“What canst thou say?” Israel and Palestine

This short essay reflects on the war and conflict between Israel and the Palestinians in Gaza. It begins by drawing on George Fox and the Quakers who invite us to look inwardly to our spiritual and moral selves in order to take a stance and find our voices to speak, in this traumatic and very disturbing conflict/war.

George Fox, the founder of the Quakers, asked in the 1650s  "You will say Christ saith this, and the apostles say this, but what canst thou say?    

Fox was challenging the religious orthodoxy of the time, he believed that each person should be guided by their individual experience of the ‘light within’ them. The Quakers were radicals, they shunned the institutional church and challenged the powerful priests who interpreted the Bible on the peoples’ behalf, telling them what to believe and think. They created an egalitarian, pacifist church, led by a ‘priesthood of all believers’ that continues today as ‘The Religious Society of Friends’. The Quakers won the Nobel Peace Prize for their social justice and peace activism in 1947. 

The question ‘what canst thou say?’ is an important starting point when we reflect on the Israel-Palestinian crisis, as it makes us think beyond the abstract, and to answer directly from our own conscience, values and beliefs.

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So ‘what canst thou say’ about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?

What does your inner light lead you to say, to think, to do? We are all people of faith, whether this is expressed in religious or spiritual terms, or whether our faith is in humanism, the question remains the same: how does your spirit guide you and lead you to speak and act?

Different responses to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

1. There are some who take polemic sides in this conflict, unable to condemn the terrible violence from one side and wholly blame the other side for the horrific violence and conflict.   

2. There are some who are conditional in their condemnation of one side’s terrible violence, claiming the context excuses or even produces it. For example, Palestinian supporters blaming the Israelis saying that Hamas’ brutal violence is a product of Israeli occupation and the long-term persecutory policy against the Palestinian people who are in despair. Or Israeli supporters justifying Israel’s unleashing of terrible violence in Gaza that is killing and harming so many civilians because they are at war and must stop the threat from Hamas.

3. Another response is withdrawal and disengagement. Either due to being overwhelmed or through fear that any comment might be jumped on – it does feel dangerous to speak about this conflict/war.

There are others, and I am one of them, who clearly and unequivocally condemn the shocking and brutal violence of both sides. 

The horror that Hamas unleashed on innocent Israeli citizens and the vicious killing of young people and aged holocaust survivors, in my mind can never be explained away and/or excused because of Palestinian suffering. 

The Israeli response to the Hamas attack, placing innocent civilians in a siege, stopping food, water, and fuel, and mass bombings of densely populated civilian areas and refugee camps is totally wrong. Killing innocent children cannot be explained or excused by the rationale that the Israelis have the right to lay siege to and attack civilians in Gaza in order to destroy Hamas.

What is our moral duty?

• Being clear about disavowing brutal and inhuman violence, particularly on the innocent, is one part of our moral and spiritual duty.

• Recognising the underlying issues and supporting peacemakers, who can show leadership is another part of our moral and spiritual duty.  

• Holding open a space for dialogue with others and working against the polarisation this conflict/war brings. This conflict is spilling into the streets, antisemitism is on the rise and Islamophobia too. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict adds to other societal and cultural wars and divisions that are not far away, they are within our communities. It takes ordinary citizens to prevent society from splitting into fragments and sides- and there are many who will take advantage of these splits.

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What canst I say?  

To speak from a moral and spiritual place:

• I totally and utterly condemn the terrible suffering caused by the awful attack by Hamas on Israeli citizens. I stand in solidarity with the Jewish people to live in a safe state, and in safety wherever they are in the world.

• I totally and utterly condemn the terrible suffering caused by the awful attacks by Israel on innocent Gaza citizens. I stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people to live in a safe state, and in safety wherever they are in the world.

The context does matter, but it doesn’t give permission or excuse the violence

My personal responses do not, however, remove me or others from facing the context, the complexity, the history and the challenges to secure peace in the region.

Acknowledging the Israeli/Jewish right to exist in a safe state, acknowledging the terrible and genocidal history of the holocaust, the centuries of discrimination, massacres and pogroms, and the antisemitism that still exists across the world, there has to be a recognition that the recent Hamas attacks evoke more than the immediate dreadful shock and horror; they also evoke the deep trauma of past events.  

Acknowledging the Nakba, (the catastrophe when the Palestinians were forced from their land), the 1.5 million Palestinians (some third generation) living in refugee camps; the recent enforced movement of people from north Gaza, re-inscribes the Palestinian people with their past trauma.

The anguish of living in Gaza, one of the most densely populated places on earth, with mass unemployment, poverty, poor drinking water, surrounded by fences, with access in and out controlled by others, is deeply traumatising causing daily humiliations including the ever-increasing illegal Israeli settlers and the wider occupation of their legal territory in Palestine. Being forced yet again to move from their homes in the North evokes the Nakba and the deep trauma of past events. 

The return of the repressed

These present traumas are producing repetitions and compulsions, where a return of the repressed takes place. Whilst there is a conscious knowledge of the past trauma’s experienced by individuals, families and collective peoples, there is also a repression that is inevitable in order to alleviate the suffering enough to continue to live day by day. 

The present traumas re-activate the repression which returns with great force, and is an embodied physical and psychological response. This makes reflective communication challenging.

Another form of repression takes place when one community/people displaces or denies the trauma that their community have inflicted onto another people. Has Britain ever really faced the trauma it inflicted on others through slavery and colonisation? It seems this is an example of a continuing deep collective repression.

This mixture of disavowal of the trauma the other suffered, and reactivation of one’s own trauma, opens up the very dangerous unleashing of violence, with the fantasy it will in some way lead to more security or that a collective punishment on innocents can be just.

Biden’s warning to Israel not to make the same mistakes as the USA did and become consumed by rage after 9/11 is a salutary warning.

Adding petrol to the fire, the international community takes sides and feeds the antagonism, whether the USA, Arab states, Iran, Europeans, Russians, Chinese….all mobilise their righteous anger when it suits, aligning positions to their political ends, and turn a blind eye to what they don’t want to see or believe. There are, however, other institutional actors, humanitarians, political individuals and countries working ceaselessly to reduce violence and open a space for peace.

Blessed are the peacemakers.

We have many examples and patterns when faced with terror and violence. In Ireland, where I live, when the IRA took up arms and fought a horrendous war with loyalist paramilitaries and the British army, with over 3,000 deaths and so many innocents suffering, some stood their ground for peaceful solutions.

Pat and John Hume from the Catholic community stood firm against using violence, alongside so many grassroots activists from all sides of the conflict who put their lives at risk for peace. Brendan Duddy was a ‘secret peacemaker’ who put his life at risk behind the scenes in Northern Ireland to set up the early negotiations on the peace treaty. I invited Brendan to speak at a leadership and faith conference, and he told me how he was guided by his own spiritual truth, which he accessed on long walks in the mountains behind his fish and chip shop in Derry, a stronghold of the IRA and a place at the heart of the troubles.  

Today, in Gaza committed humanitarians are risking their lives to help those in need. Organisations like Doctors Without Borders and Save the Children are unequivocally calling for an end to the inhumane violence against children and innocent civilians. They are calling for the restoration of “basic humanity” and the end of “collective punishment” in Gaza.

Some say ‘there is no peace without justice’, and I agree. However, no peace doesn’t equate to a violent response, that feeds the cycle of hatred. It means working ceaselessly for peaceful outcomes; to work against the structural and institutional violence of racism and all forms of oppression that sow the seeds of injustice and tensions. Peace will come slowly, and only when all parties have security and safety, and a place to call home. This requires a politically just settlement, one that will not be perfect, not give everybody everything, but one that can be lived with by all. 

George Fox wrote from prison in 1656 to the early Quaker movement, which was being persecuted by the state, asking them to “Be patterns and examples and answer that of God in everyone”. It is a good message today, encouraging us to live our values and beliefs, and to see all humans as ‘children of God’ in Quaker terms; or in humanistic terms, of each human life being valued and respected.

This is a tough ask when trauma is raw, and when violence and trauma continue, but anything less than this will feed the cycle of horror.