How
do we remember, on a day like today? How do we remember, in a world the way it
is today?
* * *
Of the deluge of images and opinions
and stories coming out of Israel-Palestine over these last few weeks, in the
midst of the overwhelming tragedy of the events continuing to unfold, one
little contribution particularly drew my attention this week. It was written by
Daniel Seidemann, an Israeli attorney specializing in Israeli-Palestinian
relations in Jerusalem.
46 years ago, almost to the day, he
was a cadet in the Israeli Defence Force officer training course. He and two
other trainees, armed with M-16 assault rifles, were sent into the Jabaliya
Refugee Camp in Gaza (which before the recent war began, was home to over
100,000 Palestinian people). It would be years, he writes, before he would
recognize what he experienced there for what it was: the consequences of the
‘Naqba’ (the Arabic word for ‘catastrophe’), the name Palestinians give to the
violent displacement and dispossession of their people in 1948, and ongoing
since then.
But that was not his only formative
experience that day. Coming out of the refugee camp, the three Israeli soldiers
found themselves in Gaza’s British and Commonwealth war cemetery from the 1st
and 2nd World Wars. Just next to the abject poverty of the refugee
camp was this cemetery, meticulously maintained down to every blade of grass.
‘It was as though a sliver of Sussex had been transplanted to Gaza’, Seidemann
writes.[1] An
‘oasis of calm’, as the cemetery’s website currently puts it.
Seidemann doesn’t comment further on the
two experiences. He simply places them side by side for us: perhaps to notice the
stark contrast between the two; and the equally stark separation, disconnection,
between them. Two utterly different worlds, just a short walk apart.
How might we remember, I wonder, in a way that makes connections between those two worlds?
* * *
In the wake of what we have come to call
the First World War, they called it ‘the war to end all wars’. After the genocidal
Nazi holocaust exterminated millions of Jews (as well as Roma people, gay and disabled
people, and others), the phrase ‘Never again’ has often been used. And yet, the
war to end all wars didn’t. And ‘never again’ is, tragically, far from the
truth. Our remembering, year after year, has done little or nothing to end the
tragic collective sin of war and violence in our world… So what is the point of
‘remembering’ today?
There are, I think, at least four
different kinds of ‘move’ we might make in our remembering, and I want to try
and tease out each of them a little here now.
* * *
Firstly then, we can remember ‘our side’,
‘our fallen’. Those were the kind of phrases on the lips of the crowd –
of mostly angry white men – that pushed through police cordons to get to the
Cenotaph yesterday, supposedly to ‘protect’ it. Members of that crowd, called
together by the dog whistles of right-wing politicians, were on camera one
minute describing the 11th November as ‘our sacred day’… and the next minute
hurling bottles at police officers, screaming ‘you’re not English any more’.
Whatever they meant by the ‘sacredness’ of yesterday, was wrapped up in persistent,
polarised division, hatred, and violence.
We’ve seen a similar kind of
‘remembering’ in many of the speeches of Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s extreme
right-wing Prime Minister, who has repeatedly turned to the Hebrew Scriptures
to justify his policy of relentless bombing and ethnic cleansing of
Palestinians in Gaza, and the ongoing violent displacement from their homes of
Palestinians in the West Bank by illegal settlers. Netanyahu has quoted
passages from the prophet Isaiah, that we Christians turn to every Christmas,
that speak of ‘the glory of the Lord rising’ like the sun scattering the
darkness: “we are the people of the light, and they are the people of darkness,
and light shall triumph over darkness,” he said. This kind of language, this
kind of polarising is, ultimately, the language of terror. And we Christians should
just pause for a moment and take a breath before we say anything, and remember
that all too often Christians like us have used such Scriptures, such language,
in similar ways.
* * *
So secondly, we might want to counter
such violent polarisation by taking the side of peace. ‘Blessed are the
peacemakers,’ says Jesus. What the world desperately needs, we tell ourselves,
is peace. And peace must start with us.
Loving our enemies, we remember,
includes ‘not bearing false witness’ about other people’s actions, experience,
or positions. It includes looking for the best, for the humanity, in those with
whom we might vehemently disagree. It means not equating marching for peace, or
solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza, with being pro-Hamas. It means not
equating being Jewish with supporting the right for Israelis to have a secure
state, and not equating either of those with supporting Netanyahu’s right-wing
government and its state-sponsored violence and oppression.
As Palestinian Christian theologian Munter
Isaac has put it:
‘peacemaking is not an easy task! It involves
taking risks and listening to both sides of a conflict. It involves stepping
into places that we might not feel comfortable in and meeting people who have
been stigmatized by many, likely by us ourselves. To be peacemakers, we must
engage the humanity of the other who is different than us. To be a
peacemaker means we must cross to the other side of the wall.’[2]
Or perhaps we might be drawn to the words of Jewish rabbi
Irwin Keller from California, who wrote these words on October 17th,
2023, ten days after the terrifying Hamas attacks which murdered hundreds of
Israelis, both soldiers and civilians.
Today I am taking sides.
I am taking the side of Peace.
Peace, which I will not abandon
even when its voice is drowned out
by hurt and hatred,
bitterness of loss,
cries of right and wrong.
I am taking the side of Peace
whose name has barely been spoken
in this winnerless war.
I will hold Peace in my arms,
and share my body’s breath,
lest Peace be added
to the body count.
I will call for de-escalation
even when I want nothing more
than to get even.
I will do it
in the service of Peace.
I will make a clearing
in the overgrown
thicket of cause and effect
so Peace can breathe
for a minute
and reach for the sky.
I will do what I must
to save the life of Peace.
I will breathe through tears.
I will swallow pride.
I will bite my tongue.
I will offer love
without testing for deservingness.
So don’t ask me to wave a flag today
unless it is the flag of Peace.
Don’t ask me to sing an anthem
unless it is a song of Peace.
Don’t ask me to take sides
unless it is the side of Peace.[3]
* * *
A third kind of remembering is to take the side of the oppressed. It remembers that Scripture talks a lot of peace – but also of justice. The two come together repeatedly, intimately entangled: peace and justice, justice and peace. Here’s Palestinian theologian Munter Isaac, again:
‘Peacemaking also involves standing on the
side of justice and speaking truth to power, even when it may be that of our
own people, religion, or nation. Shallow diplomacy and political correctness is
not always the answer. … Peacemakers call injustices out by name and call out
those who are oppressors. Now this is a difficult way! Those who want to follow
this path have to leave their comfort zones. It is also a path that Jesus
warned would bring persecution and trouble. But this is our testimony of faith.’[4]
Our Scriptures won’t let us say that
‘God doesn’t take sides’. Time and time again in the Bible, we’re told that God
hears the cries of the oppressed – and speaks and acts for their liberation. God
is not interested in peace, if it doesn’t come hand in hand with justice.
Remember the words of Archbishop Desmond Tutu:
“If you are neutral in situations of
injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its
foot on the tail of a mouse, and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will
not appreciate your neutrality.”
In war and conflict, there are always
victims on both sides – and God grieves with all who grieve… but both sides are
not necessarily equally oppressed. Taking the side of justice is an
invitation to look at the uneven distribution of power and vulnerability, and to
look for the face of God in those suffering enforced vulnerability and
oppression. This is an invitation too – especially for those of us who seem far
removed from many of the conflicts of the world – for us to notice our own
complicity in injustice, through the policies of our government, and the
actions and investments of companies we use. The 1917 Balfour Declaration, for
example, that led to the founding of the modern state of Israel, was itself a
product of the violence of British colonialism, and the colonialist belief that
we have the power to draw lines in the sand, and determine who gets to live where.
* * *
Which leads us into a fourth possible
move: to remember that it so much of this is really complex. Remembering
requires us to do hard work: remembering a much longer, more complex history. Like
the work that the National Trust have been doing over the last few years, attending
to the histories of their stately homes and their entanglements in imperialism and
the slave trade. And similarly, remembering that the history of the state of
Israel is intertwined with the Jewish people’s history of centuries of being on
the receiving end of invasion and occupation, displacement and exile, and a
violent antisemitism that culminated (but didn’t end) with the Nazi holocaust.
Through such remembering, we begin to piece together a longer, more complex
history beyond crude polarisations, acknowledging our own complicities, and paying
careful attention to the way our past histories shape present conflicts.
But this, too, can be a risky move. It
can too easily slip into disengagement, politically or emotionally,
abstraction, or even paralysis, throwing our hands up in the air in
bewilderment: ‘it’s all just too complicated!’.
This is where remembering the big,
long, complex stories needs to go hand in hand with also remembering the small,
human, personal stories within them. Remembering is about valuing and
treasuring each and every human life; grieving each and every human life that has
been lost or scarred. And, we are only just learning to add, countless other-than-human
lives too.
In our remembering, we remember that
war creates trauma. Trauma is a way of naming some of the ways in which our
past is still ‘alive’ in our present, both individually and collectively. And
how we respond to such trauma is crucial.
Disengagement or detachment is one
response (what behavioural scientists label ‘flight’). Paralysis, or ‘freeze’,
is another. Another response to trauma is to respond to violence and hatred with
more violence and hatred (the ‘fight’ response): in facing up to the monster,
in responding out of our traumatised experience and history, we risk turning
into monsters in turn. And here, again, we need to take a deep breath.
Donald
Nicholl (a Christian theologian, who spent much time in the 1980s studying
& teaching in Jerusalem), said this:
“If your immediate spontaneous reaction – if
the movement of your heart – upon hearing of some tragedy is an ideological one
rather than a human one, then your heart has become corrupted and you should
leave straight away and go on pilgrimage until it is cleansed.”[5]
I
wonder what kind of pilgrimage we need to go on – each of us individually, and also
collectively: as a church community together here, as a country, as a world. This
kind of remembering is a way of facing the trauma, and trying to find a
different response, to begin to break the seemingly-endless cycles of
traumatising violence.
When the letter to the Ephesians tells
us that Jesus has ‘broken down the dividing walls’ and the hostility that turns
us into ‘us and them’… well that sounds good, doesn’t it? But remember how
we’re told that ‘breaking down’ happens: ‘by his blood’, ‘in his flesh’, ‘in
[his broken] body’, ‘through the cross’… This work of breaking down dividing
walls is profoundly costly: and it costs nothing less than everything. We may
say that ‘peace starts within ourselves’. And yes, there’s some truth in that.
But it’s certainly not as simple as finding some tranquil centre within
ourselves, from which we can then radiate peace to the world. Here’s Donald
Nicholl (again):
“The task of
the Christian is not to be neutral – but to be torn in two.”
Peace- and justice-seeking needs to
start by letting the horrors of war, violence, division and hatred sink into
our depths, and to be met there by the compassion of God, the suffering love of
the crucified Christ. That is where our remembering needs to begin…
May
God bless you with a restless discomfort
about
easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships,
so
that you may seek truth boldly and love deep within your heart.
May
God bless you with holy anger
at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people,
so that you may tirelessly work for justice, freedom, and peace among all
people.
May
God bless you with the gift of tears
to shed for those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation, or the loss of
all that they cherish,
so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and transform their pain
into joy.
May
God bless you with enough foolishness
to believe that you really can make a difference in this world,
so that you are able, with God’s grace, to do what others claim cannot be done.
(A Franciscan Blessing)
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