75 years and beyond of Biblical proportion conflict, territory claiming, and efforts at extermination.
It is an imbalanced conflict with the nation-state of Israel exercising all the ugliness of empire over the stateless Palestinian people, in turn breeding terrorism...The ongoing cycle of inhumanity catching millions of civilians in the middle. For both sides. The U.S. is familiar with this dynamic, as we’ve been and are that oppressive and genocidal nation-state to others, breeding cycles of terroristic response.
There are no sides to choose when both sides, Hamas and Israel, are targeting civilians. The choice is to support peace, restrain violence, protect civilians, offer humanitarian intervention, and do the long, hard work of humanization and peace-building on a foundation of justice and equity.
The choice is always to prevent ethnic cleansing and genocide.
It is ridiculous to have to constantly denounce violence and murder. It breaks me to my core to see how little regard we have for one another’s life, and for one another’s children—on any side, of any battle.
The silence is deafening. Too many afraid to say the wrong thing. Too many overwhelmed by the near constant violence in our world. To many too used to violence and war.
Too many stunned by the image in the mirror that such violence and war hold up to each of us. The ugliness we share and our capacity for murderous hate of the “other.” As a country, the U.S. has the same kind of blood on our hands as the Hamas militants and Israeli government. Oppression and murder of the “other” has been our country’s long history and present story. It is part of how and why we ally with other oppressive States. And we aren’t alone on the Global stage either.
There is an idiom that is escaping me at the moment, but the point is this: the threat isn’t outside, it’s inside. That is where my anger and powerlessness emerge from, in having to acknowledge and wrestle with the threat, the danger, the gruesomeness, the violence, the hatred, the death—it is inside of us, inside of me. It is inside of us like a virus, where hatred and violence of “the other '' is spread by being infected by extremist ideologies.
I’m angry and feel powerless from endlessly watching the spread of extremist ideologies grow in the Church and many other religions, in our local communities, school boards, workplaces, city halls, legislatures, presidents, and in communities across the globe like Palestine and Israel.
Watching extremism overtake us in ways we never thought possible, attacking one group of people who are different and marginalized after another, with no seeming end in sight.
I can’t imagine peace having permanence in this unjust world. And still, we are called to pray and work towards that peace by turning to justice and love in the hardest times. Loving when it feels impossible. Loving when we want to hate. Loving people enough to see through their harmful actions to their pain. Trusting that the absence of love is the injustice—the threat inside of us all.
May God make us all better lovers of others when we need to be loved the most.
My near silence this past week was overwhelming sadness, anger, and impossibility—dread. Not because I don’t care or don’t know what is right, and not because I don't know that people are looking to pastors to say something. But because I don’t trust that humans at the collective level are capable of doing what is right, right now. And that is a different kind of grief, because I know the beauty and love that lives in Palestine and Israel, and that is being lost right now in the lives, families, and communities extinguished and traumatized by war. And it has been and will continue to spread. Unless we do something about it. Unless we stop normalizing this kind of hatred and violence as the status quo of humanity.
“Depart from evil, and do good; seek peace, and pursue it.” - Psalm 34:14
In Justice & Peace,
Rev. Dr. Jenny Whitcher
Minister of Prophetic Formation
