Thoughts on the Israel/Hamas conflict – a 30 minute read.

I offer these thoughts because it seems to me necessary and appropriate that I order my thoughts – for the benefit of my own Christian walk, and in my role as a priest in the church.  I seek enlightenment and togetherness, not division.  If anyone can show me that I am wrong in any one statement, or in the way I build one statement upon another, please show me, and I will happily correct and improve my thinking.

1. That all individual persons have the universal human right to live and worship in safety and freedom.   This applies to Americans, to Jews, to Muslims, to Christians, to Israelis, to Palestinians, to Arabs, to any and all persons.  In our current world, it especially applies to Israelis, to Palestinians, to Ukrainians, to Russians, to Kurds, to Syrians, to Yemenis, to Sudanians, to Uyghurs, and to LGBTQI+ persons.  The Pew Research Center show that Christianity, Islam and Judaism face harassment more than any other religions.  Christians face  harassment in 145 countries, Muslims face harassment in 139 countries and Jews face harassment in 88 countries.
2. I do not believe that Israel is, or was ever intended to be, a Jewish State.  When the United Nations created Israel in 1948 (under the strong influence of the United Kingdom and United States) it was invented as a secular democracy in which Jewish persons could live and worship pin peace, safety and freedom, alongside Muslim and Christian Israelis, indeed Israelis of any and all religious traditions or not transition.  In s similar way, Maryland in the USA was instituted to be a land where Catholics could live and worship in freedom and peace, alongside people of other or no faith.  European Jews carry the deeps wounds of the holocaust from the World War 2 era and Israel must become and remain a safe place for Jewish people to live, as indeed must all the world.
3. The calls from certain Muslim and Arab states form Israel to cease to exist are not in accord with the great majority of nations, nor the United Nations. It seems to me that this belief has two roots, one religious, and one political.  These nations, in particular Iran, seem to believe that Israel should not exist because
   1. They have a religious belief that Islam should be enforced on all people, and in particular on Jews. This seems to be informed by the Qu’ran Sura 5:82 among other Qu’ranic verses.
   1. They reject the Zionist imperative of the Jewish religious right, extremist Jews and certain militant Jews.
   1. The respond to the harsh treatment of Palestinians, Muslims and Arabs by the Israeli authorities since the establishment of Israel (and indeed in the years running up to the establishment of Israeli during the time known as the British Mandate of Israel, especially the years 1945 to 1948).  This harsh treatment was characterized by US President Jimmy Carter as a form of ‘apartheid’ and with some validity.
4. Iran has been a state sponsor of terrorism against Jewish people and the Israeli state for many years.  Their sponsorship of Hamas in Palestine and especially in the Gaza strip, and of Hezbollah in Lebanon, and of Qatar-based militant groups are to be condemned.  These group has the Muslim Brotherhood as a common progenitor and their record of terrorism, murder, and kidnapping in to be condemned.  These are men and women of violence who nurture murder in their hearts.  The massacre by Hamas of Israelis on October 7^th 2023 is reprehensible.  
5. The Hamas massacre is fed by the misapprehension that Israel is a Jewish state.  (See point 2 above.) Their rhetoric calls the people they murdered in cold blood ‘Zionists’.  This is false.  Of the 1200 (according to the United Nations World Health Organization – WHO, or according to Jewish sources 1400) there was likely some Zionists, yet clearly there were secular Jews, Liberal Jews, and many non-Jewish people, including many non-Israeli’s.  Their heartless murder was indiscriminate.  Hamas invited the retribution of the Israeli military, that they must surely have expected, and perhaps even wanted.
6. Israeli has a perfect right to defend itself against threats and murderous violence.  It is reasonable that Israel should seek to eliminate any future threats from Hamas, especially from the Gaza strip.  The complete failure of the Israeli intelligence forces to foresee this attack is astonishing, and suggests that intelligence alone is inadequate to defend the Israeli people from similar future attacks from Gaza or from Lebanon.
   1. Note that there was no such threat from the West Bank, which is no controlled by Hamas or Hezbollah but rather controlled buy the Palestinian Authority led by the secular Fatah party.
7. In the West Bank, the Israeli state has for many years facilitated and encouraged the baseless destruction of Palestinian homes, villages, towns, farms, and ancient olive groves.  The Israeli state has also encouraged, funded and protected the stealing of Palestinian land and given it to Jewish Zionist settlers who have built fortified hill-top settlements.  These Jewish settlers, aided but the Israeli state’s ‘Israeli Defense Force (IDF) have harassed and murdered Palestinians from these settlements, as part of a mutual antagonism with armed Palestinians who have murdered settlers. Since October 7, 2023 the random murder of Palestinians by armed settlers and the IDF has increased many fold.
8. It is to be noted and remembered that the Israeli state had a part in the support of the progenitors of Hamas, as a misguided series of political maneuvers in past decades. 
9. The response to Israelis to clear Hamas from the Gaza, while totally understandable, has also been characterized by indiscriminate military killing of the civilian population.  This has continued despite almost universal condemnation and cries for restraint from most countries around the world.
10. It is to be remembered that of the 2.1 million people who live in Gaza, over half are children/minors agreed 17 and under.  They have no ability to influence their reality.  They are powerless hapless victims both of their Hamas rulers who they have never voted for , not of their aggressive Israeli masters. 
    1. In 2006 Gazans did vote for Hamas to lead their territory.  Those Gazans who voted would have been 18 or older at the time, meaning they would be 35 year old or older today – a small fraction of the current population.  Therefore it is specious for some Jewish commentators to say that Gazans deserve to be massacered bnecuase they voted for Hamas.
    1. The 2006 vote for Hamas was less than a 42 percent vote, yet they were the most voted for party. This votes was more against the corruption and ineffectiveness of the previously ruling Fatah part and the Palestinian Authority, than it was a vote for what Hamas’s political ambitions against Israel.
    1. It is to be well considered that is the Israeli state had provided dignity and basic sanitation and basic food for their Gazan neighbors, it seems to me highly unlikely that Hamas would have voted into power. 
11. The Israeli authority’s decades-long policy of injustice, harsh treatment, and oppression of Palestinian people, both within their own borders an in the West Bank including East Jerusalem, Gaza and the Golan Heights has fomented anti-Israeli sentiment, even among Palestinians who were not otherwise antithetic towards the Israeli authorities.
12. It is to be remembered that not all Palestinians are Muslim.  Indeed Christians should remember that almost all Christians in Israel and Palestine are Palestinian.  Arab, Muslim, and Palestinian are three different and overlapping populations.  For example, the Episcopal priest in Nazareth identifies as Israeli because he is an Israeli citizen with an Israeli passport, and as Palestinian by heritage (some would say by ‘race’), as Arab by ethnicity, and as Christian by his faith and hist forefather’s faith.
    1. 80% of Arabs are Muslim. The other 20% are mostly Christian.
    1. Only 20% or Muslims are Arabs. 
13. Not all Jews are Zionist.  I use the word Zionist in it’s usual definition as a person who seeks a Jewish religious state – a Jewish Theocracy, as it were.  Indeed 22% of American Jews are secular, not having a religious belief yet identifying as Jewish in ethnicity and tradition.  In one Pew Research poll, only 32% of jews were supportive of current Israeli policies.  While there are clearly many Israeli Jews who have Zionist ambitions and beliefs, it seems unlikely to be a majority.  More Jews are supportive of a secular multiracial, multifaith society on which Jews man live and worship in safety and freedom.
    1. It is to be noted that the current prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu clearly either has Zionist belief or courts those who do.
    1. Of those Israelis who voted in 2019, about 40% voted for Netanyahu.
14. 15% of the population was Christian when Israel was created in 1948.  Mostly by a an intentional systematic oppression and expulsion of Christians by Israeli authorities, that number is now 2% in Israel and 1% in Gaza and the West Bank.
    1. It boggles my mind that so many American evangelicals blindly support Israel.  This seems to me because of three factors:
       1. A residual global sense of guilt for the holocaust – a noble sentiment.
       1. A contentious understanding of biblical prophecy that sees Israel as continuing to have a ‘chosen people’ status in the world in God’s eyes. (more on this, from me, later.)
       1. A political sense of care and responsibility for the only democracy in the Middle East, and the only strong American ally in the Middle East.
15. Christians ought to have a primary allegiance of The Lord Jesus Christ, his teachings and life.  Jesus clearly rejected violence as a way of relating.  His political example might best be understood as non-violent resistance to violent kingdoms and systems that reduce human dignity and well-being.   As such, I would encourage Christians to resist party allegiance, and instead support persons and policies that reflect our understanding of Christian values.
16. Christians must affirm the inherent dignity and worth of all human persons, irrespective of the race, religion or geographical location.
17. Christians must seek the flourishing and wellbeing (blessing) of all persons.
18. Justice is the precursor of peace.  If we want peace in the in the middle east (including the often prayed for ‘peace of Jerusalem’, we must seek justice for every Jew, Muslim, Christian, agnostic and atheist, every Palestinian and Israeli and foreigner in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza.  Also in Lebanon, Egypt and Syria.  Christians should work for this with out time, talent and money.
    1. Justice involves naming when injustice is happening.  In my view the indiscriminate nature of the Israeli military operation n Gaza is deeply unjust.  Consider the rockets fired by the IDF at the Anglican Al Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City (5 days before the terrible rockets that killed 500 in the same hospital’s parking lot.) destroying the top 2 floors of one of the hospital’s buildings.  Consider the 50 civilians killed my an IDF jet’s rocket intentionally fired at an ambulance to kill just 1 Hamas leader.  These are just two of hundreds of examples of the IDF indiscriminate slaughter of civilians in Gaza, remembering that 50% of Gazans are children.
       1. According to the UN WHO so far over 11,000 civilians have been killed by IDF action in Gaza, including between 4500 and 6500 children.  May we hold that number against the 1200/1400 killed in the wicked Hamas attack on October 7^th.
       1. I conclude that the Israeli response is disproportionate and indiscriminate of killing children and civilians, and this deeply unjust.  While it may clear gaza of Hamas, it has created yet another generation of Gazans and Palestinians surely hardened against Israeli.  It is a deep policy failure, of Israeli peace and security is a goal.

This ends my writing for today.  I will have more to write concerning the role of the Biblical status of the Jewish people, and how and if that maps onto today’s Jews and today’s Israeli state.