The Allure of Moral Clarity in a Time of War: A Response to Russell Moore’s “American Christians Should Stand with Israel under Attack” (Christianity Today, October 7, 2023)
Bruce N. Fisk, October 12, 2023
Between the headline and the byline of Russell Moore’s recent piece in Christianity Today we read:
“While we pray for peace, we need moral clarity about this war.”
It was this call for “moral clarity”—in a time of horror, rage, and confusion—that caught my attention. It reminded me of William Bennett’s 2002 hymn to patriotism, Why We Fight: Moral Clarity and the War on Terrorism.
In the wake of 9/11, Bennett reminisced about how “the doubts and questions . . . seemed to fade into insignificance. Good was distinguished from evil, truth from falsehood. We were firm, dedicated, unified. It was, in short, a moment of moral clarity.”
It was this moral clarity about America’s righteousness that accompanied US troops into Iraq on a misguided quest for regime change. Cheered on by with-us-or-with-the-enemy rhetoric, our war on terror left many thousands dead, wounded, and displaced, and sowed seeds of resentment and despotism across the region.
Many are calling Hamas’ October attack Israel’s 9/11. Indeed, per capita, the number of slain Israelis is already more than ten times the number of Americans killed on that dark day in September 2001. Hamas has perpetrated unspeakable evil and horrific war crimes.
So, we’re told, one side is clearly right. The other is utterly wrong. This is not the time for moral confusion. We must stand with Israel. Full stop.
To claim moral clarity in such a moment, however, is far from helpful.
It means we take refuge in binary thinking, silence contrary voices, and erase the complexities—legal, historical, political, theological—that have beset the land and demographic wars in Israel/Palestine for over a century.
My first visits to the Holy Land, two decades ago, were marked by moral clarity. Today, I know too much. I’ve seen too much. Hamas is committing war crimes, without question. But they are not committing them in a vacuum.
Uncritical pro-Israel clarity over recent decades has provided international cover, financial backing, and biblical justification for legalized discrimination, settlement expansion, extra-judicial killings, and systematic Palestinian subjugation. Christian Zionists’ unflinching opposition to partitioning the Promised Land has excused land expropriation, demolitions of homes and schools, and other forms of legal discrimination. This kind of clarity we do not need.
In the weeks ahead, history will repeat itself. Thousands of innocents have already become homeless. Palestinian families, trapped between Hamas butchery and Israeli bombs, will suffer and die. What we need to hear at such times are calls for indiscriminate compassion, challenges to work for justice, and invitations to humbly acknowledge our complicity. What we don’t need to hear are tales of light and darkness.
Allow me to contend for messy perplexity rather than binary certitude, by challenging seven assertions embedded in Moore’s piece.
- Israel’s response is just and proper self-defense.
“When acting justly, though, the state has not only the right but the responsibility to protect itself and the lives of its citizens.”
Israel’s partisans in this moment reflexively invoke the nation’s “right and duty” to defend itself. But the blockade on Gaza, 16 years and counting, effectively continues its control and occupation of the territory, a siege that is itself aprovocation. An occupying force doesn’t get to use the self-defense defense when it acts violently against a population under its control, whose safety it is legally obligated to protect.
- Many American Christians criticise Israel when it behaves wrongly.
“Many of us are quite willing to call out Israel when we believe it is acting wrongly. We don’t believe the Israeli Knesset is somehow inerrant or infallible.”
Zionist Christians routinely acknowledge the obvious: that Israel isn’t perfect. Rarely, however, are such admissions followed by specific grievances for which they want Israel held accountable.
Where are the frank discussions among Israel's supporters about discriminatory laws, the separation barrier, expanding Jewish settlements, de facto annexation of the Jordan Valley, and the blockade of Gaza? Where are these willing Christian leaders when Israel’s forces gas refugees and imprison children, when snipers shoot journalists, or when settlers rampage through villages with the tacit blessing of the IDF? Israel’s current rightwing government is accelerating home demolitions and refugee camp raids, and stoking conflict on the Temple Mount.
By conceding that Israel isn’t perfect, one can appear evenhanded without ever having to name specific discriminatory laws, policies and practices that contribute to Palestinian desperation.
To be sure, Palestine sympathizers can be equally reluctant to criticize Palestinian governing authorities. Whether it is human rights abuses and torture, hostility toward internal criticism and journalistic freedom, corruption, or monetary payments to families of fallen fighters—the Palestinian Authority has much to account for and merits robust, specific critique.
- This war has just begun.
“Sometimes, especially in the early moments of any war, we may be uncertain”
These are not the “early moments” of a war. To suggest as much is to forget that the struggle for Palestinian emancipation and self-determination has been going on for 75 years and, as we noted earlier, the inhumane blockade of Gaza for 16.
- Israel has greater justification to use force in the present because of past antisemitism, including the Holocaust.
“that impetus [to use force] is heightened by the unique circumstances that led to the formation of the Jewish state.”
Antisemitism is real and surging. Notable statements from Hamas ideologues clearly qualify. But we must not conflate hostility toward Jews for being Jews with criticism of the state of Israel for forging a Jewish ethnocracy at the expense of other inhabitants in the Land. Zionism is not Judaism. Anti-Zionism is not antisemitism.
- The establishment of the state of Israel was benign.
“After the state was established”
Describing the Iran-Contra scandal, Ronald Reagan famously told Congress in 1987 that “mistakes were made.” If we want to tip-toe past the messiness of history, the passive voice comes in handy. In 1947-49, when the state of Israel “was established,” three-quarters of a million Palestinans fled or were forced out of their homes, and subsequently blocked from returning. A lesser exodus of a quarter million followed in 1967. Why does this matter? Because Palestinians, including most residents of Gaza, will point to the dispossession of their parents and grandparents as the primary reason for present-day resistance.
- Israel is a liberal democracy, so we should support it.
“As Americans, we should stand with Israel under attack because it is a fellow liberal democracy—and a democracy in a region dominated by illiberal, authoritarian regimes.”
Some people, U.S. President Joe Biden among them, believe Israel can be both Jewish and democratic. Others, like historian Avi Shlaim and commentator Peter Beinart, find the combination contradictory. For its part, the state of Israel defines itself as “the nation-state of the Jewish People,” administers separate legal systems for Jews and Palestinians in the West Bank, and enshrines laws that explicitly discriminate against non-Jews inside Israel. Israel is home, certainly, to various democratic institutions, but whether it qualifies as (or even wants to be) a “liberal democracy” is very much up for debate.
- Israel responds to terrorism.
“But war has come, and we should recognize terrorism for what it is. We should also recognize the justice of a forceful response to that terrorism.”
When Hamas militants massacre hundreds of concertgoers, that counts as terrorism. When they abduct civilians, use them as human shields, and threaten to execute them, again: terrorism. Likewise, when Israel bombs hospitals and schools, or blocks civilian access to food and water, that too is terrorism. By international law, both sides are committing war crimes. To defend collective punishment bordering on genocide as self-defense, by claiming Israel is only targeting militants, doesn’t work. Israel forces respond to terrorism, yes. They also terrorize.
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American Christians often settle for tidy moral dichotomies—them & us, darkness & light, evil & good—and interpret current events through the lens of militant, apocalyptic dualism. With God on our side, of course. Ours is an age of toxic tribalism and self-righteous “clarity.” We need leaders who stand firmly against all human suffering and lead us in cries for justice, not vengeance.
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