The Reformed Pastor

The editor of First Things, Joseph Bottum, has posted the following on the magazine’s Web site:

Fr. Richard John Neuhaus slipped away today, January 8, shortly before 10 o’clock, at the age of seventy-two. He never recovered from the weakness that sent him to the hospital the day after Christmas, caused by a series of side effects from the cancer he was suffering. He lost consciousness Tuesday evening after a collapse in his heart rate, and the next day, in the company of friends, he died.

My tears are not for him—for he knew, all his life, that his Redeemer lives, and he has now been gathered by the Lord in whom he trusted.

I weep, rather for all the rest of us. As a priest, as a writer, as a public leader in so many struggles, and as a friend, no one can take his place. The fabric of life has been torn by his death, and it will not be repaired, for those of us who knew him, until that time when everything is mended and all our tears are wiped away.

It is a sad moment for the church catholic in America–he will be sorely missed, not least by me. It is a time of rejoicing in heaven, however, and a time to glorify God for the great gift of a truly marvelous Christian thinker and leader.

It’s a strange world we live in. Once upon a time, doctors had a duty to “do no harm,” and certainly not to kill their patients. Now, in the view of the supposedly foremost bioethicist in Great Britain, doctors who refuse to kill their patients are “genuinely wicked.” According to LifeSite News:

Speaking to a group in Belfast last night, Mary Baroness Warnock, a leading voice in British bioethics, said that doctors who refuse to cooperate in assisted suicide are “genuinely wicked.”

Following a theme of previous comments in which she said that the elderly and people with dementia have a “duty to die,” Warnock said, “There are doctors, we know, who don’t pay any attention [to a patient’s desire for suicide].

“But that seems to me a genuinely wicked thing to do – to disregard what somebody had quite explicitly said, that he wants to die – not to be resuscitated in certain circumstances and in certain circumstances to be helped to commit suicide.

“I believe that if someone is diagnosed as having the beginnings of Alzheimer’s or dementia, at that stage it is a positive duty that doctors should talk to them about what will happen when the moment comes where they reach steep decline.”

The conflation of do-not-resuscitate orders with helping people to commit suicide strikes me as positively dishonest, as if there’s no moral distinction between not engaging in heroic measures when a person has died and actively killing someone. As for the “genuinely wicked,” one can only hope that British doctors will continue to take their profession as healers seriously, and not become the executioners some would like them to be.

The PCUSA’s Witherspoon Society, apparently acting on the principle that politics outweighs everything else, has put an essay on Gaza on its Web site from an unusual source. The writer is Starhawk, a self-proclaimed “witch” who is one of the leading lights of modern paganism. She’s also Jewish, which I guess is supposed to give her insights into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict extra heft. It doesn’t; if anything, it makes what she writes all the more ridiculous, if not pathetic. She starts by relating some of her (irrelevant) experiences in Gaza, and then goes on to the moral reasoning equivalent of a monkey playing with a watch:

And I just don’t get it. I mean, I get why suicide bombs and homemade rockets that kill innocent civilians are wrong. I just don’t get why bombs from F16s that kill far more innocent civilians are right. Why a kid from the ghetto who shoots a cop is a criminal, but a pilot who bombs a police station from the air is a hero.

Is it a distance thing? Does the air or the altitude confer a purifying effect? Or is it a matter of scale? Individual murder is vile, but mass murder, carried out by a state as an aspect of national policy, that’s a fine and noble thing?

OK, let me explain it to you. See, the suicide bombers and homemade rockets are designed to kill civilians. They are deliberately targeting innocents. The F-16, on the other hand, is trying to kill those who are trying to kill civilians. Sometimes others get hurt or killed in the process. That’s terrible, but while Hamas is all about killing that violates the Geneva Conventions, Israel has sent tens of thousands of messages to Gazans warning them in advance about attacks on Hamas, and pleading with them to leave the area.

“All we want is a return to calm,” the Israeli ambassador says. “All we want is peace.”

One way to get peace is to exterminate what threatens you. In fact, that may be the prime directive of the last few thousand years.

“Exterminate”? “Exterminate”? If Israel wanted to “exterminate” the Palestinians, why does she tell civilians in Gaza to evacuate before an attack? For that matter, if Israel considered Palestinians qua Palestinians as its enemy, why does it allow over a million of them to live, work, and vote in Israel itself? That’s an awfully sloppy way to conduct a Holocaust, don’t you think?

Hearing this kind of slanderous line come of a Damascus or Tehran propaganda ministry wouldn’t surprise. Seeing it on the Web site of a liberal Presbyterian caucus group is mind-boggling.

The harshness, the crackdowns, the border closings, the checkpoints, the assassinations, the incursions, the building of settlements deep into Palestinian territory, all the daily frustrations and humiliations of occupation, have been breeding the conditions for Hamas, or something like it, to thrive. If Israel truly wants peace, there’s a more subtle, a more intelligent and more effective strategy to pursue than simply trying to kill the enemy and anyone else who happens to be in the vicinity.

It’s this – instead of killing what threatens you, feed what you want to grow. Consider in what conditions peace can thrive, and create them, just as you would prepare the bed for the crops you want to plant. Find those among your opponents who also want peace, and support them. Make alliances. Offer your enemies incentives to change, and reward your friends.

This is one of the most common falsehoods that one sees in anti-Israel discussions of the conflict. The Israelis are making terrorists through the occupation. If they want peace, they should make nice. But consider this: 1) The PLO was founded in 1964, three years before Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza, and th Golan Heights. Terrorism has been the preferred policy of Palestinians since before the Six Day War. 2) Terrorist activity in the form of shelling civilian populations drastically increased after Israel’s occupation Gaza ended. 3) The Gaza border with Egypt is closed as well, yet Hamas fury is directed entirely at Israel. 4 ) In 2000, Israel offered the Palestinians the vast majority of what they wanted, but didn’t get an agreement out of Yasser Arafat, because they wouldn’t give him what he wanted most–the extinction of the Jewish state.

Does this mean that Israel has been perfect in its relations with the Palestinians? Hardly–I’ve said lots of times before that building the settlements was a huge mistake, for instance. But it does give a good idea of what Israel has had to deal with throughout its existence.

There’s more, but that’s all I feel like soiling myself with for now.

The Mennonite Central Committee in Canada has written to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, seeking an end to hostilities in Gaza. In the process, they leave me wondering whether they’ve been paying attention to anything going on in the Holy Land other than what they don’t like:

Israel claims that its attacks on Gaza are a response to Hamas militant rocket attacks on Israel. We deplore these rocket attacks. They kill people, damage property, and exacerbate the fear and insecurity that many Israelis experience.

You can hear the “BUT” even before it comes in the next paragraph.

That said,

We can go on to talk about what really bothers us, which is not the deaths or injuries of Israeli civilians.

we believe that Israel’s response of heavy bombing, with more than 300 dead, more than 1000 injured, and thousands more traumatized, is drastic and devastating, and it compounds an already serious humanitarian crisis.

It is “drastic and devastating,” and is meant to be. What the MCC-C leaves out, of course, is that the bulk of those dead are Hamas terrorists, and that Israel has been taking extraordinary–even unique–measures to ensure that civilian casualties are minimized.

Moreover, this response fails to acknowledge and take responsibility for the tremendous suffering that Israel has imposed on Palestinians through its eighteen-month siege on Gaza, and, perhaps more importantly, the occupation under which Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank have lived for more than forty years. It is this very suffering, we believe, which fuels the rage which leads to the rocket attacks and ongoing anger and unrest.

The “siege” to which the MCC-C refers is a form of flexible economic blockade. It was imposed because, after Israel withdrew from Gaza (a withdrawal about which the MCC-C seems to be ignorant), Hamas began almost immediately using the Strip as a base to attack southern Israel. Those attacks only intensified after Hamas drove Fatah, the supposedly ruling party in the Palestinian territories, out of the Strip, doing so in part because Fatah wasn’t militant enough to suit the Islamist organization. Has there been suffering in Gaza because of Israel’s actions? Of course. That’s been the point–to make the population’s continued support of Hamas terrorism costly enough to get it stopped. The pity for Gazans is that those measures didn’t work.

MCC believes that peace and security for all people in the region can only be gained through peaceful means. It cannot come from rocket attacks. It cannot come from bombing and airstrikes. A lasting peace can only be achieved as all parties, including Hamas, engage in political negotiations to address the issues that divide them.

There is, simply put, no evidence that there is any basis in reality for this starry-eyed view of the situation. Given the history, actions, and continuing political goals of Hamas, Israel has no reason whatsoever to think that the terrorists would ever negotiate for any reason or purpose than to gain a breather to reload for further war. As for “the issues that divide them,” how about this: Israel won’t die.

We urge you, Mr. Prime Minister, to call Hamas leaders to stop their rocket attacks against Israel. We urge you, Mr. Prime Minister, to use your influence to call Israel to immediately stop its bombing, airstrikes and other military activity against Gaza. We urge you to insist that all parties allow humanitarian aid to reach the most vulnerable people. We ask you to join others in pursuing political negotiations that will bring an end to the forty-year occupation of Gaza and West Bank and that will free Palestinians from two generations of oppression.

The wording of those first two sentences strikes me as deliberate. If the MCC-C had its way, Israel would stop its military action this minute, while Hamas would stop its rocket attacks when it got around to it–the lack of the word “immediately” in the second sentence but not the first is telling. But it’s that last sentence that really makes me scratch my head. Is the MCC-C really unaware that Israel withdrew from Gaza over three years ago? Is it really unaware that Hamas has been in charge of Gaza since June of 2007? Is it really unaware that Hamas has been shelling southern Israel, regardless of what Israel has done or not done militarily, almost non-stop since 2001? Or are they just that self-deluded?

Back in seminary, I was required in a Christian Ethics class to read a book by an author I’d never heard of, a fellow named Richard John Neuhaus. In the years since that first exposure, I’ve been privileged to have read several books and dozens and dozens of articles by one of the foremost American Christian thinkers of the last half century. Father Neuhaus (a former Lutheran minister who converted to Catholicism in 1990) has had a tremendous impact on my thinking, and that of countless others, about the public role of Christian faith. And First Things, the journal of which he has been editor-in-chief since its inception in 1989, has become one of the most important public affairs periodicals in America.

Word has now come from First Things that Father Neuhaus is seriously ill:

Christians for Fair Witness on the Middle East bills itself as an organization that “advocates among mainline Protestants and Roman Catholics in North America for fairness in the churches’ witness on issues related to the conflict between Israel and it’s [sic] Arab neighbors.” It takes the mainline churches to task in a press release for the response of some of their leaders to recent events in Gaza:

Christians for Fair Witness on the Middle East (“Fair Witness”) is greatly disturbed by the escalating violence in Israel and Gaza and the tragic loss of innocent Palestinian and Israeli lives. As many church leaders in the U.S. demand an immediate cease fire however, we challenge them to acknowledge not only the human suffering, but the political realities in the region.

“In November 2001, Hamas, which openly declares its commitment to the destruction of the State of Israel, began a terror campaign launching rockets from Gaza into civilian targets within Israel,” says Rev. Dr. Bruce Chilton, the Bernard Iddings Bell Professor of Religion at Bard College in Annandale, New York. “It was Hamas that chose not to extend the existing cease-fire on December 18, resuming hundreds of attacks on the civilian population in Southern Israel. It is Hamas that chooses, with the Israeli army sitting right outside Gaza, to continue to target civilian areas in towns behind the army.”

Actually, Hamas resumed the shelling of southern Israel (and thus effectively repudiated the cease-fire) on November 4. According to the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “From November 4 – December 16, Hamas and affiliated Palestinian terrorist groups fired 190 rockets and 138 mortar shells into Israel.”

“Maybe people don’t realize what has been going on in Israel for the past seven years,” says Rev. James Noland, Senior Pastor of Reveille United Methodist Church in Richmond, Virginia. “I was in Sderot in October 2007. Six Qassam rockets hit the town just before we arrived. We saw three blimps in the air that circulate 24 hours a day seven days a week to detect incoming rockets. When the sirens go off people have twenty seconds to get into a bomb shelter. Kids couldn’t sleep, everyone was afraid to leave their homes, people died, people had their legs blown off. It was especially disturbing to see these Qassams up close — they were built not to cause damage to structures, but to kill and maim human beings. It was terrifying. How many years are people supposed to live like that before putting a stop to it?”

Rev. Dr. Scott Ickert, pastor of Resurrection Lutheran Church in Arlington, Virginia, says “I have to put myself in the shoes of the people of Sderot and ask if some foreign country started throwing rockets at the town where my family and I live what would I expect my government to do to protect me? I think only after we answer that question in an honest way can we presume to judge what constitutes an appropriate and adequate response to Hamas’ provocations.”

It’s not just for Sderot, of course–Hamas is now able to target innocents as far away as Ashdod and Ashkelon, and may soon be able to attack Israel’s nuclear power plant and research facilities at Dimona, making the situation even more dangerous than before.

Rev. Dr. Peter Pettit, Director of the Institute for Jewish Christian Understanding at Muhlenberg College says “Hamas has claimed its place as the liberators of Palestine and the implacable foes of the State of Israel — not only of Israeli occupation, but of Israel’s very existence. We do not condone or encourage violent resolution of political conflicts, but we question some church leaders who condemn only Israel’s military action while ignoring Hamas’ courting and conduct of this war. We have to question church leaders who condemn Israel for a disproportionate response, while failing to set this action in the context of a long-term course of violent struggle to which Hamas has committed itself in defiance of Israel’s legitimacy as a nation.”

Right on. Some specific quotes to show specifically what they are objecting to would have been good (though I suppose that’s my job ), but this is a good start. Keep their feet to the fire, folks.

(Via Stand Firm.)

The American Friends Service Committee weighs in on the events in Gaza, and makes clear where its allegedly pacifist sympathies lie:

We urge you to take all steps necessary to end the Israeli attacks against Gaza, which have as of this writing taken more than 370 lives, injured thousands, and destroyed many homes and properties. The military strike is in addition to a two year-old siege imposed by the Israeli government, and supported by the U.S. government, that has severely restricted the importation of food, medicine, fuel and other essential goods necessary to maintain the well-being of more than 1.4 million people in the Gaza Strip.

The disproportionate Israeli siege and military assault continue a policy of collective punishment. The time has long-passed to end this policy.

As usual, we have the wailing about “disproportionate” Israeli action, as well as the meme about “collective punishment.” This is the contention that the Israelis have been mistreating the people of Gaza–the ones who voted for Hamas, in full knowledge of what that organization stood for and the tactics it preferred–by squeezing them economically. This is an approach that the Israelis have adopted rather than continue to occupy the Strip, or using military force on a constant basis. Sanctions are usually the preferred liberal alternative to military action, but apparently Israel isn’t supposed to respond in any way when attacked.

At the same time, we recognize that Hamas’s decision to launch rocket attacks into Israel has threatened the safety of Israeli civilians and incurred tragic consequences for the people of Gaza.

I’m so glad they recognize that.

So the cycle of violence deepens. Even today, Hamas threatens to increase the number of rockets fired into Israel in retaliation for the Israeli siege and air strikes. Israel justifies the siege and the attacks because of the rocket attacks. It’s an untenable situation that need not continue.

Yet another Middle East meme–the “cycle of violence.” The AFSC is apparently unaware that during the truce, there was little violence between the two sides. It was only when Hamas decided to take another tack, and dig tunnels that would allow it to kidnap Israeli soldiers to hold for ransom, that Israel responded, and then only to destroy the tunnels. That’s when Hamas started shelling Israeli civilians again. Is it really so impossible to see that there is neither a “cycle of violence” nor moral equivalence involved here?

Violence must be replaced with negotiations. Both the air strikes and the embargo should end immediately. Israel should engage in diplomacy with the Palestinians, including Hamas as elected leaders of the Palestinian legislature. And every effort should be made through the good offices of the Arab states to urge Hamas to re-establish the cease fire and put forth a good-faith effort to end the current violence.

The AFSC may believe in moral equivalence, but they certainly don’t believe in equivalence in practice. Regarding Israel’s actions, they are utterly unequivocal: the “air strikes and the embargo should end immediately.” Regarding Hamas, they only want more talk: Arab states should make “every effort” to “urge” Hamas to make a “good-faith effort” to stop trying to kill Israeli civilians. What a “good-faith effort” would look like is anybody’s guess, but it doesn’t really makae any difference.  No matter how much the AFSC talks the Quaker talk of pacifism, in fact they are far more concerned about certain kinds of violence than others. If it’s done by Israelis in defense of civilians, directed against an organization with a genocidal program, that’s beyond the pale. If it’s by Palestinian terrorists against innocents, that deserves a stern finger-wagging and a “good-faith effort” to stop.

The cat says it all!

(From I Can Has Cheezburger?)