| Dossier: Israel – DIESES DOSSIER AUF DEUTSCH LESEN – Why I Am a Zionist – Did Israel violate international law in Gaza? – UNRWA: An Arsonist Playing Firefighter – Must We Condemn the Jewish Settlements in the West Bank? – Anti-Semitism in Islam – Anti-Semitism from the Left – Is solidarity with Israel unchristian? – My Statement on October 7 – Why I’m doing this |
“Love your enemies,” Jesus commanded his disciples. The Israelis obviously do not do this. So is it unchristian to stand in solidarity with Israel during wartime?
Love your enemies?
“Love your enemies”: By saying this, Jesus acknowledged that enemies exist. We in Germany can afford to ignore this reality—for now. The Israelis cannot.
What is an enemy?
Enemy: It’s not the coworker who can’t stand you. It’s not the bus driver who deliberately ignores you at the bus stop because he’s in a hurry. Nor is it the waitress at the restaurant who shuffles past you five times without taking your order.
Enemy: That’s the terrorist who burns your child alive. That—
“Stop, stop, yeah, yeah, I know—Hamas. I’m against that.” That’s the kind of thing people like to interrupt me with. But if I’m supposed to explain why, as a Christian, I stand in solidarity with Israel, then I have to state the reason.
Enemy: That’s the terrorist who rapes a young festival-goer so brutally that he breaks her bones. Who slowly and cruelly tortures parents in front of their children and children in front of their parents until they die. Who films all of this, triumphantly sends it to their next of kin, and revels in their horror. Who, in the midst of a massacre, finds time to call his parents to brag about how many Jews he has already murdered today. Who kidnaps hostages, tortures them, sexually abuses them, and starves them until they look like the emaciated figures of Auschwitz. And who has vowed to do all of this again and again.
That is an enemy. Anyone who does not hate him loves no one.
It may well be Christian to eventually overcome even hatred toward such a horrific enemy—and, after a long, painful inner struggle, to even love him. But first, I must hate such an enemy. Otherwise, I am not human. Certainly not a particularly compassionate or even holy one.
But what should be a burning concern for every human being, whether Christian or not, is this: Such a terrorist must never, never, never again be able to commit the inconceivably cruel crimes he remains determined to carry out.
Turn the other cheek?
Which brings us to Christ’s next commandment: “If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other to him as well.”
Jesus said this as an itinerant preacher with no political responsibility, at a time when the Jews were politically powerless and any rebellion against Roman authority would have been futile. Who seriously believes that Jesus meant to say to the Prime Minister of Israel: “If a cruel horde of murderers invades your country, brutally murders 1,200 of your citizens, and kidnaps 250, then immediately offer them another 1,500 citizens for the next massacre and the next kidnapping—or better yet, just hand over the entire country to them. Without resistance, of course. After all, one is not supposed to resist evil.”
Is that supposed to be the spirit of Jesus?
Christian heritage? What heritage?
Now, the claim that solidarity with Israel is unchristian could also be meant quite differently: Isn’t it inappropriate for us Christians to show solidarity with the Jews, given that our ancestors failed to do so for nearly 2,000 years? They hated the Jews, organized pogroms, forced Jews to convert, expelled them, and massacred them. Is that really the tradition I, as a good Christian, am supposed to carry on?
Of course not. Who wouldn’t reject that outright? And yet: When I hear the Nazi-style shouting at the “Free Palestine” demonstrations, I’m no longer so sure.
After all, I’m expected to reject the first and only state in which Jews can defend themselves against their brutal enemies. At the very least, I’m supposed to make my solidarity with Israel contingent on whether it conducts its defensive war in a way that excludes civilian casualties.
Unfortunately, that is impossible in a war against terrorists who abuse civilians as human shields—terrorists who do everything in their power to cause as much civilian suffering as possible so they can blame Israel for it.
Israel does not want to kill a single Palestinian child, whereas its enemies want to kill every Jewish child. Who is to judge what is necessary to prevent them from doing so?
To let an enemy who wants to exterminate my people have his way may be consistent with the letter of the Sermon on the Mount. But it would be inhumane—and would thus miss the core of the Christian message.
Put your sword back in its sheath?
“Those who take up the sword will perish by the sword,” Jesus warned the Apostle Peter in the Garden of Gethsemane.
Obediently, Peter sheathed his sword. And in the end, he did not, in fact, perish by the sword. But on the cross. For the representative of the crucified Christ, that may be acceptable. But politicians should strive for a different outcome for the people entrusted to their care.
Anyone who chooses to leave their loved ones defenseless against the cruelty of their enemies may do so. But that this is the only choice left to a Christian; that he must even demand this choice of people of other faiths who are under threat—no one will convince me of that.