“You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbour and hate your enemy.' But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.”
Matthew 5:43-45
This may, as Martin Rees said three weeks ago, be the first century out of the forty-five million in our planet’s history when the future lies in the hands of humanity, but the past week has shown us how desperately thin is the shell protecting human civilisation. It's not possible to switch on any news at present without witnessing the outpouring of aggression and hate that has followed the Hamas atrocities on 7th October.
The violent history of the Middle East goes back for over three thousand years, and there has been very little easing of tensions over the past eighty years to prevent atrocities such as these from turning into major international crises, as shown in the BBC's historical analysis.
At an individual level we can all witness — and often experience — how insecurity leads on to a warrior response, so it's not surprising that this sequence is replicated at a national level. But unbridled revenge only leads to an escalation of the cycle of violence and, in a world which possesses such an arsenal for mass destruction, we have to learn how to deal with insecurity in a way which promotes rather than destroys international harmony. Unfortunately, unsubstantiated calls for ‘restraint’ are not the answer: we need to find a new logic to avoid local criminal aggression from turning into international disasters.
The clue for tackling this natural instinct for unbridled revenge lies in the rule of law, which so many countries have established over the past two hundred years. At an individual level, people are not allowed to take matters into their own hands beyond ‘reasonable self-defence’, but must give way to policing and the law to deal with assaults of all kinds. We may not always agree with the outcome, but nearly all citizens recognise that peaceful co-existence rests on respect for the law.
The European Community has provided a valuable lead on how these principles can graduate from national to international significance. After the First World War, reparations forced on Germany were so vindictive that tensions and distrust gave way to the charismatic aggression fomented by Adolf Hitler.
Following the devastation of WW2, a new approach was taken in the formation of the European Community and the Marshall Plan for rebuilding the economic infrastructure of post-war Europe. This may not have achieved integrated political control, but it did establish a rule of law which all member countries not only recognise but also continue to respect.
It's high time that the United Nations should take a lead from this experience, and that its member countries should strengthen the common approach to international law so that it can apply appropriate sanctions and enforcement at not only a national but also an individual level. This may not provide instant solutions to dealing with atrocities such as the kind we have just seen in Israel, but it has to be better than creating such devastation as we are now witnessing for the two million inhabitants of Gaza.
There are, of course, other ways to encourage nations and their populations to live in peace and harmony with each other: for example, many will recognise the huge role played by international sport in bringing people together for peaceful interaction, and in finding ways for international competition without resorting to violence.
However, we've not done nearly so well when it comes to economic inequality, and the contrast between developed nations — including Israel — and the squalid poverty of those living in Gaza for decades must have contributed to the tension which has fuelled the Hamas atrocities.
This shows yet again why we need urgently to find more egalitarian ways of operating capitalism. Immense polarisation of wealth gives rise to massive tensions, and sometimes it only takes a spark to turn that smouldering resentment into fire.
In the context of the Middle East, that's not just a challenge for Israel. There's immense wealth in surrounding Arab countries following the past one hundred years of exploiting their fossil fuel reserves, but little of it reaches those fourteen million Palestinian Arabs living in Gaza, the West Bank and elsewhere.
There are, therefore, two significant ways in which human civilisation can move away from unbridled revenge: a determined expansion of international law and enforcement, and a fairer sharing of the world's resources and wealth creation, with particular focus on young people.
The Christian teaching to ‘love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you’ is one of the most difficult to follow, but the concept of restorative justice with its five principles of relationship, respect, responsibility, repair and re-integration does point to a way in which it can be achieved.
Therefore once the knee-jerk calls for ‘wiping people off the face of the earth’ together with, at the other end of the scale, those pleas for unsubstantiated restraint, have subsided, perhaps we can plan a new way forward which not only reduces tension but which also dispenses with ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for tooth’ as the basis for a civilised society.
Gavin Oldham OBE
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