Standing for Peace in a Time of War

It has now been nearly 11 weeks since the deadly rocket attack on Israel that began the Israel-Hamas war. Most of the military destruction has occurred in Gaza, and most deaths have been of Palestinians who were not directly a part of Hamas, an acronym for Islamic Resistance Movement, its official name.  

The destruction and death toll in Gaza has been horrendous. Make no mistake about it: the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel was an evil event. Wantonly killing more than 1,200 people, most of whom were civilians, cannot be characterized differently.

But I also see Israel’s revengeful attacks on Gaza as even more evil, for far more innocent lives have been taken. The latest figures indicate that around 20,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed by the Israeli Defense Forces military. How much greater that is than “an eye for an eye”!

A large percentage of Palestinian deaths are of women and children, and as children (and others) dying of starvation and disease will increase in the days/weeks ahead, Palestinian casualties will continue to rise to ever more distressing numbers.

The U.S. government has clearly supported Israel from its beginning in 1948, and this support is even more distressing to me now.

As a U.S. citizen, I am highly displeased with the stance of the federal government. The U.S. has given Israel more than $260 billion of aid since World War II, more than to any other nation. In October, the Administration asked Congress to provide $14.3 billion of emergency aid to Israel.

I have been quite disappointed in President Biden’s public stance on support for Israel—but not as much as Thinking Friend Mike Greer, who on Dec. 15 posted his strong views on this blogsite:

Biden's role in the creation of a hell on earth in Gaza leaves me with little hope for the Democratic party here. I am wondering if he does not have a case of moral dementia . . . .

But I don’t think Biden’s position is any different from what any other President’s would be, including Hillary Clinton (who could well have been nearing the end of her seventh year as President if it had not been for her inexplicable loss in 2016).

Near Election Day in 2016 when I thought Clinton’s election was assured, I wrote “an open letter to Madame President.” Among other things, I implored her to ease up on her support for Israel in order to lessen the injustice being done to the Palestinians.

There are, though, voices for non-violence and peace, even among Palestinians. Despite all the violence that has been unleashed on Gaza by Israel since October 7, I am heartened by those who are still advocating peaceful responses.

Just last week, I learned about Ali Abu Awwad, a prominent Palestinian peace activist and proponent of nonviolence.*

Awwad (b. 1972) took part in the First Intifada as a teenager and was subsequently sentenced to 10 years in prison. During the four years before he was released, he read the writings of Gandhi, Mandela, and MLK Jr. and embraced their commitment to non-violence.

In 2016 he co-founded Taghyeer (the Arabic word for change), a Palestinian national movement promoting nonviolence to achieve and guarantee a nonviolent solution to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.

On the other side, there is Jewish Voice for Peace in the U.S. Since its founding in 1996, it has been working for “a world where all people—from the U.S. to Palestine—live in freedom, justice, equality, and dignity.” (see here).

Also, Amanda Gelender, a Jewish American anti-Zionist writer, has also recently stressed (here) that “Israel’s massacre of Palestine is an assault on the Jewish faith.”**

So, in this war of Israel’s Defense Force against Hamas which, broadly speaking, is seen as a Jewish war against Palestinians, which side am I on? Without hesitation, I am on the side of those standing for peace and justice.

*****

Merry Christmas to all as people around the world celebrate the birth of one prophesied to be the Prince of Peace. 

_____

 * The theme of the January 2024 issue of Sojourners is “Nonviolence in a Time of War.” Their interview with Awwad is titled “Nonviolence in the Face of War.”

** Amanda Gelender is now based in the Netherlands. She has been a part of the Palestinian solidarity movement since 2006. Her Dec. 7 article begins, “I am a Jewish person who opposes the settler colonial state of Israel. This is not despite my Judaism, but because of it.”

Crises within Crises

For this blog post, I originally intended to write only about COP28, the international meeting dealing with the ever-growing environmental crisis. Then, I read powerful opinion pieces by Robert Kagan and became alarmed at the expanding political crisis in the U.S.

But how can we neglect to consider the crises in Gaza, Ukraine, and other countries where warfare continues, such as in Myanmar and Sudan that get far less press coverage? In addition, there are millions of individuals in our world who are facing personal crises of various sorts.

Indeed, there are crises within crises that threaten the well-being and even the survival of individuals, nations, and the world civilization as a whole. Please think with me about these crises, beginning with the outer circle that includes the whole world and moving down to the inner circle of individuals. 

The ever-growing environmental crisis was the central concern of COP28, which met in Dubai, the largest city in the United Arab Emirates, from Nov. 30 to Dec. 12.*¹ The first COP meeting, convened in Berlin, was in 1995 and there have been yearly meetings since then.

As I have repeatedly pointed out over the last two years, the current ecological predicament is a crisis that threatens the very existence of the world as we know it (TWAWKI). Some progress was made toward alleviating the global environmental crisis at COP28, but it’s probably too little too late.*²

There will be dire consequences for most of the world’s population if drastic changes are not made soon, which is highly unlikely. This is the existential crisis in which all the other crises exist.

The wars in Ukraine and Israel/Gaza are crises for people living in those areas of the world. But there is an ongoing possibility that they will expand into larger wars. In the worst-case scenario, either of these wars could conceivably escalate into World War III.

These crises are rather localized now, but they might conceivably enlarge to rival the ecological crisis as an existential threat to TWAWKI.

Within these two larger crises is the political crisis in the United States. While this crisis is only brewing at present, there is a real and present danger of democracy being replaced in the U.S. with a form of fascism.

I had not been aware of scholar and journalist Robert Kagan until this month, but he is an editor at large for The Washington Post (WaPo) and has been a foreign policy adviser to U.S. Republican presidential candidates as well as to Democratic administrations via the Foreign Affairs Policy Board.

During the 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign, Kagan (b. 1958) left the Republican Party due to the party's nomination of Donald Trump and endorsed Hillary Clinton for president.

Kagan’s Nov. 30 and Dec. 7 WaPo articles were titled “A Trump dictatorship is increasingly inevitable. We should stop pretending,” and “The Trump dictator-ship: How to stop it.” (These are long pieces, but well worth reading and reflecting on.)

Some Republican politicians are sounding the same warning. For example, former Congresswoman Liz Cheney's new book (released Dec. 5) is titled Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning. (Hear her talk about that in this Dec. 4 interview on NPR.)

On Dec. 10, Sen. Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential candidate in 2012, expressed the same sentiment, although more mildly, on “Meet the Press.”*³

There is a lot that can happen between now and Election Day next November, but USAmericans must be aware of the danger of losing their democracy—and minorities, the poor, and the underprivileged are the ones who would suffer most under a non-democratic government.

We common people may not be able to do much about the ecological crisis or the crisis in Ukraine or Gaza, but we do have the power to vote and to encourage our friends and neighbors to be informed and to vote accordingly.

The inner circle is the crisis of individuals who are suffering from illness, poverty, discrimination, or personal tragedies. We pray that many of these people will experience new hope during this Christmas season. Who is one such person you can help between now and December 25?

_____

*¹ COP stands for the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. (Click here to access the UNFCCC website.)

*² Here is the link to a helpful summary of the mixed results of COP28 on The Guardian’s Dec. 14 website.

*³ See here; Romney’s discussion of this matter begins at about 7 min. 45 sec. into the program. 

In Honor of Ken Medema on his 80th Birthday

Today is Pearl Harbor Day, but since I have mentioned that event in several past posts, this one is about an outstanding man I consider to be a musical genius who was born on the second anniversary of that tragic attack. 

Ken Medema in 2019

Kenneth Peter Medema’s birth day was December 7, 1943. He was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and brought up in the Dutch Calvinist tradition of the Reformed Church. But he jettisoned his childhood faith and then as a college student at Michigan State University, he met Jane Ann Smith.

Jane’s father was the Baptist Student Union director at MSU and pastor of a small Baptist church in Lansing. In his discussions with Jane and her parents, Ken decided that “If this Baptist thing is what Christians are all about I want to be a part of it.” *¹

Ken and Jane married in 1965 and she has been Ken’s exemplary “helpmeet” and his partner in composition for all the years from then until now. Ken acknowledges that “without her input and perspectives his music would not begin to be what it is today.”*²

The Medemas currently live in the San Francisco Bay area, close to their two grown married children and four grandchildren.

From the time he was born, Ken Medema has been visually impaired. His sight has been limited to distinguishing between light and darkness and seeing fuzzy outlines of large objects.

As Ken says on his website, “I started banging on the piano when I was five years old, making up crazy little pieces on my mom’s piano. When I was eight years old my parents got me a wonderful teacher who taught me the classics with Braille music and encouraged me to play by ear.”

After college, he worked for four years as a music therapist at Essex County Hospital in New Jersey. It was while employed there that he began writing his own songs. Then in 1973, Ken left that work and began a career as a performing and recording artist—and he continues to do so.

I have had the privilege of hearing Ken perform two or three times and of meeting him personally. The last time was in 2005 when he was at the Sunday morning worship service at a Baptist church in the Kansas City area.

In my diary/journal entry for that day, I wrote “Ken Medema was…wonderful. He is one of the most talented people I have ever seen and met personally.”

Ken Medema is a radiant Christian in the radiant center. Although as a teenager and in his first years in college Ken seems to have been rather harsh in his criticism of others, he began to mellow after meeting Jane, and through the years he became a radiant Christian and winsome musical performer.

In the 1980s he and Jane became outspoken supporters of moderate or progressive Christianity, becoming ardent advocates of social justice for marginalized and oppressed people.

Jane studied at Union Theological Seminary and became the assistant pastor of Dolores Street Baptist Church in San Francisco. That church began accepting LGBT persons as members in the 1980s—and in 1989 their monetary gifts to the California Southern Baptist Convention were rejected.

But Ken has also been able to maintain an amicable relationship with conservative Christians. One of the recent YouTube videos is of the Easter Monday chapel service at Wheaton College.*³ Also, a few years ago he was repeatedly a guest at the Hour of Power telecasts. (See here, for example.)

At the age of 80, Ken still keeps a busy schedule. His upcoming performances this month include venues at Santa Ana, Calif.; Plano, Tex.; and Albuquerque, N.M.; and his January schedule includes Christ Cathedral, Garden Grove, Calif.; and the Jackie Kennedy Onassis Theater, New York City.

Truly, Ken is a radiant Christian who is a good example of being in the radiant theological center that I have commended many times. I encourage you to listen to some of his many YouTube videos—and to join me today in saying,

Happy 80^th Birthday, Ken Medema!

_____

*¹ From “Blind musical artist Ken Medema articulates his art form,” Baptist News Global (June 26, 2011).

*² From KenMedema.com website.

*³ Here is the link to that video; Ken first appears about 6½ minutes from the beginning.

** In 1977 a video was made portraying Ken’s early life, his meeting and marrying Jane, and his early musical career. If you have time, this is well worth seeing (here).