Balance this...

One of these days, I might make an entry that is a to-did list or a simple narrative about what happened to me during the week. One e-mail has the power to divert me. A well meaning pastor from the mid-West sent the mission personnel a cold e-mail for prayer for requests. I answered honestly, asking for prayer because... well, I said it myself:

Please be in prayer for me as I accompany the staff at Wi'am, especially now: settlement activities are becoming more aggressive in response to the bid for statehood. There's a growing campaign of terror and destruction (settlers are allowed to uproot Palestinian olive trees and carry automatic weapons) and I fear it will not only cause deeper suffering and despair but trigger a counter-campaign on the part of extremists who do not represent the will of the people.

Looking back at my e-mail, I never said “Israel” or “Jews” once. This surprised even me. I managed to write an e-mail that emphasized the positive attributes of Palestinians, insisted they deserve a good life and condemned any and all violence. The reply I received irked me. It was not a burst of Christian Zionism, nothing scary and heart-breaking. It was something annoying: the balancing game. This balancing game makes me pissy, rather than zealously angry. Rather than go into details about his particular e-mail, I’ll just highlight typical ‘balancing’ components. 1) I was in the West Bank once and talked to Palestinians, too. 2) There are really nice Jewish people who exist 3) This conflict is complicated and old 4) Both sides deserve some blame.

Let me address these, briefly.

1) Have a cookie, I already know they’re nice. That was the main component of MY e-mail.

2) I just spent half of my day with a Rabbi who holds Israel 100% responsible for the injustices being committed. To say “there are nice Jewish people” is fallacy of false thesis. The nicest Jewish people are in solidarity with Palestinians. This has less to do with religion than resources...

3a) “It’s complicated.” We have patience and great coffee at Wi’am—why don’t you join us?

3b) “It’s old” –it’s only a hundred years old. This is not Isaac versus Ishmael versus... no, that’s convenient storybook fluff. This goes back to when the British thought it would be a good idea to allocate Palestine’s land without consulting the Palestinians. The problem is colonialism*.

4) Who are the two sides that are both deserving blame? I thought this was a complicated conflict! To reduce the occupation to two sides and say they are equally to blame is the very simplification you rejected—and rightly so.

The problem with trying to correct the ‘balancing’ attitude is that it runs deeper than ignorance and misinformation, tracing to the most pivotal moment of the Gospel. Jesus explained to a lawyer that “all the law and the prophets” hinge on the commandment to love God with all-we-got and love our neighbor like our own self. Jesus challenged him with an active command rather than a prohibition. The lawyer knew the law, quite well, and my translation says he wanted to “justify his actions.” He asks Jesus to define neighbor, to set the parameters of when he has to take action. A prohibition allows us to remain oriented however we like, as long as sin is absent, but the Greatest Commandment demands a change in orientation~ it demands love, not non-hate.

I am a Jesus fan for a reason. Christ launched into the parable of the Good Samaritan, where a man is beaten and left for dead, then by-passed by religious leaders and finally helped by someone of another ethnic group. We should be careful of gushing about the Samaritan’s kindness, as if generosity is something super-human. I believe the parable is about excuses, not kindness between people of different ethnicities. The priest and Levite cross to the other side of the street so they can pretend as if they do not see their country-man. I imagine they were not evil, nasty people but very average people with busy days ahead of them. How many times have you seen a car with its flashers on in your rear-view mirror? It is not a sin to pass by on the other side but it must be recognized as failing to be Christian. Jesus may have picked the Samaritan as the hero because he had an excuse to opt-out but, instead, shows compassion.

When I say shows compassion, I don’t mean empathy. The Samaritan puts some cash down for the beaten man at the inn. Compassion is empathy actualized.

I do have many things to say about blame and responsibility: between the Israeli government, the settlers and their sympathizers, Hamas and their sympathizers, the Palestinian Authority, the diaspora and the international community—but that misses the point. The “beaten man” is not just the Palestinian people, in this case, but the entire situation. As much as I cannot wrap my mind around it, someone needs to save the settlers from themselves. It occurred to me last night that there is something fundamentally wrong with an understanding of Hell as a place of punishment that people deserve rather than something terrible that could happen to people in our human family. Whether hell exists or not, these settlers are sick people—people who level olive plantations and teach their kids how to use automatic weapons. Playing blame games costs Palestinians their lives and these Israelis their souls, so to speak. This tendency to say “I didn’t do anything wrong—I’m not the bigot!” is not useful.

Balance has nothing to do with it. Our involvement is needed; mission WITH. I feel like these attempts to be ‘fair’ are only ways to cross the street and keep walking. Nothing about this context is ever going to be ‘fair’. No one said the beaten man was the greatest person in the world or even completely innocent. He was a neighbor in need not just of being known but of being loved. In fact, who ever said that it was worse to help the wrong person than it is to be habitually unwilling to help beyond the vague promise of prayer? Let’s commit mistakes long before we omit love.

I know this won’t be the last time I have these thoughts.

*This is also not simple; the Ottoman Empire previously controlled the region but following World War 1 the British found opportunities to exploit its position. Political autonomy is usually absent for the inhabitants of this area -- Biblical and historical accounts indicate that this geo-political trend is old but there are never just 'two sides' at play.