discovering seeds of god’s tomorrow

It would be funny if it wasn’t so tragically real!

I watched Sky news. Beirut families were pouring out of a block of flats that was under attack. They fled to a school, thinking they’d be safe there - but they weren’t. Shells started landing nearby. Now the children were streaming from the school, crazed with terror. One little girl - she looked about 9 - stood, screaming and swaying, clearly in hysterics. She was petrified. A man - presumably one of the teachers, came up to her and yelled at her to snap her out of it. She flinched, rocking back as a boxer would to avoid a blow.

What is going on with the world? How can war be made on children without every adult being so ashamed and shocked that we stop? I don’t mean that naively. I fought a war. I know that we include womane and children and other civilians in our war-making. We’re not surprised when when they’e on the casualty lists. Yet, however much we protest, we have to face the fact that we accept that we make war on kids. Cos if we didn’t - if we were as outraged and soul-sick as we ought to be - we’d do something about it!

We’ve had kids for Hope at the Centre for 12 days. They’re Palestinian youngsters, aged 12-15, identified as potential future leaders in their communities and they’ve spent the time here getting away from the war zone, experiencing freedom, making friends and undergoing Leadership Training & Personal Development. It’s been a great time with them. We’ve certainly got as much - if not more - out of having them than they have out of being here.

I did s bible study on forgiveness with them, using the parable of the prodigal. Of course, one of the main things is that it ought to be called “The Parable of the Lost Son”, coming as it does as the climax of a 3-parable section on the theme of losing and finding. Re-read it if that surprises you. The important implication of the fact that we generally mis-title the parable is that we miss the principal character: God! It’s a parable about the lovesick father, not the wasteful son!

The kids got that one straight away. We read the parable (in Arabic and English) and I then asked them to identify the principal characters. Then I divided them into three groups, each taking one character: the father, the son and the older brother. They each had 2 questions to explore, identifying with their character.

I took the group on the father. The first question was, “How did this parable strike you?” A 12-year old boy answered “Shocking!” I asked why. A 15-year old girl answered, “because the boy told his father he wanted him dead!” And she’s right! You see what happens? Youngsters “get it” straight away, because they come to it unencumbered by years of reading it and hearing it expounded in a church context. It’s a parable whose main offence isn’t the actions of the son in the far country, but in the son’s deliberate rejection of any relationship whatsoever with the father. He wishes the father dead so that he can get his hands on the money.

The surprise of the parable is grace - the joy of the loving father who won’t hear of the son coming back as a servant. The son doesn’t repent, of course! He comes home to negotiate a new relationship, not to restore the old! he knows he’s turned his back fully and finally upon his father. It’s about grace because the father doesn’t take this “last word” of the son on the subject as the Last Word. His Last Word is of love and acceptance. He welcomes the son back - as a son who was lost and is found, was dead and is alive.

The point of the parable, in the words of Philip Yancey, is that there’s nothing we can do to make God love us more, and nothing we can do to make God love us less. That’s not the conclusion most church groups come to - but the kids got it in one!

Isn’t it ironic? On the one hand, the US is arming the Israelis to bomb the hell out of Lebanon. On the other, they’re flying in huge plane-loads of blankets as part of the relief operation to care for the victims of the bombings! Lebanese civilains are dying because of American ordinance and White House support for Israel’s deadly aggression, and they expect brownie points for being feely-caring about the victims! A further irony: the single most decisive factor in the continuing carnage in Beirut is the American refusal to call for a ceasefire! And on what grounds? As far as I can detremine, sifting through the reports, it boils down to “We’ll let it go on a little while longer until the death toll becomes too high. At the moment, it’s acceptable!” Please will someone tell me there’s some more noble - or even strategic - reason, and that I’ve got this all wrong?

And here’s the thing: we have a born-again President in the White House! Hey George - wake up! It’s the Prince of Peace you allegedly follow, asshole! Isn’t it tragic that Christian faith can be so misplaced? Under this most vehemently Christian President, the American Christian Right provides massive funding to Israel to deprive the indigenous Palestinian Christianpopulation of their homes and livelihoods. And they back Israel turning the West Bank and Gaza Strip into a humanitarian disaster zone, with massive unemployment, poverty, no electricity and intermittent drinking water. In whose name, George? The God of Jesus Christ? No way!

Alarmingly, the Christian population of Palestine has dwindled from 47% to less than 2% during the Intifada. The Christian voice is a moderate voice, and it is being lost. It’s time the Christians stood up and were counted, because one of the powers that we so desperately need liberation from is US foreign policy in the Middle East. It is deadly. Let’s call a spade a spade: this is serious, serious sin. It is blatant oppoition to the kingdom of Peace that Jesus lived and died for. Do what you do, George, but for God’s sake be honest and stop making out that it has anything whatsoever to do with good, truth and the Gospel!

Does God actually make any difference at all to our efforts to transform the world into a place of justice and peace? This isn't a question about whether or not we ought to be doing it: we ought! The question is, what difference does being a Christian make to our work of transformation, compared with other people and groups who are working towards the same goals but with no Christian reference. What do I say to the young man I know who is passioantely committed to making a difference in the world, but sees no need whatsoever to do is "for Christ's sake". He cannot see that Christian faith adds anything, nor does he see any evidence for some notion of the work of the Spirit that means there is some sort of appreciable difference in either the quality or effectiveness of Christian participation in the struggle for justice. What's the answer here, folks? Is there an answer? And if there isn't, why do we bother about the "God" bit?

One of the questions provoking serious debate within Israel at the moment is the relationship between Israel's counter-terrorism strategy, democracy, and the rule of law. It is a serious issue and is being taken seriously. It is causing a great deal of heart-searching and opinion is deeply divided. I quote here from a letter by Dan Shaham, Director of Piblic Affairs at the Israeli Embassy, London (ie the person in charge of PR!):

The impact of this dilemma, was recently demonstrated when Israel's Supreme Court was divided six votes to five over the 'Citizenship and Entry to Israel Law' (temporary provision - 2003). The law currently halts granting legal status in Israel to Palestinians residents of the West Bank and Gaza who are married to Israelis. The law was initially passed in 2003, when Israel found that dozens of terror attacks were being carried out by and in collaboration with Palestinians who gained entry and residency in Israel by marrying an Israeli citizen.

Five of the Supreme Court Justices argued that Israel, as a sovereign state, has the right to prohibit the immigration of foreign nationals to its territory, and since Israel is in a state of war, the law, as it stood was in proportion to the threat. However, a further five Justices, led by the President of the Supreme Court, Aharon Barak - a champion of human rights - voted against the law, claiming it is a citizen's constitutional right to live with his/her family in Israel. The vote was, therefore, decided by Justice Edmond Levy, who recognised that the law violated constitutional right to family life, but considering the ongoing threat of terrorism, he rejected the petitions and gave the state a 9-month extension to amend the law

It is worth following those links. Aharon Barak's paper is well worth reading. What is clear is that the apparatus of the Security State (which Israel has become) is disturbing and dividing the people as it becomes more visible. I remember working with Mossad in Rhodesia in 1979 (that sounds grandiose: what I mean is that the Rhodesian and Israeli intelligence services worked closely hand in hand. At my level, it meant that I mainly got to read regular intelligence analysis reports). Israel was already and always a security state: it's just that in the world of the late 70s, Palestinians were terrorists and the Israelis were the embattled, courageous little nation that stood up to concerted Arab aggression and bit back with a vengeance. We Rhodesians admired the hell out of them! In fact, the admiration was mutual. But I digress!

The point here is that, no doubt as a fact in many Israeli minds (and it is certainly the position pushed in Israeli government propaganda), the present situation is presented as a new thing. It's as though there is somehow a new form of the "terrorist threat" faced by Israel. Much Israeli security rhetoric rides on the back of American post-9/11 "War on Terror". Subconsciously, the Intifada plays as a manifestation of a new global terror threat faced by all democratic countries. However, there is nothing new about it. What is new is the degree of radicalisation of the Palestinian community which has happened in response to Israeli terror tactics and the deafening silence of the western world over their plight, which has bred deapair and desperation.  It is not a new conflict: what is new is the level of visibility.

The parallel with South Africa is the escalation in the struggle against Apartheid, which happened in the mid-80s. When these sorts of conflicts escalate, the nature of the problem becomes nakedly visible. That creates problems for the government which is administering a policy of aggression and repression under the guise of separation. There is benign logic to separation: it needn't mean the same thing as oppression and exploitation. That is the rhetoric of acceptability that keeps otherwise decent citizens quiet about gross injustice. It enables the state to portray resistance as surprising, shocking, atypical, unrepresentative and immoral. The more naked the conflict, however, the more difficult that fiction is to sustain. That is what is happening in Israel at the moment.

Let's be clear: it is the duty of a sovereign state to protect itself and its citizens against terrorism and incursion. And in the contemporary climate, any democratic state is faced with the trade-off between security legislation, democracy, and civil liberties (please note, in parenthesis, that I do not include "human rights" in that list: by definition, these are simply non-negotiable). What I object to in the Israeli situation is what caused such outrage in the western democracies during the Apartheid era in South Africa: Israel illegitimately describes itself as being "at war", and casts the Palestinians as foreign aggressors. This is not a war between two states! It is a form of war - but it is the warfare of oppression and the conflict is caused by Palestinian resistance to that oppression. It is a civil war, in which a government is waging war upon a section of the populace - just as Saddam Hussein did against the Kurds and the Apartheid regime did against Black South Africans.

One way of trying to legitimate a war is to deprive the victim group of residency and citizenship. If you make them stateless, or "foreign", then you can claim that it is vital to put up a "security fence" to protect your borders. The South Africans created so-called Independent Homelands. They were neither viable nor self-governing. They had puppet regimes and were entirely dependent on South African funding for existence. They were often geographically scattered, so that one continually passed between sections of Bophutatswana and South Africa (for example), in precisely the same manner as one does between Israel and the areas nominally controlled by the Palestinian Authority. The measure of autonomy enjoyed by the Authority is seen in the fact that Israel is refusing to pay PA salaries while Hamas is in power!

Palestinians are not foreign aggressors. They are refugees in their own land. If that is not enough, they are subjected to a panoply of laws that any of us would find absolutely intolerable. What land they do have is expropriated at will by the Israelis. Their water has been cut off. They have intermittent electricity supplies. Their lands have been annexed, their houses bulldozed and their communities made into ghettos by the Wall and the checkpoint system. Their communities are invaded at will by the Israeli military. Any resistance is met not only with massive reprisal, but is branded as terrorism and condemned throughout the western world. They are the price that Israel demands fort the protection of US and British interests in the regions - and that Israel receives!

The point of these three posts is simple. For some reason, it was easy to see Apartheid for what it was. Nelson Mandela and the ANC were not regarded as terrorists (by in large), but as heroic resisters - freedom fighters. Of course, some of the methods of resistance were particularly hard to stomach - such as the gruesome necklacings in which vehicle tyres were paced around the necks of suspected sell-outs, filled with petrol and set alight. We in the west like our conflicts "tidy" - guns, warplanes, tanks, rifles, chemicals and missiles at dawn are all perfectly acceptable. Necklacings and suicide bombers are far to messy, up close and personal. It's a cultural thing - we know how to "do" war, and those other ways of resisting are just frightful - too primitive! "Won't do, my boy - won't do at all!"

Yet the parallels between the structures of Apartheid and the situation in Israel and Palestine are real. They are not strained, overly-pressed or only vaguely analogous. We ought to see Palestinian resistance for what it is - the response of a people who are being made war on. It is simply not true that all parties to a conflict must bear equal blame. A bullied child who stands up to the bully is not violent in the same way as the bully! People who defend themselves and their communities are not terrorists. And not every government of a sovereign state is legitimate - even if it is has been democratically elected! Hitler was elected, and look what he did with his Aryan policies! When is the rest of the world going to shrug off this ridiculous paralysis that says, "We don't know everything, so we can't choose sides"??? The ignorance on many aspects of South African political and economic life under Apartheid was sometimes encyclopaedic - yet that didn't stop people getting involved, protesting and boycotting. It didn't stop them being right, either! They got involved - and Apartheid crumbled. The sad thing is that, like anti-Semitism, we all thought it had been consigned to the dustbin of history. It hasn't … yet! It's alive and well, and living in the Middle East.