Bible reading: 1 Samuel 4:1-11.

Message (i).

I want to draw your attention to two well-known Bible stories which have an extraordinary resonance today. The first is the story of the Israelites leaving Egypt, miraculously crossing the Red Sea, travelling through the wilderness, and finally arriving at the River Jordan prior to cross into the Promised Land. After centuries of harsh slavery in Egypt and decades of wandering around the desert, they are about to have a land of their own, a fertile land overflowing with milk, honey and other good things, a land which (they are told) had been promised to them by God, hundreds of years before. But there’s just one tiny problem confronting the eager Israelites: that land is inconveniently occupied already by pagan Canaanites, and they have no intention of moving out. So the story we read in the book of Joshua is of battle, bloodshed, carnage and destruction. Ultimately the land is secured as the Jewish homeland – at a terrible cost to its former inhabitants.

The other story is the one about David, the Jewish shepherd boy, and Goliath, the giant Philistine military champion; it has almost become a mythical folk tale. I’m not going into any details as you all know it: David uses his catapult to hurl a stone; it hits Goliath on his forehead and brings him crashing to the ground. He lies there, unconscious or dead; and David, wanting to make sure that he’s not going to get up again, grabs his sword and chops off his head. It’s not a nice story, so why am I telling it to you? It’s for one simple reason: the militaristic Philistines were a thorn in Israel’s side for centuries, constantly engaging (as our reading told us) in border raids and attempts to take land. The Philistines no longer exist as a distinct people as they disappeared from view around five hundred years before Jesus’ time and aren’t the same as today’s Palestinians. But it’s interesting to notice that they lived: in what today we call the Gaza Strip, with cities including Gaza, Ashkelon and Ashdod. Don’t they sound familiar?

Those two stories tell us that there aren’t just centuries but millennia of history behind the horrific scenes we have seen this last week. I’m not saying that the Canaanites and Philistines are the direct ancestors of today’s Palestinians: I don’t know anything about the ethnology of the region and, in any case, people often move around, intermarry and migrate. What I am saying is that the land we today call Israel has long been contested, often bloodily – and that’s something which people remember. Indeed, the story of the Exodus, brought to mind at every Passover is ‘the’ foundational story of Jewish national identity.

We all know that the Jewish people have often struggled to survive; we might even consider it a miracle that they still have a distinct identity. Even in Old Testament times Israel was overrun by the Babylonians and its elite carted off into exile; and the four-hundred year period between the Old and New Testaments, which we rarely think about in church, was marked by a succession of wars and a desecration of the Temple in Jerusalem. By Jesus’ day Israel, nominally independent, was chafing under Roman rule; dissent was constantly bubbling away beneath the surface and this exploded into open conflict 35 years or so after Jesus’ lifetime, a war which culminated in the destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple, the symbolic centre of Jewish life. Many Jews were killed or sold into slavery, while Gentiles and Samaritans moved into villages which had formerly been largely Jewish. Other Jewish people dispersed to join the “diaspora” that already existed in the Mediterranean region. A mental shift took place as they adjusted themselves to the prospect of an indefinite period of displacement.

You don’t need me to tell you that, over the next nineteen centuries, the Jewish people had a chequered and often painful history. In many places they were accepted grudgingly, with many restrictions placed upon them. For example Jews in Britain, often successful in business, were seen as diabolical figures who hated Christ and sought to murder children so they could drink their blood at Passover. Many Jews were killed in antisemitic riots, most notably in 1190, when over 100 were massacred at Clifford’s Tower in York. From 1218 Jewish people we required to sew a yellow star onto their clothing; taxation grew more punitive and the Archbishop of Canterbury convened a Synod which forbade Jews to build new synagogues or mix with Christians. In 1290 they were expelled from England altogether, a law which remained in place until it was repealed by Oliver Cromwell in 1656. Jews suffered similar trials and tribulations in many other places culminating, of course, in the Nazi Holocaust which is part of my own family’s history – and which, in German Christian circles, was given legitimacy by the violently antisemitic writings of the Reformer, Martin Luther.

Palestinian history is also complex, but less well documented: there is no one Palestinian race; rather like the English, those who take this name are an amalgam of many different peoples who have emigrated or conquered the territory. It is thought that, by the 7^th century, the population was largely Christian; that changed with Muslim conquest although it isn’t clear how long it took for the Christian majority to be replaced by a Muslim one. Many Palestinian villagers and notable families today trace their origins to Arab nomad tribes who settled in the region before or after the Islamic conquest while others claim Samaritan or even Jewish roots. Certainly by 1919 90% of people living in Palestine were either Muslim or Christian. In recent years there have been attempts to give Palestinians a national identity by writing their history in ways which some would say are dubious or biased – but don’t we all do that to some degree?

I know I’m giving you a lot of history this morning – I assure you that I’m massively over-simplifying it as it is so complicated! I hope though that I’ve given you some useful background information. However we haven’t yet arrived at today’s situation which, we might say, has its roots in the late nineteenth century. Rising antisemitism in Europe and a growing awareness of Jewish identity among intellectuals led to the desire to have a land which they could call their own. The political basis of Zionism was set out by Theodor Herzl’s book “The Jewish State” which came out in 1897. Jews were encouraged to emigrate to Palestine, then ruled by the Turks; the right of Jews to a homeland was endorsed by the Balfour Declaration of 1917 and the League of Nations’ Mandate of 1922, intended both to “secure the establishment of the Jewish national home” and to “safeguard the civil and religious rights of all inhabitants of Palestine, irrespective of race and religion”. With hindsight, we can see in those words the seeds of disaster.

The next two decades saw controlled waves of Jewish migration to Palestine. However sympathy for the Jews after the Holocaust hastened the establishment of a Jewish state. In November 1947, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a plan which split Palestine into two states: one majority Arab and one majority Jewish. The Arabs rejected the plan and attacked Jewish targets; Arab allies came to their aid following Israel’s declaration of independence in May 1948.

However they were defeated and Israel took much of the territory that would have been allocated to the Arab state. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were expelled from what became the State of Israel; these refugees were not allowed to return. What Israel saw as a victory was branded “the catastrophe” by the Palestinians. It has not been forgotten and formed the basis for terrorist organisations such as the Palestinian Liberation Organisation, Fatah and Hamas. Since independence Israel has steadily consolidated its territory and built settlements which the United Nations has repeatedly termed “illegal”. More recently Palestinians have been hemmed in by security walls and fences. There have been attempts at resolution (remember the Camp David Agreement?) but this now seems further away than ever.

Message (ii).

So we are left on the one hand with a people who has a long history of struggle, denial and death; many of whom believe firmly that the land of Palestine is theirs because God gave it to Abraham in perpetuity. And on the other hand we have a people who have no international status, whose life is made a misery by many rules and restrictions, and who feel that the world doesn’t care about their history or current plight. That is a toxic mix which means that, although I absolutely deplore and condemn their rockets and murders, I can understand the frustration and despair of the Palestinians. It also means that I have sympathy with Jewish people who live in fear on a daily basis and who have lost friends and family in horrifying circumstances. There is no excuse this week for Arab exultation or for antisemitic protests; somehow the world has to break the deadly cycle of attack and reprisal, whoever started it. How that can be done, I know not.

As Christians, we are torn. We, after all, value our Jewish heritage (not enough, some people would say) and believe that the Jews, like any people, deserve a land of their own. We have huge sympathy for a people who have been hounded and persecuted over the centuries, often by people taking the name of Christ; we support their desire to live in freedom and safety. However (and I have to be careful here lest I be accused of antisemitism) I hope that we would decry the unjust policies of the Israeli Government which have so often controlled the Palestinians, ignored their human rights and stripped them of their dignity. Equally, I hope that we have sympathy for the Palestinians, especially those corralled into the virtual prison of Gaza: two and a quarter million people packed into an area only twice the size of Cardiff. But we must denounce the actions of Hamas, a profoundly nasty organisation which thinks nothing of terrorising and killing its own people if they dare to criticise it, massacres defenceless children in their homes, and which knew that its invasion of Israel would inevitably provoke an overwhelming and devastating response.

So where do we stand and what do we do today, as we helplessly look on? Clearly we lament every shot fired, every bomb dropped, every building shattered, every live lost, every hope destroyed – just as we did last year when Russia attacked Ukraine. We pray with groans rather than articulate prayer; although in our heart of hearts we may be saying, “Why do we bother? This has happened so many times, yet God does nothing. Is there any point?” We fear an escalation of the conflict that brings in nations such as Iran, Egypt or even the United States. We look to the international community to intervene but doubt if either side will listen to its voices. And we yearn for an outbreak of peace, justice and reconciliation, but have little expectation of it. Deep down, we know that eventually the guns and aircraft will fall silent, the dead will be buried, life will cautiously resume – and that, in five or ten years’ time, the whole deadly cycle will repeat itself yet again.

Israel and Palestine remain prisoners of politics and history. To be honest with you, I have little hope that the animosity between them will ever come to an end. Yet Christians must be people of hope.

I’d like to finish with a poem by Yohanna Katanacho, a Palestinian Israeli Christian who is the academic dean at Nazareth Evangelical College. He has taught courses on Palestinian theology in Palestine, Israel, Egypt, Ukraine, and elsewhere, and has written books including “The Land of Christ: A Palestinian Cry” and “Reading the Gospel of John through Palestinian Eyes”. Sadly this poem, “Cry with us” was not written last week, but back in 2014, when Palestine and Israel were also at war.

This is a season of weeping and mourning, but it is not void of hope.
Our tears are the bridge between brutality and humanity;
our tears are the salty gates for seeing a different reality;
our tears are facing soulless nations and a parched mentality;
our tears are the dam preventing rivers of animosity.

For the sake of the mourning men, cry with us to reflect your amity.
For the sake of the poor children, cry with us demanding sanity.
For the sake of lamenting mothers, refuse violence and stupidity.

Love your enemies and cry with them is the advice of divinity.
Bless those whose curse is the path to genuine spirituality.
Pour tears of mercy; compassion is true piety.
Pray with tears, for the sake of spreading equity.
Followers of Jesus: crying is now our responsibility.
But don’t cry for your friends only;
cry also for your Enemy.