Category: nonviolence

The dangerous badge


The badge has arrived in the mail. Although the package was quite small it may provoke savage reactions and will certainly be misunderstood.

Years ago, I was much more politically active and wore badges to signal my involvement in different causes. I have kept a cloth bag of badges made with those old, primitive badge-makers. I shake them out onto the table, and I see now I supported the Campaign Against Racial Exploitation, Amnesty International, the Wilderness Society and all the predictable leftist crusades.

But this new badge is partly to protest the media who have so manipulated our sympathy that we lose our wider view and demonise a whole group of society.

The badge is a blue star of David on a white background. I will be wearing Israel’s colours, Israel’s symbol.

But why?

It may seem perverse, then, to wear a badge proclaiming. עם ישראל חי” (om Israel chai – let Israel live): how could I show support for a nation set on the annihilation of another?

The media encourage us to make a moral calculation: on October 7th in 2023, 1,200 Israeli citizens were killed and 240 were abducted by Hamas. In defending their country, Israelis killed 1,500 Palestinian terrorists. We want to cry out, ‘Isn’t that enough killing? Isn’t an additional 40,000 Palestinian deaths and flattening of homes overkill?’

Possibly like you, I also wonder whether razing Gaza is a precursor, as President Trump advocates, for wholesale dispossession. ‘Take them somewhere nice,’ he says with a blasé smile, their fate evidently irrelevant to him.

Like you, I have long been aghast at Israel’s harassing Palestinians and clearing them from the West Bank, and the current intensification of the IDF’s activity in the refugee camps where, apparently, terrorists peek out from under every Palestinian bed.

But consider Israel. I see a nation lashing out in fear. Many Israelis are children and grandchildren of the Holocaust. They are terrified that they will again be wiped out. They feel abandoned by the Western nations that created the State of Israel 76 years ago.  Their only friend seems to be the US, and that friendship under President Trump now seems brittle too.

For me, that cannot justify Israel’s behaviour in Gaza. But it goes a long way to explain it. And we have rarely seen that mortal dread expressed in the media. So I support Israel as it recoils from violence done to it. It is scared for its life.

Secondly, there is the agony of the hostages; their own agony, but also the agony of their loved ones and fellow citizens. They’ve ached for them to be returned. They’ve raged against their Government for continually prioritising the military response over bringing the hostages home. I stand with all the hostage families. They’re Israelis.

Thirdly, Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics counts over 2 million Arab citizens. One Israeli citizen in every five is Arab or Palestinian. At least one Arab is a member of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. These Israelis are harassed, interrogated and imprisoned if they speak a word against Israel’s actions in Gaza. But they’re Israelis.

Lastly, not all Israelis approve of their Prime Minister. They see his political calculus. He wants to cling to power. He needs to stay in power to forestall criminal proceedings against him. Ordinary Israelis feel the whole gamut of reactions to Netanyahu, from approval to active support, but also from disappointment to feeling betrayed by him. I stand with the critics of the Israeli government.

I like Jewish culture. At its best Judaism is a powerful moral and intellectual force in the world. I like the whole gamut of Jewish ritual from the blast of the shofar to Sabbath meals. It’s no accident that Jews are over-represented in fields as diverse as medicine and music. Judaism was the cradle of Christianity.

Judaism produced the extraordinary collection of books we call the Old Testament. The Jewish Scriptures contain amazing poetry, stunning philosophy and intriguing theology.  I have invested years learning Hebrew and studying the pages of these fascinating books from Genesis to Malachi.

I stand with the Jews’ legacy as builders of an ethical and aesthetic civilisation.

I look into my heart. In the end, I cannot but wear the blue and white badge even it offends random observers. I cannot but stand with Israel.

Killer planes and Christians


One cheer for the Americans. It is reported that a drone aeroplane killed Abu Yahya al-Libi, Al-Qaeda’s number two. Oh, and by the way, probably six other militants were killed in the same strike.

The world is probably better off without al-Libi and his like. They plot terrorist acts against Westerners, and I have no cheers for terrorists.

But our Christian moral tradition calls this extra-judicial taking of life by its proper name. It is murder. It is a violation of the sixth commandment: “You shall not kill.” It happens that my personal Christian commitment is to non-violence, and I am against all killing including killing in war and killing by the death penalty.

But I respect those who fought in wars. I think of my grandfather and the difficulty he had in re-connecting with his children after nearly three years away on the Western front. I think of my uncle Sim, his body racked with the shakes of Parkinson’s and a fragile mind, pushed to its limits by the memory of an engagement on ‘No-Man’s Land’ between trenches.

As soldiers, they were involved in killing. But they were fighting to keep our kind of society: they wanted a free society; a society where there is due process; a society where the actions of criminals are tried before punishment is pronounced.

Killing bin Laden and killing al-Libi without a trial makes a travesty of our democratic way of life. It is the behaviour not of a true democracy, but the actions of a vigilante group.  We Christians may not agree on the specifics of these targeted strikes against individuals, but we should agree on the desire for justice and the care necessary for every human being if true justice, the justice envisaged by the prophet Isaiah is to be the real experience of our society.

Do you think it was right to kill this man? And what would you say about this to President Obama if you met him … or if you decide to write to him. (Go online to http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact, or address the envelope to The White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20500, USA, and (from Australia) put a $2.35 stamp on it).

First posted at Dunsborough Anglican Church