When religion morphs into politics, or politics into religion, there is likely nothing that produces uglier results. As, perhaps no one understands this better than the Irish.
Something that is too often ignored in the incendiary Middle East is the enormous and shattering effect of religious extremism. The problem is that both sides ignore it in their own tribe, while lambasting it in the other.
Fintan O’Toole, an Irishman writing regularly in the New York Review of Books, knows this better than most and he asked a crucially important question: “What lessons do people actually learn from the cruelties they applaud and the ones they suffer in return?” We should remember the wise counsel in Matthew 7:3-5: “Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye?” And no one ignores this advice more and also needs it more. than religious zealots.
O’Toole’s article centred around a story in what we call the Old Testament and others call the Hebrew Bible. That article referred to what he called a
“a Jewish legend” in which “the great warrior Samson ends up, as John Milton famously puts it, “eyeless in Gaza.” He is blinded by the Philistines and harnessed to a huge millstone, forced to drag himself around and around in circles, always moving but unable to go anywhere. Eventually, in the most spectacular of suicides, he gets his revenge by pulling down their temple on top of the Philistines, killing both them and himself. The story is apparently supposed to be heroic, but it feels more like a fable of vicious futility. Cruelty begets cruelty until there is nothing left but mutual destruction.”
The current horrid war between Israel and Hamas is exactly that—”a fable of vicious futility.” The story is a cautionary tale to those of us who are too quick to say revenge is justified, or retaliation a duty. If we can understand that nothing is gained by a thirst for revenge perhaps we can learn a better way. Israelis were attacked by cruel and vicious butchers who targeted women, children and old people and Israel sought revenge. The Israeli’s say that unlike the Palestinians they do not target civilians or children or women or old people, but they know that by attacking the Palestinians in Gaza where 2 million people live in one of the most densely packed places in the world, they will hurt, injure and kill women, children, old people and innocent bystanders. That is unavoidable.
Saying “we are not aiming to kill them” is not enough. Rather it shows that Israel really doesn’t care if civilians are hurt. Some Israelis have said as much publicly. Such indifference to suffering can be summed up in the words of that great American philosopher Bob Dylan: “you don’t count the dead with God on your side.” In other words, it shows—clearly shows—that the problem with handing over war policy to religious zealots is that unnecessary harms will follow as certainly as night follows day.
Religious zealots are truly, inevitably, indifferent to the suffering of those in the “other” religious camp. That is because there is no reason for them to count the dead.
Israel has democratically elected the religious extremists that now wield the vital votes Netanyahu needs to hold onto power in order to deflect attention from the corruption charges he is facing, or perhaps, better yet, the votes he needs to dissolve the charges against him. For the better part of 2 decades now Israel has reliably elected extremist political leaders knowing, but ignoring, the fact that this would certainly lead to a bonfire of violence. So the Israel population is deeply complicit.
The Palestinians on the other have had religious extremists baked into Hamas DNA right from the outset of that organization in 2006. It has never been without controlling religious extremists. They elected the religious extremists more than a decade ago, and even though they have not had a second chance to vote them out in a democratic election, their acquiescence in the continued leadership of religious extremists makes them complicit as well.
Neither nation can claim innocence. The people on both sides have chosen extremism and the people are now paying a huge price for this mistake. Both sides should eject their extremists at the helm. There is no other way except mutual destruction.