Hugh Hewitt wrote yesterday in an article:
Hopefully the president-elect will refuse them [liberals wanting to condemn Israel] office at any level, and will insist from day one on the same unswerving support for Israel that the outgoing president has demonstrated.Unswerving support seems really strong...and I just don't get, why exactly does Israel deserve unswerving support? At the same time, I get that the other extreme is no good, like when later in the article Hewitt quotes Walter Russel Mead who says:
In the past, U.S. peacemakers have had an Israel-centric approach to the
negotiating process; the Obama administration needs to put Palestinian
politics and Palestinian public opinion at the center of its peacemaking efforts.
Both sides seem to deserve condemnation, and neither side deserves to be at the center. Is it naive to say you shouldn't pick sides? Does that work? "IDK" But I'm thinking about verses like John 3:17 and 12:47, how Christ came not to judge and condemn but to save. We don't have to champion one side and condemn the other. At least, if we don't mind being disliked by both sides. Am I mixing too many cups of hippy with Jesus to say that we should focus on going in there and bringing life? Incarnational living, relationship-building, valuing each person?
There really is a precedent set where community development works, like when the Road of Hope Urban Program in Arafat brought youth from different backgrounds together for a simple sports team, and the youth end up coming together and starting their own newspaper.
There's this film, Promises, following several Palestinian and Israeli kids over several years. Here's a trailer for the 2001 documentary of Promises, and here's the 2004 part 1 update. There's the boy who says "In war both sides suffer. Maybe there's a 'winner' but what's a winner? People on BOTH sides die. BOTH sides lose," but goes on to join the military as you see in the update. And I can understand that, he speaks and you hear his story and you can understand. And there's...okay, no, I better stop there, because it's better if you just watch it, okay?
And the whole thing, the film, which has dance and music and sports teams and gyms and cars and military, all of these things can contribute to community. And especially with the artsy stuff, I think about Invisible Children, and about invisible children, and about the corresponding blind people walking around. And it's rather painful because I'm partly the latter, and partly even worse this third group that sees and still has been mostly just talk so far.
eep.
