Israel & Hamas: Moving Beyond the Horror & Spiral of Violence

In Gaza today, 320,000 residents are now homeless.  Israel’s siege is starving Gaza of electricity, food, water, and fuel and putting hospitals on the verge of collapse. 

A threatened ground invasion would be extremely costly to Gazans but also to the Jewish military which represent 4% of Israel’s population and to the 150 hostages. So many young people have left their jobs and families to go to battle.

Attacks on civilians such as Hamas perpetrated are war crimes and all grieve the horrible loss of so many.  But one Israeli survivor, huddling in her home, wrote this:

The terror Israelis feel right now—myself included—is a sliver of what Palestinians have been feeling on a daily basis under the decades-long military occupations of the West Bank and Gaza.*

She reminds us that Israel’s far-right government gave Jewish settlers carte blanche to set up new illegal outposts and actually launched pogroms against Palestinian towns and villages. Recently Jewish extremists challenged the status quo arrangement over the administration of the Temple Mount/Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.  Some Israelis are actually calling for genocide. 

Extreme poverty has marked the situation of Gazans even before this war.  The average salary in Israel was $55,000 per year; in Gaza, $1200 per year (sic), with 80% of young adults unemployed in Gaza. 

It comes to this: Is there a military solution to Israel’s problems?  I think not.  I think the entire context must be considered for peace to finally emerge.  I agree with the following poignant but wise analysis from Haggai Matar who is on the ground in Israel.

Everything that I am feeling now, which every Israeli must be sharing, has been the life experience of millions of Palestinians for far too long….The only solution, as it has always been, is to bring an end to Israel’s regime of apartheid, occupation, and siege and promote a future based on justice and equality for all of us.  We have to change course not despite the horror, but precisely because of it.*

We must address the spiral of violence.

Haggai Matar, “Hamas’s Shock Attack Should Spark Our Horror—and Our Questions.” The Nation, Dispatch, 10/11/2023.

See Matthew Fox, The Hidden Spirituality of Men: Ten Metaphors to Awaken the Sacred Masculine, pp. 77-104.

And Fox, Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul and Society.

Banner Image: A child stands in the midst of destruction during the 2008-2009 Gaza War. Wikimedia Commons.

Queries for Contemplation

Do you agree that only justice and equality and therefore love can undo the spiral of violence?

Recommended Reading

The Hidden Spirituality of Men: Ten Metaphors to Awaken the Sacred Masculine

To awaken what Fox calls “the sacred masculine,” he unearths ten metaphors, or archetypes, ranging from the Green Man, an ancient pagan symbol of our fundamental relationship with nature,  to the Spiritual Warrior….These timeless archetypes can inspire men to pursue their higher calling to connect to their deepest selves and to reinvent the world.
“Every man on this planet should read this book — not to mention every woman who wants to understand the struggles, often unconscious, that shape the men they know.” — Rabbi Michael Lerner, author of The Left Hand of God

Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul and Society

Visionary theologian and best-selling author Matthew Fox offers a new theology of evil that fundamentally changes the traditional perception of good and evil and points the way to a more enlightened treatment of ourselves, one another, and all of nature. In comparing the Eastern tradition of the 7 chakras to the Western tradition of the 7 capital sins, Fox allows us to think creatively about our capacity for personal and institutional evil and what we can do about them. 
“A scholarly masterpiece embodying a better vision and depth of perception far beyond the grasp of any one single science.  A breath-taking analysis.” — Diarmuid O’Murchu, author of Quantum Theology: Spiritual Implications of the New Physics