Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these, ye have done it unto me

Once upon a time, as a naive teenager, I unequivocally and wholeheartedly supported Israel's existence, as a good and natural and reasonable thing.

That was a long, long time ago. I never entirely let go of that opinion.

When I hear unwavering Israel supporters, talking heads, and government officials speak of threats to Israel's existence, I consider it doublespeak. Talking about Israel's existence is simply a means of changing the subject, shifting focus from the matter at hand (Israel's government's violations of human rights, for example). Nobody who's at all rational challenges Israel's right to exist.

But today, when I consider Israel, I feel outraged, angry, and saddened. I see a nation apparently gone mad, a nation seemingly governed by unfeeling and dangerous human beings, a government apparently made up entirely of sociopaths.

I know there are protesters against violence on both sides of the divide, Israeli and Palestinian. Everyone with any real grasp on what it means to live an ethical life knows that violence is not an answer to any kind of conflict or problem-solving. It will forever make things worse.

I have read as much of the Hebrew Bible as any literate and religious-minded Christian-reared kid would have digested, growing up. And I tried not many years ago, enthusiastically at first, to read a translation of the Dead Sea Scrolls. I couldn't get through the screed of it, full as it is of prayers against perceived enemies, begging for God to smite them all down.

Some things never really change, I guess.

The actions of a state should be incomparable to the acts of a few disorganized lunatics. (A true apologist, which I am not, would call them desperate and disempowered people). But in the case today, the government of Israel and the violent membership of Hamas are practically the same. The only difference between them is that Israel’s actions are far, far worse because Israel is A GOVERNMENT taking these actions, and because the end results are so much more catastrophic for human life and well-being, with incomparable numbers of injuries and deaths to innocents.

Justifying Israel’s actions today, by comparison to the acts of Hamas, as the Israeli government spokespeople and the Bush Administration do, is not unlike excusing sexual harassment in the work place – ignoring who, in the equation, has the real power – and it’s not unlike sentencing a woman to the death penalty who, after years and years of extreme abuse, has finally lost all balance and killed the abusive spouse.

I oppose violence in every form. But I can no longer say I wholeheartedly support Israel's right to exist as the nation state it is today, since it isn't a very promising display of the heights of human achievement and progress. After the governement's orchestrated campaigns for building illegal settlements in the West Bank (since the Bush I years), the attacks on Lebanon (a sovereign state), the so-called "fence" (which has destroyed Palestinian homes and livlihoods), the blockades (which have crippled people's ability for day-to-day survival), the deliberately dehumanizing border control processes, and now this...

I am appalled by what is happening in Gaza, by the callousness, by the absolute disregard for the sanctity of human life, by the absence of any real effort to protect innocent civilians, by the well-documented organized governmental interference with relief efforts, the use of flesh-melting phosphorus in its bombs, by the lies and the doublespeak and the obvious hypocrisy of the Israeli government's public statements about the current aggressions.

In due course, true justice and true balance must come. Of that we can be certain.

"Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me."
That was said by a guy named Jesus, an Israelite, from a very humble background, a marginalized person in the nation-state of his day, and a Jewish peace and justice activist, some 2000 years ago. His message of non-violence is unchanged to this day...