Tag Archives: israel

IT’S NOT DARK YET BUT I’TS GETTING THERE

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I fully identified and completely understood King Charles, some weeks ago, when he was confronted with the pitiful pile of children’s shoes, on Holocaust Day, and said it was something he would never forget. I had visited the holocaust gallery at the British War Museum and the Yad Vashem remembrance centre in Jerusalem, but it was being in Auschwitz, Oświęcim in 2012 that did it for me. I saw the railway carriage, the mountain of shoes and false teeth, the bullet ridden wall, I stood in the chamber with the ovens when the young Polish guide asked us to be silent out of respect for those who were incinerated there and I stood at the end of the rail line, when she told us to be careful where we stood, because the ground was covered with the powdered bones and dust of the million souls murdered in this place. It was April, but there was no sign of Spring. The trees were dark and bare and there was no bird song to lighten the awful silence. The bottom dropped out of my stomach and I realised then, in a way I had never understood before, that there was no end to evil. Given a free reign, evil in the human heart descends further and further into an abyss of total darkness. It was like looking over a pit and knowing there was no bottom. Any faith I had in humanity could never be recovered. I too would never forget.

All these memorials are helpful but we really don’t need reminders. We saw it, just this week, on full display to all the world, the abomination of naked evil. The choreographed parade, the giant displays, the stage, the mock signing of documents, the celebrating crowd, the cameras and in the centre the bodies of the murdered family, the mother, the nine year old son and the four year old child lying on the platform locked in black coffins. All was black and grey even the sun couldn’t bear to look at the scene and hid it’s face. The sky was embarrassed. This too I will never forget.

The holocaust, however, was then. This is now. That was our “never again”. This is the now reality of evil. There can be no rational, political or sociological explanation for the utter depravity on view. And its roots are in the oldest of hatreds morphed, as Jonathan Sachs lucidly explained, from hatred against the religion through hatred against the race to hatred against the nation and it comes from the very pit of hell.

The main-line news has to sanitise their reports, of course. It has to fit the narrative and so every effort must be made to soften the impact and whiten what is, in reality, irredeemably black. They don’t show you the crowds of men, women and children, some in their father’s arms, shouting cheering and singing over the bodies of the murdered children and later dancing on the stage as if it was their graves. This is a new level of wickedness. The Nazis’ tried to hide their crimes, here they are openly celebrated. And this is what is truly sickening.  When, what looks like, ordinary folk with families of their own, taking part, joyfully it seems, in such a macabre spectacle, any sense of humanity goes down the drain. And I wonder if those who protest on our streets every Saturday actually know who they are supporting.

Terrible as it may sound, I have no faith in humanity. If I had, I lost it and nothing could restore it now. But I do have faith in the one who created humanity, who became humanity, who lived perfect humanity and by his sacrifice made it possible for us unhuman: murderers, liars, cheats, mockers idolators, adulterers, abusers, thieves, slanderers, swindlers, or just decent folks to be made truly human, in him.

THE FLAG

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When Ronan Hale stepped up to take Ross County’s penalty against Celtic at the weekend, the opposition supporters, massed behind the goal, were doing there best to distract him. The tactic worked; Schmeichel, saved the penalty. The third official, however, spotted that the goalkeeper had moved well over his line, so the penalty was retaken and this time Ronan scored.  There was nothing remarkable about the away crowds’ antics behind the goal. Unlike other sports, in tennis or snooker, where the spectators are urged to be silent at critical points, shouting chanting and waving flags, to influence the play at football matches goes with the territory. There is nothing extraordinary about that. What was extraordinary and incomprehensible was the giant flag being waved constantly behind the goal. It was not a flag with the Celtic colours, or their crest, nor was it the Irish tricolour which relates to the clubs’ historic roots or was in any way connected with football at all. It was flag of Palestine in support of a war several thousand miles away.

It would be hard to explain to a visitor from Mars what was going on here. If it was possible to interview the individual hoisting the flag or their compatriots and ask what it was about, I guess they might be at a loss to know what to say. Like the protestors chanting “From the river to the sea…” who weren’t sure which river or which sea, they might not know what it was actually about. Did they know that they were taking sides in a war where innocents were being killed, homes destroyed, women and children massacred, bodies mutilated, babies sacrificed and it was happening in real time? Did they know that this was the eve of the event that triggered the war? Did they possibly understand or have empathy for those who would see this display as the worst sort of outrage? Did they know that they were effectively supporting terrorism and barbarism? Did they actually know the difference between football and war?

Our Martian friend wouldn’t be able to get what the flag meant, but we do. We see it on our Streets every Saturday. We know, in the current state of affairs it doesn’t simply embody the hope and pride of a nation or people, it carries a much more specific narrative, it stands for the oppressed people of Palestine in their battle against their Zionist oppressors, the fascist Israeli state, which practices apartheid and genocide, wilfully destroying schools, hospitals, places of worship and the deliberate targeting of civilians. It looks to the final triumph over the Jews articulated by Iran’s spiritual leader when he said “Israel won’t last long” then from the river Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea Palestine will be free. In today’s context that is what the flag says. But I wonder if the flag waver knew that.  

That’s the worrying thing. Do people actually know what is going on before they nail their colours to the mast or it is little more than a display of virtue or a fashion statement? Or does it represent something deeper and viler, a visceral hatred of the Jews. To the visitor from Mars this would be even harder to explain. Why are the Jews of all peoples so consistently hated throughout the centuries? There is no convincing logical reason for this odium. The faults that can be laid at the state of Israel are common to all nations and often to a far greater extent. How many civilians were killed in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? What about Libya, what about Russia and China and Syria and Sudan? Why are the jews so hated? Could it be envy of their success? That such a small nation could outstrip its neighbours in just about every achievement and in such a short time.  Or could it be that they have a story as victims that surpasses any other and there is envy of victimhood? “Why do they always claim the high spot on this chart with their holocaust?” It could be both of these as well as the other issues over land, but I suspect there is something much deeper that is going on. There is a supernatural element and here the Bible throws its light on the case. It is not in our gift to know how things will work out in human history, but it seems clear that the Jews remain a people special to God and it should not surprise us that the epicentre of the world’s conflicts should settle on the Jews and the tiny land of Israel.

I wonder if the flag-waver really knew what he was doing.

GATHERING STORMS

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It is hard not to be overcome by a deep sense of foreboding that crowds in and overwhelms us when we look and see and feel the movement of the tectonic plates of our world, the rise and fall of kingdoms, the nations in uproar, the growing unrest and protest, the curious alliances and the strange bedfellows. It is hard not to be overcome and gripped by fear, fear for the future for our children, our children’s children and those yet unborn. Stephen Pinker may well say that as humans we have become less violent, more reasonable more understanding, loving and caring over the centuries. Even if that is true, there is no guarantee that it will continue and the ebb and flow of history tells a different story.

When adversaries become friends and come together over an issue, as they did in the house of commons this week, it should be a cause for cheer, but it filled me with dread. This impermanent alliance has been formed for war. A war with Russia. It is not that we are in danger of slipping into this war, we are already so far in, it may impossible now to extricate ourselves from it. When so many, thousands of lives, have already been lost in the conflict, the clear commitment from the Parliament was to support the war and allow the roll call of deaths to stack up. The prospect is almost too horrific to contemplate and “sleep-walking” is an apt analogy for what we are doing.

But it is the war in the middle east that is just as frightening. Who knows where this will go, with Israel now fighting a war on two fronts with proxies of a more fearsome enemy.  Unlike Ukraine, the West seems ambivalent, supporting Israel militarily on the one hand while undermining moral on the other.  Its hard to know if a new world war will be triggered by what happens in Ukraine or here in Israel. I suspect the later.

All the while the Western Empire has hollowed out its moral foundation and what happens in the next few months will quite possibly signal the end of this project. In the United States, the “Leader of the Free World” has finally recognised his time is up and will leave, but not just yet. How a Harris presidency will respond is anyone’s guess, but peace in either conflict is unlikely.   A Trump presidency might just hold the tide for some time but boasting about what you are going to do, solving all the immigration and economic problems and bringing peace to the world is never a good thing. It doesn’t usually work out that way. There will also be very powerful people who will do everything to ensure that this does not happen. They will use very weapon at their disposal to somehow prevent Trump’s election as president for a second term. It is a well-worn conspiracy theory, of course. But these testy conspiracy theories have an uncanny habit of turning out to be true. The conspirators know how to hide and remain hidden for decades possibly centuries, but in the end all will revealed. Nothing will be hidden.

I don’t know, of course. I am just speculating. I can’t see what’s round the corner or what’s up the bend. The outworking of history always tends to surprise us. But this could be the moment, and I can can’t shake that feeling of doom. The curse of an overactive imagination has filled me with trepidation and I get no comfort from knowing that I may not see it. My overriding concern, my burden, that I find hard to shift is that we are not prepared for what is coming and, because it doesn’t touch us directly, we live in denial.

But, as always, it is only when I look again at God’s word in all its breath-taking wonder and wisdom, when I look beyond and through the cloud, I see another hand at work, an unseen hand. It’s only then that I find a hope that is real and a hope that does not disappoint.  When I read again that ancient song, Psalm 46, when I Come and See what he has done and what he is doing, when I am Still and Know that he is God, the Lord of hosts and our refuge, it is then that I find peace and direction in prayer.