Column
Comment
Gaza
Israel
Middle East
4 min read

“Sometime the killing just has to stop”

Simple calls for peace are often against the grain of power, observes George Pitcher. Many still yearn for it, even when faced with complexities and impossibilities.

George is a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics and an Anglican priest.

A dove stands on a concrete block wall.
A dove rests on a wall in Gaza, 2021.
براء حبوش on Unsplash.

I admire my friend Clive Stafford Smith for two principal reasons. He’s a demon pace bowler for my Vicar’s XI cricket team. And, as a lawyer, he has dedicated his career to defending prisoners on death row. I’m not sure whether batsmen or US attorneys find him the more threatening. But I know I’d want to have him on my side, whether on the pitch or in court. 

We always have to be careful how we describe people these days. I nearly wrote that Clive is an atheist; more accurately he is an unbeliever. He’s certainly pleased to have God on his side if it means appealing to the Christian conscience of jury members in a capital trial.  

But it’s two very ordinary comments that I remember from hanging out with him, which come to mind now as we witness the hatred of war in the Middle East and which evoke words spoken to me by the principal of my theological college some years ago:  

“Be very careful to notice, George, where you encounter the Christ.”  

Meaning that it won’t necessarily be among the pious, the faithful and the churched. 

The first was a comment I heard Clive make in an interview:

“It’s always been a rule of my life that if someone is being hated, you have to get between the hated and the hater.” I have tried, when I can, to stand in the corner of what we might call the “hatee”.  

The second was a phrase spoken by an actress in a play that arose from Clive’s work with the charity he co-founded, Reprieve. It’s a monologue comprising the story and the court evidence given in the US by Lorelei Guillory, whose six-year-old son Jeremy was taken and murdered by Rick Langley.  

Lorelei visited him in jail and subsequently appeared as Clive’s witness to plead that Langley be spared the death penalty. Her breathtaking words of explanation, which have stayed with me since, were simple:  

“Sometime the killing just has to stop.” 

It’s the simplest words that cut through the political noise and sophistry. I believe the voices of western powers should be calling for, insisting upon or even demanding a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. Our Church leaders have done so. But these voices are called naive or simplistic or disloyal, or worse. 

In the UK, London Mayor Sadiq Khan has called for a ceasefire, pitching him against his political party leader Sir Keir Starmer. Khan is a Muslim – again, let’s be careful to note where we encounter the authentic voice of peace. Conservative minister Paul Bristow has been sacked by the government for calling for a ceasefire, while prime minister Rishi Sunak continues to mouth that “Israel has a right to defend herself.” 

So, the call for peace, against the grain of power, comes from across the political spectrum. Against it are the claims of naivety and disloyalty, which state that the situation is far too complex for peace or that Israel must be left to its own self-determination.

Faced with complexities and impossibilities, both these writers seem to conclude, almost in prayer, with a yearning for peace 

But even here the runes read for ceasefire. Take two recent and prominent commentators on the conflict, again from across the political spectrum. And, again, we must be careful, in this febrile climate, how we describe people. These are not Jewish commentators, so much as columnists who happen to be Jews. 

One, Jonathan Freedland in the Guardian, writes a superb piece that this isn’t about Team Palestine versus Team Israel and picking which is wrong: “Israeli novelist and peace activist Amos Oz was never wiser than when he described the Israel/Palestine conflict as something infinitely more tragic: a clash of right v right.” His pay-off is devastating: “There are no winners – only never-ending loss.” 

The other, Daniel Finkelstein in The Times, writes equally soundly that foreign observers, calling for ceasefire, fail to understand Israel’s roots. He cites 1958’s blockbuster novel-to-movie Exodus to posit that Khan’s call for a ceasefire “was not merely wrong, not merely absurd… it was utterly pointless.” 

Yet he concludes with a quote from Exodus’s final scene beside an Arab and Israeli grave:  

“... the dead always share the earth in peace. And that’s not enough. It’s time for the living to have a turn.” 

Then Finkelstein’s own pay-off:  

“May it come to pass.” 

Faced with complexities and impossibilities, both these writers seem to conclude, almost in prayer, with a yearning for peace. It’s difficult to see how that peace comes without ceasefire. 

I’ve referenced a Muslim and Jewish voices so far. What of the third Abrahamic faith, the Christian voice?  

One hopes it joins the others, with the old hymn’s still, small voice of calm. It has to call for ceasefire. Because as my friend Clive puts it, we have to get between the hated and the hater. And as Lorelei said, sometime the killing just has to stop.  

Article
Comment
Community
Nationalism
5 min read

I protested against the Unite The Kingdom protest

The need to see one another

Thomas is a writer exploring the intersection of faith, politics, and social justice.

CCTV footage show two rival protests divided by a line of riot police.
CCTV image of the rival protests on Whitehall.
Met Police.

I don’t know why I was so concerned about the horses. I kept noticing them swaying through the sea of shivering bodies. I was so drawn to them that I tried to take a photo, a rare occurrence for me, but I was too far away. The horses riders, dressed in full riot gear, were being pelted with beer bottles. Maybe the horses were getting hit too, but it felt like they were recoiling on behalf of their riders. 

In front of the horses, engulfing Trafalgar Square, were tens of thousands of “Unite the Kingdom” protestors. From what I could see, they were predominantly white men. Many of them were dancing and waving flags, but a sizeable contingent was furious, drunk, and insisted on attacking any unfortunate police officer in their way. 

Behind the horses, lining the streets of Whitehall, were five thousand counter-protestors, including me. Unlike our opposite numbers in Trafalgar Square, we were trapped, surrounded on every side by St George’s flags, Union Jacks, and, oddly, some Georgian flags too. Maybe the shop had sold out. To my right, I could see the counter-protestors defiantly dancing. To me left, I could see a group chanting “Nazi scum, off our streets” whilst swearing towards the St George’s flags. 

There in the middle, I found myself feeling a curious mixture of discomfort, sadness, and anger. Uncomfortable because I’d been trapped for four hours, stuck on a continuous cycle of rinse and drain. Sad, because I knew that much of the “Unite the Kingdom” violence was built on misinformation and the scapegoating of refugees, a group I know well, and because this fog of violence blew over the counter-protestors as they hurled insults towards the St George’s flags. And angry, because figures like Elon Musk were using their extraordinary wealth and influence to spread fear and lies: “Whether you choose violence or not, violence is coming to you. You either fight back or you die. You either fight back or you die. And that’s the truth. It’s only a matter of time till that happens to towns and villages. It will spread. And no one will have any peace.” Over the years, I have spent many hundreds, if not thousands, of hours with refugees and asylum seekers, both in my home and at my church. I had experienced no violence. In that moment, I was surrounded by “leftists”, socialists, and trade unionists, and the only violence I was experiencing was from the glint of beer bottles raining down on the police two hundred meters away. 

I was grateful for the interruption of an elderly lady asking if she could get past. I’d been asked a number of questions throughout the day, primarily because I was one of a group of four Christians holding signs like “Jesus was a refugee”, “love thy neighbour”, and “I was a stranger and you welcomed me”. At the start of the protest, an older lady and a young man joined our circle. The young man asked “I’m glad to see there are some Christians here. What do you think of Christian nationalism? Your religion doesn’t feel much like Jesus?” He was a brave Saudi Arabian refugee with a bright smile, earnestly questioning the fractures in my community of faith. Taken aback by the poignancy of the question, I fumbled a response before being rescued by one of my friends. 

Protest signs written on cardboard.
Tommy's protest signs before the rain.

 

After a while, the older lady started speaking. “Sorry for interrupting. I used to be a Roman Catholic, but I’ve lost my faith. On days like this though, I always want to pray. I don’t feel much hope for the church. A while ago, I went into a catholic church. I asked if the church could do anything about the divisions in our community and the anger at refugees. The priest shrugged and said no. I’m glad you’re here.” Her short, staccato sentences mirrored the tension of the day. I told her about how our church serves refugees, how I struggle with the anger of days like today, and how some of us have forgotten that the bible tells us to welcome the stranger dozens of times. As they walked away, I felt touched by the honesty both the young and old had gifted to four strangers, and I was glad to be carrying our smalls signs of hope. 

The megaphone brought the present back into view with another question. “Could everyone please get ready to leave up the left of Trafalgar Square?” it said. The police had cleared a path for us to leave, the sea of flags artificially parted by riot gear. We were escorted to Green Park tube station, at which point we turned off towards Oxford Street. My wife remarked at how quickly normality returned. I was devastated by the day, but felt too tired to weep. I wasn’t quite the same Tommy that I’d been that morning. The man who shares my name, and the chaos he wrought on my city, had turned a dial in me a little further than it had been turned before. 

I knew that I would have more days like this. In the midst of my discomfort, sadness, hope, and fear, I knew that I was supposed to be there, holding my soggy “Jesus was a refugee” sign, shivering in my damp clothes, and praying under my breath. I knew that I needed to gather other reluctant protestors alongside me, holding their own soggy signs and praying their own prayers. 

And I also knew that there was a better way to carry this fragile message of unity in our increasingly fragile land and increasingly fragile time. As a half-British, half-South African man, I’ve had the privilege of growing up with the stories of the anti-apartheid movement, stories which steward the hard-earned truth that defiant, tenacious, persistent love is the only antidote to hatred, misinformation and fear. As Desmond Tutu once said, “when we can accept both our humanity and the perpetrator’s we can write a new story”. Saturday left me feeling that we desperately need a new story, and that requires us to look beyond the swaying horses and see one another clearly. 

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