Home by Another Road: Nonviolence, Ceasefire, and Peace in the Middle East

Post Author: Lauren Grubaugh Thomas

“And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, (the magi) left for their own country by another road.” Matthew 2:12, NRSV

After successfully following the star to meet the Christ Child in Bethlehem, the magi were supposed to return to Herod’s palace in Jerusalem to report on the child’s whereabouts. At least, this is what the imperial puppet king had ordered them to do. But the magi are considered wise for a reason: as seekers of truth, they were sensitive to the subconscious insights that can surface when the thinking brain is subdued by sleep. They took seriously a foreboding dream and followed an alternative route home. In doing so, they effectively refused to cooperate with a state-sanctioned genocide targeting children. 

The creative response of the magi to a holy nudge in a new direction is a source of consolation and inspiration. I am consoled that the Spirit of God is always inviting us into life-affirming action, and I am inspired that, no matter how dire the circumstances, refusing to cooperate with oppression is always an option. Sometimes stories in Scripture seem so far from today’s world; sometimes those stories feel like reading the story behind today’s news headlines. We learn from this story in Scripture, even while reading the headlines, that there is always another way home – to our true selves, to our God, and to one another.

Since Israel’s declaration of war on Hamas on October 8, a child has been killed in Gaza an average of every ten minutes – around 130 children every day. Gaza is now considered the “most dangerous place in the world to be a child,” according to UNICEF. Citizen journalists have brought the intensity and scale of the suffering of Palestinians to the palms of our hands, revealing via social media the devastating effects of Israeli air strikes (via US-supplied bombs) which have flattened entire city blocks, including hospitals, schools, and churches. We have seen horrors we can never unsee: Parents wail to the heavens as they gather up their children’s bodies in pieces. Children cry out from under buildings for their families to be saved first. Decomposing bodies of premature babies are found in the neonatal units of targeted hospitals. 

It is understandable to feel frozen in the face of so much trauma. There have been a number of days when I have felt shrouded in a thick, depressive fog. Yet we all have a collective responsibility to stay sensitive to the Spirit and go home by another way – to refuse to cooperate with this genocide by every means available to us. Nonviolence is another way, part of the soulful revolution as both spiritual practice and political praxis. Would that every Gazan child were to us as the Christ Child, that we might choose another way: the road of nonviolence over the path of fear; a destination of humanity rather than winner-take-all vengeance. 

Ceasefire is the baseline of solidarity for those of us in the international community. The bombardment must be interrupted to allow for access to medical care and food (the UN reports that half of Gazans are starving), for those still alive under the rubble to be rescued, and for those living to bury their dead. The cycle of violence only serves to enact a lasting mental heath toll while radicalizing those targeted and maiming the souls of those causing harm (many of whom already bear tremendous intergenerational trauma). To call for ceasefire is to resist the lies that war is peace, that might makes right, that violence makes for security, or that there is ever a real winner in war. This is about walking with the One who is the way, the truth and the life.

Beyond ceasefire, we need to be clear that liberation – from occupation, oppression, and their basis in supremacist ideologies that hierarchize human worth – is the long term work to which we are called. Coming home to one another requires a courageous examination of entrenched patterns of power and privilege and the building up of systems that help protect justice and equity. A recent Sojourners article featured Palestinian activist Ali Abu Awwad, founder of the Taghyeer nonviolence movement. Awwad – who engaged in a 17-day hunger strike while in an Israeli prison – said, “Nonviolence is not just about having a dialogue with Israelis. Dialogue is just a tool. My goal is not to have a dialogue; my goal is to solve this madness. Dialogue will not change the conditions of Palestinian daily life when it comes to legal rights.”

Persuasive protest is one means of agitating for material change, with this Open letter from Christians in the US and Canada to End the Nakba being a prime example of the way clergy can raise our voices in dissent to the status quo. Participation in boycotts, divestment and sanctioning are even more potent. Research shows that when just 3.5 percent of a population engages in sustained participation in these kinds of strategic actions (and other forms of nonviolent intervention and noncooperation) change has never failed to occur. Other means of refusing to allow our economic power to fuel death include war tax resistance and general strike. 

Lauren’s protest sign at a recent solidarity action for Palestine in Denver, CO

Withholding our cooperation from inhumane systems, we return home to our God-given humanity by another, nonviolent, way. With sensitivity to the Spirit of God who is always calling us to see and stand for the humanity of all people, we can courageously express our humanity with love in action.

I am particularly convinced by Palestinian Christians that this is how we come home to one another as the beloved children of God. I recently interviewed the Rev. Leyla King, a Palestinian American Episcopal priest and YCWI alum in Austin, Texas. She attributes her call to ministry to her grandmother’s faith, which brought her through the Nakba, the violent expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians from their homes in 1948 in order to establish the modern state of Israel.

Reflecting upon the pain and suffering of recent months and the last 75 years, Rev. King said: “Forgiveness does not come easily to me. And, I recognize that it is the only way out of cycles of hurt and hate and pain. And that we are called to do it. In order for forgiveness to happen you have to have some hope that justice will also happen and truth will be told. I am able to forgive only because I have faith in the goodness of God that in some way, at some time, the truth will come out and justice will reign.”