Antisemitism

It has been a grueling week since the horrifying attacks by Hamas on Israel. The issues are deep and complicated… to a point. There are some things that are crystal clear and any insistence on trying to muddy those points is driven by pure hatred.

What gets lost in the place where Israel and Hamas are currently is the people. Regular Israelis and regular Palestinians all trying to live and make a living. Finding a way to have a place to raise families.

We get too easily into our ideological bunkers and scream for the demise of Israel or the crushing of Palestinians. We equate Hamas with all Palestinians or all Israelis with Netanyahu. So, things get complicated.

When I say I am “pro Israeli, pro Palestinian, and pro peace” people tend to see the narrow lens they’re using to say I am FOR ISRAEL or FOR PALESTINE and a wimp. I am pro people. And that takes the blessedness of peacemaking found in the Sermon on the Mount. It is the way of the Kingdom of God and there is no other way to accomplish it. Otherwise, we get war and violence… and it’s always common people who get the brunt of that conflict.

But some things are crystal clear and the biggest one is antisemitism. It is an outright hatred for Jewish people and calls clearly for their destruction.

William Shire wrote this in his monumental work, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich:

Not every German who bought a copy of Mein Kampf necessarily read it… But it might be argued that had more non-Nazi Germans read it before 1933 and had the foreign statesmen of the world perused it carefully while there was still time, both Germany and the world might have been saved from catastrophe.

It somehow does not penetrate our minds that Hitler had to wipe out the Jewish people. Even when the U.S. entered the war and Hitler knew that would probably mark the end of his effort at some point, he ramped up the annihilation of the Jews. That is the depth of hatred we are dealing with in antisemitism. This is what Jews have had to deal with for centuries.

Enter Hamas. It is sheer ignorance to think Hamas is for the Palestinian people compared to the ultimate goal which is stated in their charters of formation: the complete destruction of Israel and the establishment of Islamic law (think ISIS in Syria a few years back) and there is no solution short of constant holy war until all Jews are driven out.

Again, there is the need to separate out Hamas from all Palestinians. Try hard.

It is one thing to criticize Israel’s policies as a government toward Palestinians. It is quite another to be cheering for Hamas as they kill infants and children and women and parade the elderly through the streets before killing them as well because Israel is labeled an “apartheid government” by some segments of political theory. There is no level of violence that is justified. NONE.

There is a limited series on Disney Plus called “A Small Light” that tells the story of Miep Gies and her family’s attempt to hide Otto Frank and his family (including his daughter Anne, which we have her diary published and read every year in many schools). We want to forget history. We want to somehow make it palatable and justified as to what happened in the Hamas attack a week ago.

Watch that show. Realize that even when the Allies had broken into Europe on D-Day and the Nazis knew they were finished, what did not stop was the systematic execution of the Jewish people. The killings increased. Otto Frank’s family was discovered by the Nazis long after the Allies were marching toward Berlin. They were still rounded up and sent to camps to die. Only Otto survived.

That is pure hatred. And that is what exists in Hamas.

That is antisemitism at its darkest.

We cannot wish for the destruction of others out of hatred like that. We cannot wish for the destruction of Palestinian people as “revenge” either. We cannot be that way.

It is hard. It is difficult. It is heartbreaking.

Heartache and suffering won’t stop. But I don’t have to contribute to it, either.

Almighty God, from whom all thoughts of truth and peace proceed: Kindle, we pray, in the hearts of all people the true love of peace, and guide with your pure and peaceable wisdom those who take counsel for the nations of the earth; that in tranquility your kingdom may go forward, till the earth is filled with the knowledge of your love; through Jesus Christ our Lord. AMEN