Jim Flowers is the rector of All Saints Episcopal Church in Mobile, Alabama. This article appeared in his parish newsletter for the fourth Sunday after Epiphany. With leadership from Ed LaMonte he is also sponsoring a study group of the Episcopal edition of Steadfast Hope: The Palestinian Quest for Just Peace.
From the Rector: Of Middle Eastern Matters
Not that we will hear anything substantive from our politicians regarding recent developments in the Middle East, now that the na-tional election campaigns are headed into full swing, but we best be paying attention to the rapid destabilization in the Arab world. Egypt is at a crucial crossroads as it attempts to form a government less op-pressive and more responsive to its people. Tunisia and Libya and Yemen also in transition towards a more democratized form of gov-ernance; Syria also with the current regime desperate to hold on to power and thereby facing a possible human catastrophe with expo-nentially increasing loss of lives; Iraq is still a powder-keg with re-newed sectarian violence sprouting with the so-called Arab Spring; Iran now threatening to blockade the Strait of Hormuz, through which the greatest proportion of crude oil is exported. Left out of the conversation, at least in the news, is the fading possibility of the so-called two state solution between Israel and Palestinian Arabs. This is a potential disaster in the making. Israel continues to occupy increasing acreage of Palestinian territory deemed illegal by the United Na-tions for decades. It seems that the United States has lost energy and interest in making a bona-fide attempt to resolve the issue, an issue with global ramifications.
Ironically enough it is this Holy Land, Israel/Palestine, sacred to Jews, Muslims, and Christians that is at the heart of all matters Middle Eastern. Each example of conflict I cited above has some substantial contingency to the resolution of the seemingly intractable Israel/Palestinian deadlock. This conflict reflects the larger issue affecting the entire Arab world and that is the issue of the loss of dignity of populations in the face of oppressive power for power’s sake; and the corollary: the disparity of wealth between the elite few who garner 90+% of the wealth and the rest who struggle for a living, struggle for a dignified life. This problem of course has now made its way insidiously into our own country…..multi-millionaires pay-ing lower tax rates than the secretaries who work for them.
What will stabilize matters in the Middle East will be an impassioned effort by all parties to create a means of shared power and shared wealth…In the political and socio-economic rhetoric of the gospels that is exactly what is called for…when people are freed from poverty and indignity…when people have the option for a bet-ter life…then there is no need for the wars that such oppression and indignity en-gender. Had we, the U.S. as a nation, spent the countless billions on creating op-portunities for shared wealth and power in the Middle East beginning with Israel and Palestine, the critical domino for Middle Eastern stability, instead of fighting two hyper-expensive and unwinnable wars, I believe things would look quite dif-ferent. The gospel imperative is the human imperative, that the abundance of this planet belongs to all, that every living soul has a birthright for freedom and there-fore dignity….that violence is not an option….because the well-being of humanity is deeply interconnected….one organism, we humans…Should our own nation in its capacity as leader take on such a predisposition in the coming critical negotiations on matters of the Middle East, I believe violence will wane, and our common hu-manity will become the rule of the day….May it come ever so swiftly.
