Tunnel vision? Stevie Krayer’s personal take on the Gaza statement

‘There is more to a conflict than facts.’

I was impressed by the powerful ‘A different future is possible: Quaker organizations share a vision for peace in Palestine and Israel’ statement signed by American Friends Service Committee, Quaker United Nations Office and others, including our own Yearly Meeting. In fact, when it first came to my attention I asked my Meeting to consider signing it. But I’ve since re-read it several times, and have felt a sense of unease growing.

It’s not that there is anything untrue in the description of the terrible facts and the heinous actions of the Israeli government, nor anything I can’t heartily endorse in the call for action by various parties. Those who drafted the statement are clearly well-informed, experienced and thoughtful. I have no quarrel with what is there – it’s what isn’t there that troubles me. As the statement says, Quakers have long been involved in the region, but mostly in supporting Palestinians. Perhaps that is why there is only the most perfunctory reference to what Jewish Israelis suffered on 7 October, and no hint of how their response may have been fuelled by historic trauma. There is more to a conflict than facts.

But even the facts are somewhat selective. I accept that not everything can be shoehorned into a public statement. And I’m not asking for a false ‘balance’. It is a dreadful and undeniable fact that tens of thousands of Palestinian lives have been brutally cut short or wrecked, with the support and protection of the US, the UK, the EU and others. We can see that Gaza lies in ruins. What is less easy to see is that Israel is also inflicting on itself a different kind of ruin. In a recent conversation with a Palestinian charity organiser from Hebron, I learned how the Israeli economy is falling apart due to the diversion of resources. There are all sorts of shortages, including of water. A worse ruination than that, however, is the moral collapse. Successive Knesset decisions have reduced democracy to little more than the vote. Dissent is suppressed. The people are lied to, from kindergarten onwards, and as a result live on a barely conscious cliff-edge of fear. Young soldiers come home traumatised and twisted. A nation that once aspired to be a light to others is fast becoming a pariah. Oppression damages the oppressors too.

As a Quaker, I have a further worry. The joint statement is called ‘A vision for peace’, and comes from a peace church. Yet I am not sure how much it can contribute to the achievement of peace. Although it begins with a reaffirmation of ‘the inherent worth of every individual’, that doesn’t seem to be well reflected in the rest of the text. I’m worried by the propensity of many Friends to identify one side as the ‘good guys’ and one as the bad – the same has happened with Ukraine and Russia. If we sound as if we find only those on one side of a conflict worthy of our compassion and understanding, we undermine our credibility as peacemakers. Do we truly believe in the ‘inherent worth of every individual’ no matter what they have done? Do we still seek to answer that of God in everyone? Do we want to meet others in the field that is out beyond ideas of rightdoing and wrongdoing, or do we only want to be right?

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Comments

This Friend speaks my mind, I am grateful it has been published.

I notice that Stevie’s article is subtitled ‘a personal take’, coincidentally as was Keith Braithwaite’s excellent ‘Hold you peace’ (22 Feb 2024) which (again coincidentally) also advocated a more considered approach to Quakers’ role in Israel and Palestine.

Is ‘a personal take’ another example of QuakerSpeak, similar in intent to ‘That is not an idea that would have occured to me’ and as potentially dismissive?

By Ol Rappaport on 30th May 2024 - 8:54

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