Why Do the Nations Rage?
I try hard not to voice political opinions too strongly on this blog, but when it's a matter of God's glory being defamed, I have a hard time keeping silent. This is a letter I wrote to Colorado Senator Wayne Allard, in response to his "response" to my e-mail (which was, of course, simply a position paper that addressed nothing I'd said). I pray that the political and religious leadership of the United States would have the humility to forgo worldly empire in return for the peace and humility of the Kingdom of Heaven.
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Dear Senator Allard,
I doubt you'll actually read this, since nothing you said actually addressed what I wrote, but I feel it my moral duty to at least say something in response to your letter.
You say that Israel has the right to defend itself. Does Lebanon not also have the right to defend itself against Israel's brutal aggression? Nearly a thousand Lebanese civilians have died, even though it was Hezbollah, not the Lebanese government or public, that attacked Israel. Yet Lebanon has not taken this right. Why? Because they do not receive billions of dollars of military aid from the world's only superpower. They are helpless against Israel's immense US-provided firepower. We are funding a massacre.
Are Israeli lives more valuable than Lebanese? Are Jewish lives more valuable than Muslim or Christian? Then why do we aid and even support Israel's killing of hundreds of Lebanese, creating hundreds of thousands of refugees and destroying the Lebanese economy, while we deplore as "terrorism" Hezbollah's attack on Israeli military targets? When Hezbollah rains down rockets on Israeli civilians, this is terrorism. But when Israel does the same against Lebanese villages, why do we not have the courage and moral fortitude to deplore it in similar terms?
I strongly condemn Hezbollah's aggression, especially against civilian targets. I have friends in northern Israel who are under attack, and whose safety I'm praying for. I have lived in Israel, I speak Hebrew, and I love the Jewish people. But I am ashamed of my president, and ashamed of my senator, for supporting the massacre of civilians in Lebanon that have little or nothing to do with Hezbollah. What is the difference between a "terrorist" bomb and an Israeli (or US) bomb? Both kill human beings created in God's image.
Whoever is actually reading this e-mail, I want to plead with you to not let Israel destroy itself by ignoring its moral foundations, the standards of democracy and human rights and the Judaic spiritual tradition. As we Americans should heed ourselves, we also should exhort our friends in Israel to heed the teachings of a Palestinian Jew of long ago:
"Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good."
This is my plea and my prayer.
Sincerely,
Seth Wilson
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Dear Senator Allard,
I doubt you'll actually read this, since nothing you said actually addressed what I wrote, but I feel it my moral duty to at least say something in response to your letter.
You say that Israel has the right to defend itself. Does Lebanon not also have the right to defend itself against Israel's brutal aggression? Nearly a thousand Lebanese civilians have died, even though it was Hezbollah, not the Lebanese government or public, that attacked Israel. Yet Lebanon has not taken this right. Why? Because they do not receive billions of dollars of military aid from the world's only superpower. They are helpless against Israel's immense US-provided firepower. We are funding a massacre.
Are Israeli lives more valuable than Lebanese? Are Jewish lives more valuable than Muslim or Christian? Then why do we aid and even support Israel's killing of hundreds of Lebanese, creating hundreds of thousands of refugees and destroying the Lebanese economy, while we deplore as "terrorism" Hezbollah's attack on Israeli military targets? When Hezbollah rains down rockets on Israeli civilians, this is terrorism. But when Israel does the same against Lebanese villages, why do we not have the courage and moral fortitude to deplore it in similar terms?
I strongly condemn Hezbollah's aggression, especially against civilian targets. I have friends in northern Israel who are under attack, and whose safety I'm praying for. I have lived in Israel, I speak Hebrew, and I love the Jewish people. But I am ashamed of my president, and ashamed of my senator, for supporting the massacre of civilians in Lebanon that have little or nothing to do with Hezbollah. What is the difference between a "terrorist" bomb and an Israeli (or US) bomb? Both kill human beings created in God's image.
Whoever is actually reading this e-mail, I want to plead with you to not let Israel destroy itself by ignoring its moral foundations, the standards of democracy and human rights and the Judaic spiritual tradition. As we Americans should heed ourselves, we also should exhort our friends in Israel to heed the teachings of a Palestinian Jew of long ago:
"Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good."
This is my plea and my prayer.
Sincerely,
Seth Wilson
posted by Seth | 4:54 PM
2 Comments:
Seth, I want you to know, first, that I did pray, and will continue to pray, for both the Lebanese and the Israelis. I don't personally know anyone in Lebanon right now, but I know both Israelis and Palestinians, and have a deep concern for the region in general. I would genuinely like to know, though, what you think should have been done under the circumstances. In such cases, it's always very easy to condemn whatever course is taken, because the truth that every possible course is very, very bad.
Israel's position puts into sharp relief a sort of dilemma that will probably become more and more familiar to the rest of the world in the coming years. From the very beginning, their survival has been genuinely threatened by their neighbors. In response to this, they have used a multitude of tactics to stay alive, including torture, preemptive strikes, assassination, and disproprtionate displays of force (by which I mean, exercising force much greater than what their opponents have used or would be able to muster.) A great many innocent Arabs have died or suffered greatly because of Israel's actions. When you talk about Israel "destroying itself" I presume part of what you have in mind is this: in order to defend itself against enemies, Israel turns itself into a country so ugly and so unjust that it may almost not be worth defending. You may also be considering that the resentment these actions provoke can put Israel in further danger.
These are all worthwhile points. But from the other end, there is this: without using at least some of these objectionable-seeming tactics, Israel almost certainly would not have survived as long as it has. Preemptive strikes and disproportionate diplays of force were key to their success in the *five* wars waged by the Arab states, and to making a sort of peace with Jordan and Egypt. Torture is a very effective way of extracting vital information; assassination a capital way of weakening the enemy's leadership. Who can say which of these they could have abandoned without disaster? And remember that the stakes are very high. I find it difficult to believe that the Arab states would show any mercy at all, were they ever able to achieve their goal of defeating the Israeli military. Full scale genocide would be the most likely outcome; in some of the wars, this is more or less what the Arab soldiers were promised by their governments in the event that they were victorious.
Now, none of this means that we should give Israel carte blanche to commit whatever heinous acts seem fitting to them. We can and should pick through particular actions and say, the settlements should go down, torture should not be used, we should not provide this or that form of military support, or whatever. One of the advantages of giving so much aid is that we have some leverage to insist on particular policy changes, and I often think that we should exercise this more judiciously. But we must do it very soberly, always remaining fully aware of the possible consequences. Because for Israel, the possibility of annihilation has never been the stuff of B-grade movies; it's a real concern. If we were to withhold our military support, if the Israelis were browbeaten into not responding to terrorist acts, if the Arab states were to increase in power (particularly by obtaining nuclear weapons)... who can say?
The bottom line is that I'm inclined to believe that there are certain horrible acts (like torture) that we should never do, even if our refusal means our own deaths, or, worse, horrible consequences for people we love. But when recommending changes to the Israelis, we should humble ourselves and be conscious that those sorts of consequences really are on the table. Making nice through a good neighbor policy has always been a sort of limited option for them.
As you see, I don't have any fancy answers, just lots of troubled questions, which is why I was hoping you'd have something more constructive to say. I do think in your letter that you're wrong on one point, however: there *is* a moral difference between aerial bombing that kills innocents and, for example, suicide bombing. The moral questions surrounding aerial strikes are extremely difficult. But the morality of suicide bombing is not very difficult: it is always deeply wrong.
I won't say that Israelis have *never* stooped to killing innocents deliberately and in cold blood for revenge or just for the sake of intimidation. It may have happened here and there, and obviously that's wrong and evil. But at least the Israelis know that they're not *supposed* to be behaving that way; for groups like Hamas and Hizbullah, this is the backbone of their military strategy! When units of Israelis set out to kill people, they have targeted objectives, they at least in theory want to avoid killing noncombatants, and they wear uniforms. Hamas or Hizbullah do none of these things, and all of these points matter. The first matters, because it is indicative of the fact that Israel's ultimate goal is something fairly palatable to us; a peaceful existence for their country, with reasonable relations with their neighbors. Hamas or Hizbullah have other final goals that probably aren't so palatable to us.
The second is one of the most significant moral principles we have: that the deliberate killing of innocents is wrong. Israel may skirt the lines of this rule from time to time, but Hamas and Hizbollah have brazenly obliterated it, drawing strength from the very fact of their being willing to stoop far lower than their neighbors without flinching. This needs to be condemned in the strongest possible terms. If we allow our anger about the Israelis' excessive force to blur or downplay this distinction, we will seriously diminish our ability to make moral choices. By saying in effect, "what's the difference if the people are still dead?" we adopt a paralyzing consequentialist logic that will not serve us well in the years to come.
The third difference, wearing uniforms, relates to the last. If waging war justly requires focusing one's fire on combatants, it's necessary to distinguish who the combatants are. Uniforms make this somewhat possible. Groups like Hamas and Hizbullah deliberately hide themselves among the (uninvolved) local population. In a way this shows their awareness of the rule I just mentioned, about sparing innocents. If Western countries were willing to follow the pattern of Alexander or Tamerlane, we'd just resort to genocide and the problem would be easily solved. We could wipe out all the Sunnis in Iraq, say, and peace would suddenly become a lot easier there. But they know we aren't going to do that, so they try to exploit our moral qualms as much as possible. It's fairly effective, but also means that a lot more innocent people die in places like Iraq. You can't make a habit of sparing everybody in civilian clothes when all the enemy combatants dress like that; consequently, killing becomes a lot less discriminate and innocents die. Terrorist groups are apparently willing to make that sacrifice, just as Hizbullah was willing to sacrifice the innocent Lebanese lives that they surely knew would be lost when they deliberately baited this war with Israel. (This point about uniforms, incidentally, is why it was so bogus to decide that the terms of the Geneva Convention should apply to captured members of terrorist groups. *Some* sort of rules needed to be pounded out for the humane treatment of captured terrorists, certainly, but that was the wrong code to use. The whole idea behind Geneva was that in being a soldier, one sacrificed certain things -- like the natural right not to be the direct target of an opposing army's assault -- and picked up certain others in exchange -- like the right not to be held personally responsible when caught doing things that under other circumstances would qualify as criminal. By lumping people who don't wear uniforms or have serial numbers under the same code, we further diminish our ability to draw moral distinctions that might make warfare (always horrible) a little bit less bad. But anyway.)
So anyway, I would urge you not to contribute to the increasingly popular tendency to hold Israel's and Hizbullah's tactics as morally equivalent. And I still want to know what you think Israel should do/should have done. I basically get depressed whenever I think about Islamic extremism and the Western world. I do not think peace between these two groups can be established; the sources of tension between them are too deep and too fundamental. I don't know exactly how the conflict will play out, especially once Iran goes nuclear, but I do anticipate many, many, many innocent deaths, probably on both sides. This thing between Israel and Lebanon is a flash in the pan compared to what could, and very well may, happen in the future. So we'd best start thinking more about hard choices like the ones Israel faces, because we may all be in a similar spot five or ten or twenty years hence.
Rachel,
In some ways I regret having voiced such an overtly political view on this blog, since I want it mainly to be devoted to bringing people in the Middle East together. But I guess that has to be done within the context of dealing with real issues, and these are some of the real issues. It's easy to say, "Let's all love each other in Jesus"--and indeed we should--but in order for true reconciliation to occur, we need to deal with the root issues.
Before I say the main things I want to say, I just wanted to clarify the "moral equivalency" issue. I don't think that aerial bombing and suicide bombing are morally equivalent. One is (usually at least) "trying" not to hit civilians, while the other is deliberately targeting them.
However, in this particular case, I believe that Israel's leadership was deliberately targeting civilians in order to inspire fear and cause the Lebanese public to pressure their government to stop Hezbollah. This is the very definition of terrorism--using violence against civilians to pressure political change based on fear. Hezbollah's initial attack on a military target (capturing the Israeli soldiers) was not terrorism; Israel's subsequent reaction was. That isn't to say that Hezbollah in any way is beyond despicable, terrorist action. I have no illusions as to the peace-loving, conscience-driven nature of Hezbollah, Hamas or other similar groups. But when we talk about "moral equivalency," we also have to recognize that in this particular conflict, Israel's reaction to Hezbollah's initial evil was even more evil and destructive than the provocation itself.
I understand people of good faith may completely disagree with me on that one, if they see the events differently. That's just how it seems to me.
Now to one of the root issues I saw in your writing, and one which will scare and anger many Jews I believe (and I hope you and others listen to me through the end, and please not jump to any conclusions about what I'm saying):
We must recognize the hard truth that God is sovereign, and we're not. So if God wants us to love our enemy--in fact, commands us to, telling us that we're to follow His example in doing so, and that we're no better than the pagans if we don't--then we'd better do it, even if it might mean our destruction. For Israel to use fleshly weapons against its enemies and claim spiritual justification is a hypocrisy of first degree. (And for Christians to support such actions is equally hypocritical.) IF the only way for Israel to "survive" as a nation is to torture, murder and destroy, perhaps they shouldn't exist as a Jewish state in the Middle East.
Would that mean that every Israeli life is not valuable? Of course not! Each individual has the right to live, and in general that means living where they'd like to live. But in the face of the terrible injustice of Israel's enemies' strong desire to destroy Israel, a just response does not imitate their hatred, but "overcomes evil with good." If that would actually mean that Jews living in Israel would become martyrs of love in a sea of hate, then, in the end, this would be to God's glory and their ultimate, pure and eternal joy.
Now, I'm NOT saying that this is what "ought" to happen. Perhaps Israel can act justly as a nation and still survive. Perhaps individual Jews living in the Holy Land can still be there and live peaceably and justly with their neighbors. And, especially in light of the horrors of the Holocaust, I'm under no illusions as to the real and immense cost of such terrible circumstances. But what I am saying is that IF the only way for Israel to survive, or for an individual Israeli to survive, is to engage in hatred and injustice, then it would be better for them to lose their body than their soul.
"For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it. What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?" (Mark 8:35-37)
Following God's way of love, of "overcoming evil with good," very well may cost Israelis, and even Israel as a nation, their lives. (In fact, in a sense, it would cost all of us our lives.) But it will gain them something far better. They might lose their earthly kingdom for which they have fought so hard, but they would gain a heavenly kingdom that will never be destroyed. They might lose the earthly Jerusalem, a city enslaved to sin and filled with blood, but they would gain the New Jerusalem above, whose glorious splendor and freedom will never fade away.
I pray that Israelis would never have to make such terrible sacrifices. But if they do, or if Palestinians or Lebanese have to make similar choices between the life of the flesh and the life of the spirit, I pray they would count it joy to lose their life on earth but gain the eternal life that awaits God's people.
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