I moved house last month – a positive move which had been planned for some time – and I am still getting over the shock. Moving is well-known to be stressful, apparently next in line after death and divorce, and I have been reflecting: if it is this traumatic at the best of times, what must it be like under frightening or dangerous conditions?
The fathomless trauma on both sides of the Israeli/Palestinian war currently raging is too terrible to be real. Yet, shockingly, it is real. As helpless bystanders we find ourselves at first instinctively honouring all the dead and the grieving and the traumatised. Yet how seamlessly the tribalism ramps up! The question swiftly changes, from “who has been harmed?” to “who is to blame?” “Who needs to be punished?” In the words of Rabbi Dannya Ruttenberg: “We can refuse to root for the safety and lives and rights of human beings as if they were sports teams, in which there are winners and losers, in which safety is a finite resource to be hoarded.”
What a terrible time it is to be Israeli! What a terrible time to be Palestinian! Threats to both Jews and Muslims have soared here in the UK – please God it is different in Ireland. Yet there are many people of peace on both sides, those who acknowledge the existential peril of the people of Gaza as well as the existential threat to the nation of Israel, and those who draw attention to the complicating reality of the imbalance of power between the two peoples.
Israeli Hagit Ofran, of the organisation Peace Now, writes: “Please tell me, how does the bombing and starvation of two million Palestinians in Gaza contribute to our security? And does it help us recover and come back to life after the terrible massacre we went through? And will it return any of the prisoners?”
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Last week Ahmed Al-Jaafari, Palestinian chairman of the Bereaved Families Forum for Peace, wrote: “Very dear friends. We are all in shock and confusion. The Palestinian members of the Families Forum worry about your safety, join in the terrible mourning of the Israeli people and grieve for all the dead, injured and kidnapped.”
It is at these times that the ancient question arises again: Is God all-powerful? If he is, why is he doing nothing? And if he isn’t all-powerful, how can he be Almighty God?
God as revealed in Jesus floods this binary until it overflows. In Jesus we see God getting involved physically, laying down his power and putting himself into the hands of the human creatures he has made, despite our propensity for viciousness and violence. As people of faith, we are called to welcome him and give him sanctuary in our hearts.
Etty Hillesum, Dutch Jewish saint who perished in Auschwitz, found great nourishment in this insight, and pushed it as far as it can go. Despite many opportunities to escape Amsterdam, she insisted on remaining and sharing the fate of her people, aware of the horrors that lay ahead. In July 1942 she writes to God: “Alas, there doesn’t seem to be much you yourself can do about our circumstances, about our lives. Neither do I hold you responsible. You cannot help us but we must help you and defend your dwelling place inside us to the last.”
How can we offer shelter, as it were, to our vulnerable God at this most terrible of times, in the crucible of war, when we are helpless witnesses, so far away? By prioritising the powerless: in our prayers and our giving and our actions. By encouraging the peace-makers, those who acknowledge the humanity and the story of their enemies, at great personal cost. By remembering the words of James Baldwin: “The children are always ours, every single one of them, all over the globe.”
Cameron Bellm ends her loving, sorrowful Prayer for a Country called War like this: “There is no way to wrap our arms all the way around the globe. But let us try. Let us try. Amen.”