Below are posts associated with the “2023 Gaza war” tag.
🔗 linkblog: Palestinian deaths in Gaza rise above 50,000 as Israel expands its military campaign
50,000 is roughly as much as all students, faculty, and staff at the University of Kentucky. The whole university gone.
🔗 linkblog: Palestinian death toll in Gaza soars past 25,000 with no end to war in sight : NPR'
1,200 deaths is an enormous tragedy. What does that make 25,000 deaths?
🔗 linkblog: ‘God Is Under the Rubble in Gaza’: Bethlehem’s Subdued Christmas - The New York Times'
Again, what’s going on isn’t bad because it happens to touch on things significant to Christians, and it’s bad when Christians only care about Palestine and Israel because it fits with their religious worldview. Yet, it would be a missed opportunity to talk about Bethlehem this Christmas season without asking about the West Bank, Israel, and Gaza, and how to make a better world for everyone there.
🔗 linkblog: With war raging in Gaza, Christmas in Bethlehem has been canceled : NPR'
As I’ve written before, I’m skeptical when Christians see the Middle East uniquely through the particularities of our beliefs and tradition—there’s so many ways that can (and does) go wrong. Yet, if we’re going to sing and preach about Bethlehem this year, we ought to use modern Bethlehem to get us thinking about a better world for the West Bank, Israel, and Gaza.
🔗 linkblog: This Palestinian American professor leans on his Quaker faith during conflict : NPR'
I’ve been wanting to learn more about the Quaker faith, and this example only reinforces that.
Bethlehem in the Nativity and in the West Bank
Earlier this year, I read Guy Delisle’s excellent comic Chroniques de Jérusalem twice in the course of two months. I began by finally checking out the English translation from a local library to give it a try (I like Delisle, but I’d had trouble getting into this particular comic in the past). Then, as I was getting into it, my brother-in-law texted me from New York to say he was stopping by a local French bookstore and ask if I wanted anything. I wanted the original French version, he picked it up, and I immediately reread the book (is it rereading if it’s in two different languages?) as soon as it arrived.
🔗 linkblog: Gaza Civilians, Under Israeli Barrage, Killed at Historic Pace - The New York Times'
I had been reading and thinking about non-violence for months before the 2023 Israel-Hamas war started, but its outbreak is making me more committed to the idea than any abstract philosophical argument.
I’m more inclined than ever before to believe that military force can never be justified, and I think that’s especially true in cases where civilians are deliberately targeted (or allowed to be caught in the attack). Hamas’s attack on Israeli civilians is unjustifiable, the IDF’s seeming disregard for Gazan civilians is unjustifiable, the U.S.’s bombing of German and Japanese cities during World War II was unjustifiable, and the list goes on.