[Oe List ...] 1/18/2024: Progressing Spirit: [regarding Israel/Palestine/Hamas] Rev. Dr. Robin Meyes: An Eye For An Eye?

Thu Jan 18 04:51:14 PST 2024

 Hi Folks,Since I have stopped forwarding the Progressing Spirit newsletter to the list serves, I am just sending part of this particular newsletter as it is very timely regarding the Israel/Palestinian/Hamas situation.Ellieelliestock at aol.com    

   By Rev. Dr. Robin Meyers  
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An Eye For An Eye?
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|  Essay by Rev. Dr. Robin Meyers
January 18, 2024

If progressive Christians pride themselves on radical truth-telling, then our time has come, and it will be dangerous.  We claim to prize critical thinking and evidence-based reasoning, but what happens when this leads us to conclusions that are effectively censored by the very people we have historically championed and defended?  With free speech under withering attack, what will happen to those of us who have long-held unpopular and unorthodox religious beliefs?   

Just consider our present dilemma. We have long preached that the Palestinian Jew named Jesus was on the side of the oppressed and marginalized and gave his life to stand over against the unbearable oppression of empires and their military might. If we wish to practice what we preach, then how do we speak bravely about the unspeakable horrors of the Israel/Hamas war?  We resist the idea that we must choose sides and try to silence our critics, but this is exactly what is happening.  The horrific attacks of October 7 have led to the even greater horrors of genocide now underway in Gaza.  As civilian casualties pass 24,000, mostly women and children, people are told to evacuate to safe areas and then bombed in the places they were told to go.  No one can escape and no place is safe. Mass starvation is now underway. 

I do not use the word “genocide” lightly, but rather based on what is happening on the ground.  Omer Bartov, a professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Brown University, believes that there is clearly genocidal intent, which he warned might become genocidal action.  This is based not only on Israel’s use of 20,000-pound bombs, which most countries no longer allow in dense urban warfare, but also on the rhetoric of Israel’s military leaders themselves.  There has never been a more obvious or deadly example of the difference between vengeance and justice. 

The slaughter of innocent Jews on October 7 was pure vengeance by Hamas, born of 75 years of military occupation, hopelessness, and hatred.  Terrorists are made, not born— because young men with no future and nothing to lose can easily be recruited into martyrdom. Being invisible is sometimes worse than death. The response of Israel is now also an act of pure vengeance, albeit with overwhelming military superiority supplied by the United States.  We cannot escape the obvious: We are complicit in every Palestinian death. 

Many are reluctant to call Israel’s actions genocide, fearing the charge of anti-Semitism, but we have heard the language that makes this obvious.  As reported in the New York Times, Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant said, “We are fighting human animals, and we are acting accordingly.”  Maj. Gen Ghassan Alian added, “Human animals must be treated as such,” adding, “There will be no electricity or water.  There will only be destruction.  You wanted hell, you will get hell.”  Another IDF general wrote in a daily newspaper, “The State of Israel has no choice but to turn Gaza into a place that is temporarily or permanently impossible to live in . . . Gaza will become a place where no human can exist.”   

That word “permanently” sent a shudder through those who study genocide. It is also an indelible irony that this action is being taken by those who were themselves the victims of one of the world’s greatest genocides.  Many fear that Palestinians will never return to Gaza and will be slowly expelled from the West Bank by extremist Jewish settlers who capture and occupy Palestinian land illegally and with no criminal consequences.  If indeed the total expulsion of Palestinians can be accomplished eventually, then the cruel illusion that was the Two-State solution will be dead.   

Under the influence of the most corrupt right-wing government in the history of Israel, led by Netanyahu, himself a convicted criminal, extremist voices have advocated moving the entire population of Gaza to the Egyptian-ruled Sinai Peninsula.  A rabbi in the Nahal Bigrade spoke to a group of soldiers, saying that it was clear that “this land is ours, the whole land, including Gaza, including Lebanon.”  The troops cheered enthusiastically. 

Again, the ironies here are biblical.  Consider people who once wandered in the desert themselves after leaving captivity, forcing their enemies out of the Promised Land and into the desert. Or the unchallenged assumption that God is in the land-grant business solely on behalf of the Chosen while at the same time demanding that everyone interpret the pro-Palestinians chant, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” as a call for Jewish genocide.  For some, it surely is; for others, it is aspirational.  Like all humans in exile, just as the Jews before them, Palestinians wish to return after being forced off their lands and out of their homes. Besides, the genocide many believe is now underway in Gaza is not theoretical. 

It is impossible to overstate the danger of this moment, including the prospect of a larger regional war which has already begun.  It will increase the evil that is anti-Semitism exponentially and cleave yet deeper the deadly bifurcation of the Arab world against the West and the West against the Arab world.  Recent history taught us that Israel will reap the whirlwind of their response precisely as did the U.S. after 9/11.  After an unpopular U.S. president vowed vengeance against “those who knocked these buildings down,” bombs rained down on the mountains of Tora Bora, and two disastrous U.S. military invasions gave birth to ISIS and spawned ten times more terrorist activities than before.  You cannot “eliminate Hamas” like you eliminate roaches.  It is an ideology, not a country, and it feeds on violence. It will scatter, regroup, and come back stronger. 

Since we all understand the dangers of misusing scripture by coopting it out of context or twisting it to justify what we are already up to, consider Netanyahu’s call to remember the story of Amalek in Deuteronomy, in which God orders paybacks for Amalek’s attack on the Jews, commanding them, “to kill alike men and women, infants, and sucklings.”  Although impossible to imagine, consider how radical it might have been if Netanyahu had quoted Isaiah instead, and his dream of turning swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks? 

Christian evangelicals also misuse the passage infamously known as “an eye for an eye” to defend vengeance and capital punishment, but scholars tell us it was intended to limit retribution in a way that was proportionate to the offense.  That is, do not poke out ten eyes in revenge for one eye lost, or ten teeth in response to one tooth knocked out.  Do not let your desire for revenge cause you to commit an even greater crime against the one who has wronged you.  

What is more, it is important to remember that the “eye for an eye” passage is one of only a few that the Jewish Jesus cites directly for reinterpretation.  He says, in Matthew’s gospel, “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’  But I say to you, do not resist an evildoer.  But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, also go the second mile.’” 

This may sound like nonsense when you have been attacked, and your kin have been murdered and held hostage.  But if you want to consider the true counsel of religion, remember that it has always been, and remains to this day, profoundly counter-cultural.  It makes holy fools out of those who take it seriously, just as it makes politicians look weak.  Yet what does this genocide promise us but even more violence, even more hatred, and even more U.S. complicity in terrorism around the world?  The permanent Palestinian occupation is the primary driver of the terrorism in the Arab world.  Only systemic changes in this hopeless situation will reduce terrorism and mitigate the obvious belief that some lives are more important than other lives.  

Now is no time for progressive Christians to stop speaking truth to power for fear of being labeled anti-Semitic or anti-Muslim. Hamas has gotten exactly the response from Israel and the U.S. that it hoped for, and a whole generation of terrorists is waiting in the wings.  If we are going to quote MLK Jr., that “hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that,” then we better mean it.  If we are going to heed the warning of Ghandi, that “an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind,” then we are going to have to break the cycle, or at least stop funding it.  

This terrible moment demands prophetic preaching. The last thing we need now is more coping sermons or self-serving narcissism. No one is exempt from trying, with God’s help, to tell the truth—just as no one is exempt from judgment, including our clever selves.  Because if not now, when?  If not here, where?  If not us, who?  

It has been said that the first casualty of war is the truth. Surely, the second is the fear that is the mother and father of lying. Reminds me of the “fierce urgency” of the world’s shortest sermon-- 
Fear not. 

~ Rev. Dr. Robin Meyers
Read online here

About the Author

Rev. Dr. Robin Meyers is pastor of First Congregational Church UCC, Norman, Oklahoma, and retired senior minister of Mayflower Congregational UCC church, Oklahoma City.  He is currently a Professor of Public Speaking and Distinguished Professor of Social Justice Emeritus in the Philosophy Department at Oklahoma City University.  He is a fellow of the Westar Institute and the author of eight books on religion and American culture, the most recent of which is, Saving God from Religion:  A Minister’s Search for Faith in a Skeptical Age.  A feature-length documentary chronicles his work on behalf of Progressive Christianity in Oklahoma (americanhereticsthefilm.com) and more information is at RobinMeyers.com
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