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As a Christian, I find writing about armed conflict difficult. I am in no way a complete pacifist, but the organised slaughter of humanity by two opposing sides is clearly as far from my vision of the kingdom of heaven as you could possibly achieve.
I am in no doubt that we were absolutely right to oppose Hitler, and there are other wars which I can justify. However, when I look down the list of conflicts the UK has been involved in over the decades, a number strike me as having been reckless, poorly conceived and executed, and ultimately lacking firm moral basis.
I lived in Israel in my gap year between school and university. My faith was reawoken in Jerusalem, working as an untrained auxiliary nurse in a hospital for both Jewish and Palestinian Muslim children. My friends and I hitchhiked across the West Bank and even into Gaza, and we enjoyed the warm hospitality of Palestinians who welcomed us into their homes. In Jerusalem, Jewish friends also befriended us. One particular family were amazing generous to me and we are still regularly in touch.
Returning several times since, one of my Jewish friends was protesting against the shift to the right in the Israeli government and the further increase in Jewish settlements in the West Bank, and I attended a protest with her outside the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, as part of this, feeling the eyes of security on me from all sides.
I later returned leading a pilgrimage and was horrified to see a huge wall separating Bethlehem from Jerusalem, a further sign of how the situation had deteriorated drastically since my gap year. Palestinian taxi drivers would now hardly converse with me, seeing me as part of the western hegemony that had led to the further imprisonment of their people.
When the October 7 attack occurred, I wept for the 1,200 people killed by Hamas. I knew Israel would retaliate.
However, as the months have passed, I, like you, I am sure, have become deeply angered by the scale of the retaliation. More than 30,000 adults and children have been killed in Gaza according to recent estimates, and the figure is likely to rise much higher with predicted military action in the Rafah area beginning this very morning as I write this article. Not only that, an entire society is living life in abject poverty and with poor nutrition and sanitation. The pain of Gaza cries out to us every day.
Just War Theory
As someone who has received positive things from Israel in the past, it is important for me now to really get my mind around what is happening. Looking back on my studies I recall that St Augustine was the first to start really formulating a “just war theory”. This is a way of trying to work out when military action is morally acceptable and when it should be condemned.
Augustine condemned attitudes within conflict which were sinful when he wrote: “The passion for inflicting harm, the cruel thirst for vengeance, an unpacific and relentless spirit, the fever of revolt, the lust of power and such things: all these are rightly condemned in war.” He continued by saying: “We do not seek peace in order to be at war, but we go to war that we may have peace. Be peaceful, therefore, in warring, so that you may vanquish those whom you war against, and bring them to the prosperity of peace.”
Note the vanquishing does not mean annihilation here, it means leading the opponent to a place where they can rebuild, and new trust can be established. I think immediately of Germany in the post-WWII years and the success the west had in rehabilitating a people who had not all been Nazis themselves and who were rightly given a second chance.
Thomas Aquinas in the Middle Ages then established the just war theory further when he said there had to be three guiding principles: an authorised authority, a just cause, and a rightful intention.
Philosophers Vitoria and Spinoza in the 16th and 17th centuries added two more principles, namely: war should always be fought as a last resort and the innocent should be protected.
Various further mutations of the just war theory have followed, with the emphasis on the innocent being protected always key, and also the idea of “just proportionality” becoming central. If you fight back, it has to be proportionate to the injuries you yourself have received. An eye for an eye: not 10 eyes for an eye.
So now I am stating the obvious, which I think nearly the entire world agrees on: that the action in Gaza by Israel has not been proportionate and has not protected the innocent. As I wept for the innocent deaths of October 7, I weep also now for the many tens of thousands of deaths in Gaza and stand in solidarity with Palestinian activist groups calling for an immediate ceasefire. I also completely understand why calls for disinvestment in Israel companies are being made on university campuses in the USA and now in the UK as a response to the situation in Gaza.
My own personal view on disinvestment is more nuanced as I know many Jewish people within the State of Israel are totally against their government’s actions, but certainly for the time being a pause on arms sales would be appropriate till the Israeli government change their course, and I am open to further sanctions being applied if the situation deteriorates further. It is certainly a discussion we should be all be having.
Rattling the Cage
However, I want to leave us with this thought. One of the initial thoughts of Augustine was that the action of war should lead us to a more peaceful world in the end.
That clearly happened when we opposed Hitler, as the 1950s and successive decades were peaceful ones for Europe as a continent.
By contrast to this, Netanyahu and his cabinet are, through their actions, making their country less secure, and the world less secure.
When I think of someone rattling the cage of world peace, my immediate thoughts turn to Vladimir Putin. However, Netanyahu must surely join him as an example of a man who is rapidly and powerfully making this world a more dangerous place day by day — another cage rattler at work in an equally destructive way.
His actions are stoking up hatred towards his own country and increasing the power of Hamas-based political theory over the Arab world. This is weakening more moderate Arab opinion and leaving whole new generations even more entrenched in their hostility to Israel.
So rather than firm action making Israel more secure, Netanyahu is not just making Israel less secure, he is making the Middle East less secure, and therefore all of us less secure as we live in a nuclear age.
Further afield, we can all see the effects Netanyahu’s actions are having on how the wider world views Israel and the effects this has had in increasing anti-semitism towards Jewish people generally.
Meanwhile, we know from the disastrous campaign in Afghanistan by our UK forces that you cannot kill off an ideology. When one person is killed for an ideology, three others will spring up behind that dead body and replace the former combatant.
The madness of further action in Gaza is stoking a fire that will burn even more destructively throughout our world. And then I hear right wing fundamentalist Christians actually support the action in Gaza. Lord have mercy on us.
About:
Simon Tillotson grew up in Cambridge and has a degree in English Literature from London University and one in Theology from Cambridge University where he trained to be an Anglican vicar. Before his calling to the ministry he worked for Simon Hughes, MP for Bermondsey in his constituency office, and also for six months as an auxiliary nurse in Jerusalem. Ordained in 1994, Simon has served in parishes in Paddock Wood, and Aylesford in Kent and also in Ormskirk in West Lancashire. He has been in Whitstable since 2007 – a place he has loved from the start. In fact he used to come to parties in a beach hut in Whitstable in the early 1990s as his school friend owned a hut here, never expecting to make the transition from partygoer to priest. Also a singer songwriter, Simon works in a Team of clergy here in Whistable which is still fairly unusual, meaning there is a wider single parish of Whitstable with five Church of England churches working together.
Simon’s blog and other material can be found under Spiritual Resources of All Saints church website www.allsaintswhitstable.org
Simon’s songs can be found at www.cuddenpointmusic.co.uk and on Itunes and Spotify.
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