To Jews & Christians: you can’t sit out a genocide

This week I read an article in Al Jazeera describing the killing in one day of hundreds of Palestinian civilians. The same day I read a piece in CNN, “Israeli soldiers returning from war struggle with trauma and suicide”.  The article tried to elicit sympathy for soldiers who were traumatised from bulldozing Palestinians.

According to the testimony of IDF bulldozer driver Guy Zaken on many occasions he and others had to “run over terrorists, dead and alive, in the hundreds.”  

Courage and decency in action.

“Everything squirts out,” he said.  Seeing all that “meat and blood” had made eating meat difficult for him.  

We know that Hamas fighters do not gather “in the hundreds” so almost certainly what was being described were large-scale war crimes against civilians - but we are supposed to weep for the perpetrators. It also seemed to escape CNN’s attention that running over wounded combatants would also be a war crime. Palestinian Lives Matter.

Don’t sit on this fence. 

Zaken had rationalised his actions by describing most of his victims as terrorists.  He is quoted by CNN as saying, “There is no such thing as citizens,” suggesting the ability of Hamas fighters to blend with civilians.  

Reading that I thought:  we need to talk about the Christians and Jews throughout the West – and what on earth is going through their minds. I’m not talking about the millions of Jewish people who courageously fight every day to oppose the genocide in Gaza or the millions of Christians who stand alongside them. I refer to the vast bulk of those communities in the Western world who quietly sit out the horror being committed in their name, hoping nobody will call them to account.  Few would dare to call them out for fear of being labelled antisemitic or the like.  J’accuse.  

Over a year ago I wrote: “When faced with incontrovertible evidence of indiscriminate slaughter, the premeditated destruction of all means of existence including shelter, water infrastructure, fuel and food, the Western World continues to send thoughts, prayers and bombs to Israel.”

Look at what has happened since and how – with many noble exceptions – most of the priests, nuns, bishops and rabbis have kept their congregations passive and on the sidelines.  As Paolo Freire said:

Christ in the rubble. 

“Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.”

What do politicians, military people or senior administration figures in the West think they are doing when they work to support Israel through endeavours like Five Eyes?  What on earth do such people think of the crystal clear words of that most famous Jew, the Palestinian Jesus Christ himself: “What you do to the least of my brethren, you do unto me.”

Joe Biden is a Christian and a Zionist.  Alongside him are 210 million Americans who profess to be Christians.  Yet millions of them have no problem with 2000 lb bombs being dropped on defenceless civilians. 

Somewhere in their brains these proud Christians must have rationalised their defiance of Christ’s injunction and decided Jesus was a pussy. “He’s a nice guy but that’s not how the real world works.”  Or do they in their twisted minds think “What would Jesus do? Yeah, he’d want us to support Israel to incinerate innocents lying in hospital beds in Gaza. Of course, he’d slaughter men, women and children trying to flee the missiles … yes, that’s what Jesus would do!”

Jesus can reply in his own words to all those who did not stand up and oppose these crimes.

‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me. Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” 

The Western world is falling into the moral abyss and as a defence mechanism I see many people shift their opinions to align with our increasingly depraved leaders. It’s frightening calling out Pro-Israeli Zionists in these twilight days of free speech in the West. Even to say the self-evident – Israel is a racist, fascist, apartheid state committing genocide – is unacceptable. It may be a bridge too far to say a few million more religious Jews should get their arses off that fence and join the millions of courageous Jewish people who every day are fighting the genocide being committed in their name. Same for the Christians. And the Agnostics.

The US and Israel may win the war; I hope not. They may ethnically cleanse the Palestinians from their own homeland.  Or worse.  I hope not.

But if they do, I’d ask all those Jews and Christians who supported this war of extermination – and I’d especially ask all those who took the coward's option and simply remained silent – to recall Matthew 16:26.

“For what will it profit a person if they gain the whole world and forfeit their soul?”

Eugene Doyle