A Deafening Silence

All of us have heard of the tragic events in Gaza over the past week. Hamas provoked Israel and Israel responded. Four hundred Palestinians have been killed as well as four Israelis. And yet, the news media, the churches, the public, has been uncomfortably silent. Yes, Hamas has been run by crazies for years and they will never accept Israel's right to exist. This is not about whether something should be done about Hamas, it's about proportionality. The biblical rule of lex taliones, an eye for an eye, was about not exacting more than was done or taken. Take no more than an eye, is what it meant. Israel, with massive funding by the US, has taken upon itself to be judge and jury. They have now moved to ground assault. We need to remember one salient fact: the Palestinians did not go along with the United Nations mandate in 1947 that effectively took half their land for a Jewish homeland. In response, Israel began an expansionist policy that continues to this day. Yes, some people in Gaza act more like animals than people. Could that be because one and one-half million people have been walled in to an area that is barely more than a few square miles and not been allowed to travel freely? Israel lumps all Palestinians together as terrorists and thinks of them as less than human. Jimmy Carter was roundly criticized when he referred to what is going on in the middle east as "apartheid." I have been there, and that is exactly what is going on. When I was there, we were told that we could not return home and tell about what we had seen, because we would be perceived as anti-Semitic. I acknowledge Israel's right to exist and to be secure, even though I think the creation of the state of Israel was done less than honorably as far as the Palestinian people are concerned. It's time for people of faith to cry "enough" to this slaughter. Most of the Palestinian people are not members of Hamas. Why do they express loyalty to that group? Because Hamas took care of medical and community needs as it was building itself up. They were wise, they knew how to win the hearts of the people. If Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza had been treated as human beings all along, we may have been able to avoid this crisis. It's time for Israel to be held accountable for their blatant disregard for the lives of the majority of the Palestinian people. The people of Palestine deserve human rights as much as anyone, don't they?