The Limits of Engagement

My thinking regarding the Israel-Palestine conflict has evolved over the course of the Gaza war. I’ve occasionally referred to the entrenched anti-Israel stance of nice liberal British Christians which, on one occasion, slipped into open anti-semitism in front me, out of the mouth of a member of my own congregation who was given to wearing a keffiyeh from time to time. I have remained suspicious of Christians wearing keffiyehs, and pro-Palestinian demonstrations and activism no matter what the good intentions of most of the people involved may have been. My niece, no stranger to radical politics, said she has steered clear of the issue at her university for the same reason. I have questioned why so many British people, perhaps Christians especially, feel the need to comment on this conflict out of all the brutal struggles which deface the world: there are various answers, some less pleasant than others.

But we are 18 months of slaughter on now, and I have come to admit that this is different. It’s partly the scale, partly the open avowal of ethnic cleansing by some Israeli ministers, and partly the lies which it seems to me quite clear that the Israelis want the world to believe. Il Rettore also gave me a book, Faith in the Face of Empire by Palestinian theologian Mitri Raheb. This examines the interesting question of why God chose to be incarnate in this part of the world when he could have picked anywhere; its answer is the geopolitical position of the Holy Land on the contested border of great empires, in the past as much as now. This is the right location for God to critique human lusts and insecurities and offer an alternative to them, Kingdom against Empire, Cross against sword. The Word didn't become incarnate in Judaea because that’s where the chosen people were, but the Israelites became the chosen people because they inhabited the land where the Word would become incarnate. So perhaps this conflict does have cosmic significance in a way others do not.

I mention lies. There are few nations and governments which always tell the truth, but few whose falsehoods extend to their military killing aid workers and burying not just their bodies but the vehicle they were travelling in and then maintaining an entirely false account of events until caught in the lie. It is very clear the statements the Israelis give are untrue, and if I were responsible for policy at an august news organisation such as the BBC I would have begun treating them as such, in the same way that we quite reasonably gave up routinely asking the Russians to comment on the war in Ukraine. In both cases, you occasionally need to be reminded of the argument, and whether people do themselves believe the lies they tell is an interesting and useful question to consider. I think the Israelis probably do tell themselves that their state is a liberal democracy the same as other liberal democracies because they had a trans woman win Eurovision in 1998 (except those who loathe the fact). But there’s limited value to wasting your time on untruths. Remember how long it took the BBC to decide that it didn’t actually have to have a climate change denier on every time the issue got mentioned.

There is a broader point here. I always approach any disagreement (if I have my wits about me) along the Dominican lines of identifying assumptions you have in common with your interlocutor and proceeding from there. But there is no point rehearsing lies. You have to distinguish the people from whom you might genuinely learn something from those who are only trying to defeat you. Such people are not even interested in being understood, in affecting the way you think: they would really rather you were not there at all. There is nothing to be gained in dealing with them.

‘Do not answer a fool according to his folly, or you will be like him yourself. Answer a fool according to his folly, or he will be wise in his own eyes’ run two adjoining verses in the Book of Proverbs. Christ negotiates this treacherous landscape with skill. He encounters and distinguishes between those who ask him questions in order to elicit a genuine answer, and those who ask them in order to entrap him: the latter attacks he turns round in their own terms, exposing the falsehood of the premises by bringing in some other idea or statement from Scripture.

So here is a relevant question. When King David numbered the people of Israel, how did the Lord respond? He sent a plague. Where did the plague end? At the threshing-floor of Araunah the Jebusite. What did David do? He bought the threshing-floor. What did the threshing-floor become later? It became the site of the Temple. Now David was king: he could have done what he wanted. Araunah even offered him the place for free. But David insisted on buying it lawfully, so his offerings would not have cost him nothing. He did not seize it, not even from a foreigner, one of the People of the Land who the Israelites were supposed to have displaced.