Brookings pastor Carl Kline: We must discard the empty lessons of war and learn from the mistakes we have made
A friend sent me a copy of an Oct. 14 article by Dan Rather and Elliott Kirschner titled “Anger and Sadness.” The friend is a veteran of the Vietnam war, who saw his fair share of carnage, and who I expect experienced in a profound way, both anger and sadness as a result.
Anger and sadness! Anger and sadness! What else can one feel as the loss of innocent life, destruction of towns, cities, farms and fields proceeds, with devastating and far reaching consequences; in Ukraine, and now, Israel and Gaza. The grief grows into an inconceivable wail, as the bodies pile up and the armies rage.
I’m drawn to the book of Lamentations about the destruction of Jerusalem in the Hebrew Scriptures. The word “lament” becomes more meaningful by the day.
For me there is a deeper sense of sorrow in the word. It suggests to me the longevity of grief, a tragedy that plays out again and again, endlessly over the ages, seemingly without hope of resolution. The older I get, the more the tragedy of war and violence seems to unfold, as if the human race is fated to killing the “other.”
Still, even in the book of Lamentations, there is a small voice of hope, in the midst of the destruction. But, even that voice ultimately asks for vengeance; “Pursue them in anger and exterminate them from beneath thy heavens, O Lord.” In this closing passage the prophet Jeremiah sounds like Sen. Lindsey Graham, as he spoke about Gaza after the Hamas raid on Israel; “level the place.”
Excuse me, senator! Do you know there are 2.3 million people who live in Gaza, the third-most densely populated area in the world? What will you do about the children, at least half the population, who are not yet fighters in Hamas? What will you do with the aged and infirm? How will you identify those who have struggled for peace with Israel? How will your attitude moderate the violence and help prevent a wider war?
There are those who see this as a religious war, a struggle between Islam and Judaism, with Christians standing on the sidelines, cheering one or the other of the cousins along, offering (as suggested in the image above showing Israeli and American military personnel viewing Israeli defense systems in a public domain U.S. government photo published in wikimedia commons) moral support and in some instances, weapons.
There’s nothing “religious” about this violence!
Both Israel and Hamas may well use religious reasons and arguments as their motivation for struggle, but at heart, the conflict is about “land.” Ever since the UN gave the Jewish people a land of their own after the trauma of the Holocaust, displacing Palestinians through no fault of their own, there has been violence. Palestinian lands have gradually disappeared, as Israeli territory has grown, until Gaza and the West Bank are virtual prisons. Check for yourself. Look at the map in 1946 and then again today.
Contrary to the claims of some, God does not “promise” land to anyone. Perhaps that’s the way the ancient Israelites understood their victory in taking land from those already settled there, but as inheritors of Manifest Destiny ourselves, we hopefully will recognize in the Palestinians our own imprisonment of the original peoples on this continent, imprisoned in what we call “reservations.”
There are always alternatives to violence. There is an organization called Nonviolence International in Washington, D.C., that promotes alternatives to violence, including in the Middle East. It was founded by Mubarak Awad, a Palestinian advocate for nonviolent resistance, who led nonviolent civil disobedience during the first intifada in Palestine and was arrested several times.
Awad started the Palestinian Center for the Study of Nonviolence in Jerusalem in 1983 and was eventually deported by Israel in 1988. He is presently an adjunct professor at American University in the school of International Service, where he teaches classes in the theories and methods of nonviolence. Unfortunately, he was never supported or given the resources to continue teaching and demonstrating nonviolence in Palestine. It might have saved some anger and sadness today.
There is still a small sense of hope. Perhaps the anger and sadness in the human community will reach a fever pitch where we can turn a corner, recognize there are nonviolent alternatives in each and every situation, and send the weapons makers who have captured our 21st century economies into a well-deserved retirement. Maybe we can try a new thing, instead of repeating trauma after trauma!
It’s lamentable that anger and sadness always have to be our teachers, when we know love and joy enhance and demonstrate our better selves.
Carl Kline of Brookings is a United Church of Christ clergyman and adjunct faculty member at the Mt. Marty College campus in Watertown. He is a founder and on the planning committee of the Brookings Interfaith Council, co-founder of Nonviolent Alternatives, a small not-for-profit that, for 15 years, provided intercultural experiences with Lakota/Dakota people in the Northern Plains and brought conflict resolution and peer mediation programs to schools around the region. He was one of the early participants in the development of Peace Brigades International. Kline can be reached at carl@satyagrahainstitute.org. This column originally appeared in the Brookings Register.
