Complicating factors

Let me first specify that these factors may complicate what we feel, or make it harder to do the right thing, but that does not mean they change what is right or what our responsibilities are.

Not that it makes figuring out individual responsibilities easy either.

While there has been an increase in support for Palestinians, and that is important, most of the Western world (for lack of a better term) has strongly supported Israel and still mostly does. The reasons for that may not be great, but we have to face them.

First of all, there is the horror of the Holocaust. It is not unreasonable that we are horrified by that.

I am not even sure that finding land that could be their own was wrong. Given the time frame colonizing solutions were more likely than not.

Beyond that horror -- and a righteous "Never again!" -- I think there are also issues of guilt that play into it.

There is that guilt for the role the rest of the world played, not just in turning away refugees but in letting it happen. That includes appeasement and letting other countries get run over, and probably even the vindictiveness at the end of World War I, which contributed to what was happening in Germany before World War II. 

All of those steps got many people of many nationalities killed. Some of those steps involved trying to avoid war which makes sense, but if you are trying to avoid war because it causes death, and then that causes different death... 

Remember, none of this is going to be easy.

Beyond that, the United States played their own role in our treatment of Native Americans, which was part of Hitler's inspiration for how he did things. Yes, he had some ghastly innovations, but we need to own that role because it leads very much to today's situation.

So many Native Americans have visited Palestine and come away saying it reminds them of reservations.

That may lead us to a different guilt, but still one that we have a hard time facing.

We need to deal with that, for Palestine and for ourselves.

I believe an additional factor is that tendency to just want one side or the other to be right; forget nuance. I will get back to that next time, but there is one other thing I want to get into this week.

We may feel more conflicted because the Jews are Christ's chosen people. 

Besides, there are fundamentalists "Christians" cheering it on because they think it will bring on Christ's return.

There are two points with this. I would like to think that they are both fairly obvious, but so much that should be obvious isn't that I'm just going to go for it.

First of all, the purpose of the Revelation of St. John is to let believers know that even though they will see a great deal of evil and trouble they can be comforted that salvation will come and all wrongs will be righted. Feeling that comfort would be very different from celebrating evil. 

We should not root for evil. We should not accelerate it.

(Besides which, since the revelations describe a siege against Israel, that indicates that their offenses will fail at some point, though how many they will have slaughtered by then, and how many have already died... again, this is all horror.)

But also, remember that the Jews were the chosen people when they crucified Him too.

Now I realize that's bordering anti-Semitic, because that's a tack that they use, but my point is that being a covenant people does not exempt you as a group from criticism and it does not make each individual culpable of the group actions.

I believe God loves the Jewish people and I believe He loves the Palestinian people. I believe He has a plan for all of them.

The overall plan involves people having agency and the ability to make decisions, including destructive, terrible ones, but there is a limit to how much any one person can do without some cooperation. 

I believe Hitler was uniquely evil, but he would not have been able to succeed without others going along with it.

Governments often feel bound by treaties and financial concerns and what the opposition party has going on, and there is a limit to any one individual's control. 

I believe the protestors are having an influence now. There are people being arrested calling for a ceasefire, and they may not get the ceasefire, but it still makes a difference.

President Biden spoke words that Israelis found very comforting. Given the generational trauma they have had, I don't begrudge them that.

They also should not persecute others because of the persecution their ancestors faced, and that is a fair criticism.

It is also fair to note that they are doing some things not so different from our ancestors. There's a statue of one of my ninth-great-grandfathers because he was such a good Indian-fighter. I am sure that his children and grandchildren were proud, and for some generations after that. I wish things had been different, but all we have is now.

And I am not sure what else to do, so I blog.