Good News and the Bible

There are many signs that a positive change is underway.

Last week, two Israeli soldiers who were vacationing in Belgium were arrested and interrogated, being credibly accused of war crimes. Footage and images from their own social media were presented as elements to support the accusation.

Many Jews, within and without Israel, are aware of the genocide and are actively opposing it. Some young Israelis who received a government letter telling them to show up for military service in the IDF have burned such letters in public. Israeli volunteers are reaching the border with Gaza to see that the humanitarian aid is delivered, confronting those other Israelis who try actively to block the convoys.

The Israeli government has recently threatened the Irish government with retaliation for their support of Palestine — a sign that their actions are working. The UN special rapporteur for Palestine, Francesca Albanese, has been proscribed from the USA — this is good news because it means that her words are very much bothering Trump and Netanyahu. She has been confirmed in her position and nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

So many journalists, who one year ago were on the fence, are now openly confronting the blatant lies of the Israeli government.

Just yesterday, one Israeli spokesperson went so far as to declare that it is Hamas, not the IDF, who targets the hungry crowds in order to blame Israel for it. But Hamas does not have the type of weapons used for such murderous attacks, and even if they did such a unspeakable thing, killing their own children, would the Palestinian population not revolt against them? These are, therefore, some of the most shameful lies ever uttered by a human being. The good news is that nobody believed them. Not even the European Commission, usually prone to support Netanyahu.

Too little, too late? To me, these are all signs of a permanent change in the public opinion of the world with regard to Israel/Palestine.

It is extremely sad that the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, with about 1,000 victims, has furnished a rationale (an irrational and cruel one) to Netanyahu and his accomplishes to pursue their genocidal actions, with about 60,000 victims thus far. But these events have destroyed for ever the reputation of the State of Israel. There is no going back.

It is now clear to the great majority of the world that modern Israel is a colonial and racist project, perhaps the last such project of the West, and that it is an apartheid state. Many Israelis are beginning to be confronted with the bloody origins of the statehood of modern Israel.

Once they believed — and many Westerners with them, including myself — that modern Israel was the banner of civilization and the sign of the permanent defeat of Nazism; now they must accept that the trauma of the Shoah has been violently projected over the non-Jewish population of Palestine since 1948 and until today.

What is still unclear is the role of the Bible in all of this.

I was very upset to watch an interview in which an Israeli colonist stated that “wiping out” the Palestinians is affirmed and blessed by God, because “such is the teaching of the Torah.” The interviewer was appalled and kept expressing his surprise that any religion at all today allows and blesses a genocide. Indeed, using events which happened in the Bronze Age, recounted (and aggrandized) in the saga of Ancient Israel, to support a modern genocide, with no reference whatsoever to the theological developments of the subsequent 3,000 years, is an horrible disservice to the Bible, to Judaism, and to humanity at large.

When anybody uncritically claims superiority for the Jews, based on the Bible, and talks unreasonably about God giving the land to the Jews, please read to them what God said to similar individuals through the prophet Amos, around the year 630 B.C.E. 

Is it not I who made Israel get out of the land of Egypt,
just as [I made] the Philistines get out of Kaphtor
and the Arameans from Kush? (Amos 9:7)

Amos already knew that God is the God of all peoples, the liberator from slavery of all, the defender of all the oppressed. Debasing God today to be the justifier of the genocide of Palestinians is a blasphemy, and is a most disgusting offense to the generations of Jews and Christians and Muslims — the descendants of Abraham according to the faith — who have fought for a better society, in line with the divine intentions for all creation.

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See Matthew Fox, Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh:

Also see Fox, A Spirituality Named Compassion:

And see Fox, Prayer: A Radical Response to Life

Also see Fox, One River, Many Wells

Banner Image: Orthodox Jews demonstrate in the 2022 London protest of the Israeli killing of veteran Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh while she was covering Israeli action against the West Bank town of Jenin. Photograph by Alisdare Hickson on Wikimedia Commons.

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Queries for Contemplation

Do you reflect critically on the uses of the Bible in modern conflicts?

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Related Readings by Matthew Fox

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

A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Awareness with Social Justice

In A Spirituality Named Compassion, Matthew Fox delivers a profound exploration of the meaning and practice of compassion. Establishing a spirituality for the future that promises personal, social, and global healing, Fox marries mysticism with social justice, leading the way toward a gentler and more ecological spirituality and an acceptance of our interdependence which is the substratum of all compassionate activity.
“Well worth our deepest consideration…Puts compassion into its proper focus after centuries of neglect.” –The Catholic Register

Prayer: A Radical Response to Life
How do prayer and mysticism relate to the struggle for social and ecological justice? Fox defines prayer as a radical response to life that includes our “Yes” to life (mysticism) and our “No” to forces that combat life (prophecy). How do we define adult prayer? And how—if at all—do prayer and mysticism relate to the struggle for social and ecological justice? One of Matthew Fox’s earliest books, originally published under the title On Becoming a Musical, Mystical Bear: Spirituality American Style, Prayer introduces a mystical/prophetic spirituality and a mature conception of how to pray. Called a “classic” when it first appeared, it lays out the difference between the creation spirituality tradition and the fall/redemption tradition that has so dominated Western theology since Augustine. A practical and theoretical book, it lays the groundwork for Fox’s later works.
“One of the finest books I have read on contemporary spirituality.” – Rabbi Sholom A. Singer

One River, Many Wells: Wisdom Springing from Global Faiths

Matthew Fox calls on all the world traditions for their wisdom and their inspiration in a work that is far more than a list of theological position papers but a new way to pray—to meditate in a global spiritual context on the wisdom all our traditions share. Fox chooses 18 themes that are foundational to any spirituality and demonstrates how all the world spiritual traditions offer wisdom about each.“Reading One River, Many Wells is like entering the rich silence of a masterfully directed retreat. As you read this text, you reflect, you pray, you embrace Divinity. Truly no words can fully express my respect and awe for this magnificent contribution to contemporary spirituality.” –Caroline Myss, author of Anatomy of the Spirit

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