30 October 2023: Dear PIN supporters: These days since October 7 have been hard ones, among the hardest we've had. We are experiencing extreme emotions and are encountering a barrage of reactions to the crisis in Gaza, both from without and from within our own Episcopal Church and EPF families. Among the most challenging and vexing questions is, how do we react to the use of violence in the Palestinian struggle? EPF PIN Executive Committee Convener, Dr. Tom Foster, offers personal reflections and confessions. Tom speaks here for himself, but we believe it is an important perspective for all of us in PIN to consider, and so we use this PIN outlet to share it with you. We invite your responses. J. Harry Gunkel
They came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the Gerasenes. And when he had stepped out of the boat, immediately a man out of the tombs with an unclean spirit met him. He lived among the tombs; and no one could restrain him any more, even with a chain; for he had been restrained with shackles and chains, but the chains he wrenched apart, and the shackles he broke in pieces; and no one had the strength to subdue him. Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains he was always howling and bruising himself with stones. When he saw Jesus from a distance, he ran and bowed down before him; and he shouted at the top of his voice, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me.” For he had said to him, “Come out of the man, you unclean spirit!” Then Jesus asked him, “What is your name?” He replied, “My name is Legion; for we are many.” He begged him earnestly not to send them out of the country. Now there on the hillside a great herd of swine was feeding; and the unclean spirits begged him, “Send us into the swine; let us enter them.” So he gave them permission. And the unclean spirts entered the swine; and the herd, numbering about two thousand, rushed down the steep bank into the sea, and were drowned in the sea. Mark 5:1-13
Years ago, I owned a book called Christian Uncertainties. It’s no longer in the house; I must have given it away. As I recall, the author posed hard questions that arise when one moral principle collides with another. Witnessing now the carnage that Israel has unleashed on Palestinians in Gaza in response to the October 7 Hamas raid and confronted with the many pleas from people of good will to condemn Hamas and to reject all violence, I find myself wrestling with an uncertainty. I will place the unconditional commitment to nonviolence among the Christian uncertainties. I will not join the chorus that condemns Hamas and rejects all violence. I choose to distinguish between mourning and condemning. I must mourn without the demand to condemn violence committed by an occupied people.
Since my adolescence, I have longed for the moral clarity that pacifism seems to offer. Although I have profound respect for pacifists, their clarity has never been, is not now, and I suspect never will be available to me. I cannot claim the clarity of pacifism and remain steadfast in solidarity with and in a commitment to self-determination of an oppressed, marginalized people who suffer the daily violence of occupation. To rank pacifism as the more fundamental, the deeper, the more true moral principle imposes limits on a commitment to self-determination. It imposes conditions on solidarity. Do I have the right to judge the tactics of a people struggling for liberation, while I suffer none of their decades-long oppression?
A friend has helped me to ponder the demonic character of the sterilized violence of contemporary conventional military action. A missile fired miles away from its target, a bomb dropped from the sky by a uniformed, well-trained pilot – this is the way we are to understand proper warfare. If the Israeli pilot never looked in the eyes of the Palestinian child buried under the rubble, is that somehow less disturbing than a death from a rifle shot at close range? Is one of these children less precious than the other? But somehow the distance and formality of the one murder gives rise to language like self-defense while the other is deemed savage terrorism. Every element of our discourse is hopelessly colonized.
And in this context and as I consider the condemnation of Hamas, I reflect upon the scale of the violence. The Palestinians have no aircraft. They have no airport. They have no warships. Palestinians have no anti-aircraft capability, no tanks, no air-raid shelters. They have none of the means of “respectable” warfare. This is not a war. It is the slaughter of a people defenseless against jet fighters and collective punishment for refusing to abandon resistance.
Finally, I am reminded once again of our own settler colonial history and the lens through which many of us now view that shameful national original sin of ethnic cleansing and genocide. Through that lens, few of us would condemn the violent resistance of the indigenous population. Acknowledging that it is excruciatingly difficult and gut wrenching, can we view Palestine through that same lens?
No justice, no peace is a bumper sticker, a chant. But it is also simply true. For now, I will mourn all lives lost in Israel/ Palestine. I will lament the conditions that have given rise to this unspeakable violence. But I will not condemn the armed resistance of an occupied, displaced people trapped for 16 years behind a brutal blockade.
Tom Foster
If we cannot unequivocally condemn the killing of children, we are a people/organization most to be pitied. We have lost our moral direction.
Singer Holly Near asks "Why do we kill people who are killing people to say that killing people is wrong?" This suggests killing people for any reason is wrong...and we should put down our swords..
FIRST—I have a PhD and probably at least several hundred continuing ed experiences, including two trips to Palestine and Israel.
My background is Jewish, I have been an Episcopalian since 1963, and have grown spiritually from studies in all the world’s major religions (and some not so major). I have been a member of EPF for many decades, and helped start a chapter (unfortunately now defunct) in Colorado.
I write today because one of my volunteer efforts has been tutoring young adults from (and mostly living in) Gaza in their work toward becoming professional writers in English. I know four such young people, one in Europe whose family home is adjacent to the fence between Gaza and Israel. He has not heard from any of his large extended family since October 7th. Another speaks 4 or 5 languages, and has been in touch with me once since then. Another (with whom I was actively working when the current situation started let me know once that she was okay, but I’ve not heard again since then.
One of the other groups some of whose sessions I’ve attended on ZOOM consists of Israeli Jewish parents who’ve lost a child in violence from Palestinians, and Palestinian Christian and Muslim parents who’ve lost childen to the Israeli army. They are working together for peace. This moves me deeply.
So, if you have thoughts and hopes related to the horrors going on in Gaza, and are so moved, take action. At least write your senators and representative. Perhaps consider learning more and becoming engaged to work for peace and justice in some way fitting your gifts and interests.
And let us all stop and be grateful for the wonderful opportunities for growth and empowerment that our lives have given us.
Absolutely! Thank you for so eloquently expressing what I feel as well and what others should hear.
I hope you and everyone who reads your statement will share your clarity with the Biden Administration, their congressional representatives, friends and family. We must speak up.
Tom, thanks for your well-thought out note. I find it interesting that we US citizens who are part of the most armed empire in the world--an empire that was born out of our own brutal, genocidal settler colonialism--are focusing on whether methods of liberation of those in Palestine are "moral" or not? I could just imagine how Jesus would turn this 'debate' on its head by simply asking us: Do we condemn the violence of on-going genocide that we see livestreamed daily? And if so, do we condemn ourselves for letting it continue, grow, and get worse? Jesus calls us to take accountability for the equipping, training, supporting, and financing of the high tech weapons used to ethnically cleanse Gaza. As long as we say nothing, do nothing, fail to stop the funding of these weapons, we are morally complicit. Maybe the fingers need to be pointed toward ourselves (our institutions, church,country) rather than others who swim in the water of humiliation and oppression. The real moral question we need to be asking is: How are we collectively accountable for the genocide and its continuation? This points to what Howard Thurman calls "community accountability"? This seems like a more productive use of our energy since accountability leads to confession which leads to repentance and its outcome of repairing the breach by doing everything we can to stop the funding source of weapons of destruction.