Column

Comment

Gaza

Israel

Middle East

2 November 2023

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 Pitcher

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

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

Politics

Trauma

War & peace

9 December 2024

6 min read

So, what are the prospects for peace and good will?

2025 will need the reconcilers, and their pain.

Emerson Csorba

Emerson Csorba works in deep tech, following experience in geopolitics and energy.

Two people down a table turn and listen to someone closer talk, against a wall mural.

Reconciliation event, Northern Ireland.

Telos Group.

As we approach 2025, a series of skirmishes are erupting that warn us of impending danger. In Syria, Turkish-backed rebel forces have overtaken Aleppo, taking advantage of Russia’s focus on Ukraine. Pro-Europe protestors in Georgia demonstrate at the country’s parliament in Tbilisi. And South Korea declares martial law in response to purported North Korean threats. President-elect Trump jokes – with much truth in jest – about Canada becoming the 51st state.

As the world awaits the inauguration of President-elect Trump on January 20, 2025, we are in an in-between state. But there is more feeling of foreboding than of future peace. A ceasefire has been agreed between Israel and Hezbollah, but with rocket fire continuing to be exchanged and Israel yet to respond to Iran’s October missile barrage while Iran pursues nuclear capability. In the United States, Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emmanuel warns of Chinese ambitions to take Taiwan not in 2027 – as commonly believed – but rather in 2025.

Even if only temporarily, there will be a pause in early 2025 from the conflicts we have been accustomed to over recent years. The inauguration of President-elected Trump will, in all likelihood, put an end to Russia’s war in Ukraine. Russian agreement for peace will be secured, however, only in exchange for Ukrainian territorial concessions. Israel will maintain a ceasefire with Hezbollah while American support helps to remove the remnants of Hamas in Gaza. With American backing, Israel and Saudi Arabia will restart the historic Abraham Accords process as we enter the Spring.

Yet this pause and these short-term successes will be ephemeral and deceiving, an interlude prior to the much greater threats in store. Antonio Gramsci’s ‘The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters” is often quoted with a tinge of optimism, as if the monsters are here for a moment, but soon to be overcome. Unfortunately, the monsters of our times are well-entrenched, and they are gathering energy for their next acts. And they appear from all sides, as the lesser rather than greater aspects of men and women take centre stage in our politics, whether in the political West or Global East.

In this world of monsters, division and difference is the default approach to human relationships. We have become numb to these words, but what division and difference signify is a profound weakness in modern men and women bereft of love. Too many men and women prefer basking in their own and others’ flaws, to a striving to overcome these in favour of what we may individually and collectively achieve – if only we tried. We are living in a period of darkness seeking to dampen the light and diminish the spirit of those pursuing the good.

Division is easy. It is natural. It is emotional. Its focus is the lowest element of ourselves and of others. In comparison, togetherness is faith. It sees the hidden potential of another. Togetherness is unnatural. Togetherness flows from faith and is the unseen-become-reality. It recognises the seeds of good in another, understanding that each person is composed of many contrasting sides, some bad, some good, but the good the more powerful of the two. Togetherness is a choice. It is a choice to water the seeds of faith with patience, to see what these seeds might become with time, consistency, and effort (while maintaining balance of personal space and social connections, as both are vital for emotional wellbeing).

There is no bridging of divides, no reduction of division, no togetherness, without pain. This is a lesson for the world’s current and future reconcilers across all walks of life.

In an age of growing division and conflict, togetherness is barely visible. Yet reconciliation remains possible. In fact, it is precisely in these times, when the odds are against the peace of togetherness, that reconcilers in politics, business, academic, non-profit and community sectors are called to step forward with purpose. It is precisely when there is little faith or hope in the future that reconciliation – an act of love – is demanded.

Reconciliation is the restoration of a favourable relationship between oneself and others. It is achieved through sacrifice. The reconciler experiences pain in order to restore relationships. Reconciliation is built on love for other persons, in spite of their flaws and their continuous resistance, as well as their lack of faith, love and hope at many times. It requires a healthy self-love, in which we seek the fulfilment of our own good as a basis for doing so for others.

Next to love, the main ingredient of reconciliation is pain, because those who have become estranged fight, they resist, they go back on what they said they would do, they vacillate between good and evil, and they contest the reconciler. The reconciler will die, or come close to dying, at certain points in the reconciliation process. And yet the reconciler is raised following death, defeat only a stepping-stone to the triumph of togetherness.

The reconciler turns the pain involved in bringing together otherwise conflicting groups, peoples or nations into something much more positive. They internalise pain, incorporating it into their being. This is achieved through love, which enables patience, always seeing the bigger picture and the potential of people. Love is the basis for action to bring others together and keep them together, appealing to their better sides, despite the human tendency to corrupt the good.

People talk nowadays about the need to ‘bridge divides’ and that we are ‘better together.’ We need, for instance, to bridge divides between regions and capitals, such as between Alberta and Canada, or Québec and Canada in the Canadian context, or between the North East and London, or with Northern Irish reconciliation, in the United Kingdom. But these are easy things to say. More difficult is realising that the process of reconciliation is painful and that leaders seeking reconciliation – at local, regional or national levels – must first become experienced in suffering.

This experience can only be the result of a prior education in the value of pain, knowing that the joy of togetherness is most profound when preceded by a patient and humble suffering. There is no bridging of divides, no reduction of division, no togetherness, without pain. This is a lesson for the world’s current and future reconcilers across all walks of life, as we enter a world even more replete with conflict. And in reconciliation, it is always unclear what the outcome is going to be. A person’s efforts could be all for naught, faithful efforts then a matter of failure and bitterness, rather than of sweet accomplishment.

Anyone seeking reconciliation in a more dangerous world must first die to their previous lives of division. They must leave this self in the past, shedding it. They must become new persons, imbued with love, believing in human potential, who want others to succeed and who are ready to fight to achieve this success. But reconcilers must always fight with love as the foundation of their efforts, and with faith that they will win in their fight, that their efforts will be successful. This faith goes against what is seen – the odds are rarely if ever in reconcilers’ favour.

We need reconcilers in our day and age. These individuals are in short supply, but they are key to the futures of nations and to the health of our geopolitics. They are the politicians - elected and those behind the scenes - the businesspeople, and the local community leaders who can see the bigger picture and articulate it, keep focused on the potential of those around them, and bear the suffering involved in fulfilling potential.

The present wars and skirmishes as we enter 2025 will temporarily lessen. They will even pause. We should not be surprised when these re-emerge with more intensity over the next year. This is precisely when many will be called to strive for togetherness in the face of division, knowing that reconciliation is strength in the face of the reality of human weakness. Reconciliation is always a possibility.