Religion, the cause of and solution to all of life's problems.

This is about the present demolition of Gaza by Israel in response to the atrocities of 7 Oct 2023, but lets be real, this is about me, having thoughts, and most of my thoughts come with some Bible in them, so there will be some bible stories.

'Indigineity' is often claimed by Israelis and Palestinians as a source of basic rights to the land.  In my context, Australia, indigeneity claims come with evidence of very long-term societies adapted to survive the peculiar rigors of places, and, I think, a kind of sovereignty deriving from long-term heritage - "you can be here and do your thing now, but we'll see who's still here and how they're living in a thousand years."  While Jews and Palestinians have very old connections to their land, something that I, a white guy descended mainly from British losers (mainly Scots) who retreated from their homelands, got coopted by / wormed their way to power in the British Empire project, and settled in Brisbane and Far North Queensland and who now lives in Melbourne probably don't understand, I don't think indigineity is the right category.

Although archaeologists are (as I understand it) not able to verify much about the famous origin story of Israel (slavery in Egypt, Exodus etc) there's a bit in the bible that is interesting and relevant:  God told Abraham who lived in Ur of the Chaldeans to go to a new land and live there, so he did.  But when he got there he found it was inhabited, and his household (which was fairly large) and livestock became unpopular; when he dug new wells, the locals filled them in. Abraham was not unable to put together a war band (see battle of the 4 kings) but he didn't - he moved, trying to find lands where he could live. When his nephew Lot needed space, he let him have the pick of it. In the story, Abraham's family prospers until the time of Jacob's children and the story of Joseph in Egypt.

Another big Abraham theme is hospitality - Abraham welcomes three visitors who, it turns out, are Angels, and one of them the Angel of the Lord (Christians usually understand this as a special appearance of Jesus.)  They bring hope of a son, and from his descent, a future for all the nations on earth.  When these visitors suggest they will stay in Sodom, Abraham begs them not to, and when they do and find it inhospitable, they destroy it.  The law of Israel includes a lot of protections for 'sojourners' - people of other nations who have had reason to live in Israel, often refugees from war or famine, political exiles and so on.  Israel is to remember that was them (and will be them again, it turns out).

The third big theme that I think is relevent is exile.  Joseph becomes a pathway for the family into wealthy and sophisticated Egypt where the story says they became numerous and successful until the Egyptian's feared them and enslaved them, leading up to the Exodus narrative.  Then for a long time with lots of ups and downs, they live in the Land, until they are thoroughly conquered by the Babylonians, which liked to reorganize their conquered peoples to limit their power, so the Jews got redistributed into the cities of the Empire, especially Babylon. This is complicated and by the end the Empire is the Medo-Persian empire.  (I read the book of Lamentations recently and the experience of the Gaza is not new, this has all happened before.)  But in the time of the exile, the message of Jeremiah is:

Jer 29:7  "But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare."

The thing that few leaders in the history of Israel/Palestine (or anywhere in the world, really) have been able to do is get out of tribalism, to make peace and to make the flourishing of other people a priority. When Yitzak Rabin tried, an Israeli settler shot him.  In the Israel/Palestine conflict, I think it's been especially acute because of the religious aspect - both sides have a power resource in the 'Imaginary' that make just walking away hit harder than any material losses. The monotheisms will do that, but so will Buddhism and Hinduism if the politics demand it. 

At the same time, as totalising systems they can be used to destroy universalism, common humanity.  The incredible cruelty of people in moral conflicts develops when normal defeats are not experienced because of the power of the ideology.  John Searle argues Germany might have been back at Nazism without the psychic intensity of the 'strategic' (targeting civilians) bombing and being overrun (with all the attendant violence) by soldiers.  Hegel says 'man is recognition', describing the way my identity is bound up in how others see me which is bound up in how I see them; if I know the lens I'm being observed through has a lot of reservations about me, its deeply unnatural not to defensively modify my perception of that perceiver.

Christianity became a religion for the dispossessed and demoralized in need of new life is grounded in a reality that when God came to Earth he got killed rather than lead an army of redemptive violence, and created the hope that we might all get something better than justice.

Everyone on Earth could have done more for the Palestinians.  Everyone on Earth could have done more for Israel.  We all deserve (to varying degrees) to lose our land to newcomers, to have to exercise hospitality. If we don't make room we're left with nothing to do but to tow the boats back out to sea to sink, build prisons from which no one will be release, promote our most treacherous sociopaths to be our government until we meet a bigger bunch of psychos and learn that could be us.  That could definitely be us.