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.