NILS VON KALM reflects on how we, as Christians, are called to respond to the violence in Israel and Gaza…
Melbourne, Australia
When I first heard about the Hamas attacks on Israel on 7th October, I was filled with a range of different emotions. Over subsequent days, and having visited Israel, Gaza and the West Bank a few times in recent years, my emotions settled into a deep sense of grief.
Then in the following week, when I woke to the news that the Anglican-run Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza had been hit, my grief went deeper. This was the hospital I had worked at when during my time in Gaza. Suddenly I wondered if friends I have there were still alive.
People react at the area of Al-Ahli hospital following a blast in Gaza City, on 18th October, 2023. PICTURE: Reuters/Mohammed Al-Masr
As I have sat with the heaviness of these past couple of weeks, I have realised that there is a sense in which I have felt the closeness of God more, not despite the heaviness and suffering and war, but because of it.
For much of the time since the start of this current conflict, I have felt close to tears, like I’m sure many of us have. I have resonated more than ever with the fact that Jesus was known as a man of sorrows, familiar with grief.
“Violence has been shown yet again to be a complete and utter failure in bringing about a resolution to the decades-old crisis in the Middle East. Non-violence is the only way. It is only the enemy-loving way of Jesus that can save Israel and Gaza now. “
Along with the deep emotion, there has been much frustration and anger among many of us, and hearts aching for loved ones. As I reflected on my feelings and my subsequent struggle to be emotionally present with people, I also realised that I couldn’t imagine what the people of Gaza and Israel have been experiencing.
Richard Rohr says that, rather than seeing God as almighty as is a common way of perceiving God, a closer and more intimate way of seeing God is as all-suffering.
When I spoke to my spiritual director about all this, she looked at me with deep care in her eyes and told me something that Dietrich Bonhoeffer had said less than a year before he was executed by the Nazis. What Bonhoeffer had said was, “Only the suffering God can help”.
Bonhoeffer’s words have stayed with me ever since.
Part of me wants to stay in this place of grief. I feel closer to Jesus here. It’s also the only place to experience genuine joy and hope, and to come to a place of total surrender to the enemy-loving Jesus, whose Way of the Cross is the only way through to resurrection.
As I see violence met with more and greater violence – and the despairing men, women and children caught in the middle, I am more convinced than ever that what Bonhoeffer said is true. Violence has been shown yet again to be a complete and utter failure in bringing about a resolution to the decades-old crisis in the Middle East. Non-violence is the only way. It is only the enemy-loving way of Jesus that can save Israel and Gaza now.
Entrance to the Al-Ahli hospital taken during Nils von Kalm’s visit to Gaza. PICTURE: Courtesy of Nils von Kalm
It is only the way of Jesus that can bring hope. For many years, the people of Gaza have been experiencing a deep sense of hopelessness. That’s what happens when you live in what groups like the United Nations, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch call the world’s largest open-air prison. Gaza is one of the most densely populated regions in the world, 95 per cent of the water is undrinkable, electricity is intermittent at best, and unemployment sits at around 50 per cent. The air, sea and land are all controlled by Israel, and the vast majority of the people are trapped, victims of the blockade enforced by Israel.
It is not until you see the situation for yourself that you realise the depth of despair that the people of Gaza have been living with for decades. A common refrain amongst them is, “When you’re already dead, you’re not scared of dying again”. Such is the absolute despair they live with, the sense of complete hopelessness. According to the aid organisation, Save The Children, 50 per cent of children in Gaza express no will to live.
It’s at times like this that verses like Romans 8:26 really hit home to me. We can’t find words to pray, only groans from hearts that are broken open with grief. A friend of mine in Gaza said this week that words can’t express what they are currently dealing with. She and her friends have been sheltering in a church, but they feel like nowhere is safe. Many of them expect to die.
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As I ponder the disaster taking place over there, I am more convinced than ever that love is the only way out. It is the only sane response. Israeli bombing of Gaza will just create more terrorists yet again, and Hamas’ violence will just create more Israeli retaliation. And so the cycle will continue. As Martin Luther King said many years ago, violence begets violence and hate begets hate.
As Christians, we are called to weep with those who weep and mourn with those who mourn (Romans 12:15). We are called to the way of peace by the Prince of Peace, who said that it is the peacemakers who are the true children of God (Matthew 5:9). We are called to follow Jesus, to love our neighbour, to do for others what we would want them to do for us. It is that, He said, that sums up the whole Law and the prophets (Matthew 7:12).
So, our calling as followers of the Prince of Peace is to follow Him in loving our neighbour, including our enemy, doing good to those who persecute us. We are, as St Paul says, to respond to evil with good and not repay evil for evil (Romans 12:21).
The Christians I have spoken to in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank do not want us to be pro-Israel or pro-Palestinian. They want us to be pro-peace.
It is the ones who mourn today and the ones who make for peace who are blessed, according to Jesus. Let’s be on the side of Jesus as we do all we can for God’s reign to come in Israel and Gaza as it is in Heaven.
