LIFE MATTERS: Holy Wars Are Not So Holy

By COL Dr. Dencio Acop (Ret)

The recent and still ongoing fighting between Israel and Hamas is as always unfortunate as it claims many innocent victims whose deaths are totally unnecessary if only men learned to live together peacefully. But in order to better understand what is really going on in not so many words, let us try to lay out some facts pertinent to the history of the atrocities carefully attempting to decipher them from fiction. It is not the intent of this brief article to draw out all the details more than to share some insights holistically and then leave you to your thoughts on this continuing drama which has both theological and secular implications. First, the issue is more significantly about peaceful coexistence than mere land-grabbing. Second, the issue is most meaningfully about peaceful coexistence and religious tolerance than mere theological superiority or exclusivity. And third, the issue is furthermost about tolerance and love of one’s neighbor than merely about who’s right and who’s wrong. Any conflict in the world is resolvable through genuine win-win scenarios than selfish zero-sum games. The latter undoubtedly almost always results in wars that destroy us all in the end. It is the story of the human tragedy. Can we not for once, and better always, expend all our energies and best efforts on making this world a better place not just for ourselves but for everyone else as well?

First, the clashes between Israel and the Palestinians over the years, including the latest one, are not so much about one entity grabbing the land of another as it is failure to peacefully co-exist. Before the establishment of the political boundaries the world knows today, there were none. There were only conquered and re-conquered territories by the strong over the weak for access to resources that enabled survival. Lines over geographic terrains were drawn and re-drawn based upon the victories of invading armies. These lines were considered legitimate back in the day until ‘legitimacy’ was given a ‘civilized’ definition in the 20th century. Given the unsurpassed lethality of modern weaponry today, lines can no longer be as easily re-drawn as before without international approval. But just to give some historical enlightenment, by all indicators ‘Palestinian’ ancestors whose origins were European already occupied parts of modern-day Israel as early as the 4th millennium BC. Before their Egyptian captivity, the early Israelites were not known to have settled in the Promised Land until the 2nd millennium BC. The state of Israel was finally recognized in 1948. Immediately thereafter, war with Egypt broke out leaving the Gaza strip an orphan since 1949 until mutual recognition between Israel and the PLO in 1993. In 2005, Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip enabling Hamas to eventually take over political control. While there are actually Jews and Christians among the majority Arabs in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, hardliner Zionists and Palestinian Arab nationalists in and outside Palestine such as Lebanon both continually claim exclusive ‘rightful possession of the area west of the Jordan River’. Bad governance by Hamas, distracted by diversion of public funds to construct underground tunnels against Israel and its ongoing feuds with Fatah in the West Bank, has not done anything to advance peaceful co-existence with the Jewish state.

Second, the issue is most meaningfully about religious tolerance and peaceful co-existence than theological superiority or exclusivity. Despite human differences, the world is a big place and there is room for everyone. No one is above the other. There is diversity and variety in the world whether the world likes it or not. All can be happy only if there is unity and acceptance in diversity. A middle ground can work. But not an extremist one held uncompromisingly against the other. On the one hand, Orthodox Jews believe that there must be the ‘physical restoration of the biblical land of Israel before the return of the Messiah’. On the other hand, ‘according to fundamentalist schools of Islam, at the end of days, the whole land of Israel and Palestine should be under Islamic rule’. Jerusalem is central to the world’s three monotheistic religions: Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. It contains their holiest sites. If today we wonder why Hamas attacks Israel, we only need to take a closer look at the history of Jerusalem. Because of its religious significance and all-around importance, ‘Jerusalem has been attacked 52 times, captured and recaptured 44 times, besieged 23 times, and destroyed twice. The holy city of God, Jerusalem contains the holiest sites mentioned in the Bible, the Torah, and the Quran. It seems odd and strange that while all three main religions worship the same God in Heaven, their followers kill each other for their place in the same Kingdom of Heaven. Conflicting religious, political agenda intermixed producing unwanted socio-economic offsprings through outright and proxy wars causing untold suffering on both sides through the years. Hamas is an offshoot of the religious extremist group Muslim Brotherhood seeking to resurrect the historical Islamic Caliphate in the region. MB considers Israel a ‘thorn on the side’ that must be removed. ‘Iran has been the fiercest in opposing Israel’ and ‘openly calls for the destruction of Israel from a theological standpoint’. ‘It finances Hezbollah and Hamas and supplies them with weapons and training.’

Third, the issue is furthermost about tolerance and love of one’s neighbor than merely about who’s right and who’s wrong. Muslim, Jew, Christian, or Gentile, killing and more killing do not justify killing and more killing. When we see pictures and videos of those war-torn villages, all we see are death and destruction laid bare by rotting corpses and heaps of rubble. What has been accomplished? Lessons — hopefully. That the pain, suffering, and death will continue … mostly by the innocent and helpless. That more villages and cities will be destroyed and will take many years to be rebuilt, if ever. That entire societies and normal lives will forever be destroyed. And God forbid, the war escalates due to many reasons and factors unforeseen as when the protagonists decided to think their war could be ‘won’. An analyst wrote that ‘the greatest threat really not just to the protagonist stakeholders but to the rest of us in the region and the world is the escalation of hostilities against the backdrop of Palestinian stakeholders attempting to block what was an impending agreement involving Saudi Arabia which would gravely impact the status-quo in the Middle East’. I think what is implied is the recurrent hidden effort by forces out to derail strengthening coexistence with the Jewish state. Where do love and tolerance figure in all these equations after all these years? They seem elusive as ever even as they are well known deep down inside by both protagonist. Just not deep enough to spread to the other side.

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