A few weeks ago, I met a woman who asked me a question that has wriggled through my mind every time I think about the War in Gaza.
She said her family is Jewish, and when she heard about the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, her heart broke. She has family in Israel who have lived in fear every day of their lives. Military states on all sides point weapons in their direction. They are small. The threats are unfathomably big.
But then, she said, her children have been learning about the suffering in Gaza. They learn that Palestinians also live in fear every day. Palestinian settlements are even tinier than Israel, and Israel’s military points in their direction, backed by the unfathomable military might of the United States.
She asked me, when everybody is suffering, and everyone is afraid, who do you support? Who deserves your empathy?
I think the answer many of us choose by default is no one.
This week I heard two speakers who explained how to choose otherwise.
Rev. Dr. Mae Elise Cannon (Executive Director of Churches for Middle East Peace) and Jonathan Kuttab (renowned international human rights attorney) came to Wheaton College this week to speak candidly about what we can do to end the War in Gaza.
They said nearly two hundred people die in the conflict every day. Over 14,000 Palestinian children have died in the past six months. Tens of thousands more suffer irreversible brain damage from starvation. 60,000 pregnant Palestinian women lack medical services. Fifty percent of Palestinians currently face an acute level of famine, and that percentage is projected to rise to 100% by July. They said whatever you call this – genocide, ethnic cleansing, war – the question remains: why are we not doing more to stop it?
They offered a couple of reasons. Fear of being antisemitic against Jews. Bad theology. I often hear another reason, and it’s what I heard in the conversation with that Jewish woman. One of the speakers, Dr. Cannon, called this problem by this name: oppression Olympics.
Here’s what I mean by oppression Olympics. With the decline of Christianity’s moral influence in the west, another standard for morality has filled the void. It’s a standard based upon two categories: suffering and power. Those who suffer are moral, and those in power are immoral. If you’re unsure who to defend in any conflict in the world, choose whoever suffers more, or whoever has less power. If those don’t overlap, good luck. If both have suffered, it’s a race to the bottom.
I see this pairing of suffering = morality in some shoddy research from my own discipline. Fortunately I also read anthropologists who are calling out the faults in that reasoning. But as a Christian, it stands out to me all the more starkly because I’ve also been steeped in another moral framework.
“As Christians, we fundamentally have to be against death, against killing and against violence,” Cannon said. Living by that standard might not sound controversial, but it requires holding everybody—both sides of the bombing—to a higher standard. It’s a standard where peace is the only answer.
I asked the speakers how they respond to people who get caught in the logic of the suffering Olympics. Kuttab said suffering does not justify suffering. Empathy does not require hating anybody’s enemies.
When we dole out empathy only to the groups who have proven themselves most oppressed, no one wins. Cannon said she finds it helpful to replace the oppression Olympics with Romans 12:9, “Abhor what is evil; cling to what is good.”
News media is effective at teaching us to abhor evil. As I watch the recent pro-Palestinian protests spread on campuses across the nation, I wonder how much action is driven solely out of abhorring evil. We also need to cling to what is good—dig our fingernails into peace and hang on as it dangles from a precipice.
“Peace is really, really hard work,” Cannon said. “I do not see hope.” But she understands hope through the words of Romans 8:25: “We hope for what we do not see.” Hope means walking toward an outcome you can scarcely even imagine.
So what can you do now to actively cling to peace? Here are some recommendations they offered:
Learn: Read this short free book by Jonathan Kuttab explaining the history of the crisis and outlining possible solutions. For news, use multiple sources. “Truth is the first casualty of war,” Cannon said. Read OCHA. Compare Israeli news, Al Jazeera, and more. They will contradict each other, but learn from that, too.
Better yet, learn with others. You might consider getting together friends to watch and discuss this 20 minute film.
Tell politicians. I just signed this global letter for peace by Churches for Middle East Peace. A solution might sound impossible, but there are basic ingredients we can ask for: avoiding civilian casualties, providing basic services, aiming for ceasefire.
Use the skills you have. If you write, write an op-ed. If you have connections to people of other faiths, reach out. Leverage the groups you’re a part of.
Learn from organizations that know more. Check out Nonviolence International or Churches for Middle East Peace for heaps of ideas.
Jonathan Kuttab, a Palestinian himself, looked audience members in the eye and said this:
I’m not worried about whether Palestinian people will survive. Palestinian people will survive. But will the legitimacy of the church survive? Will the legitimacy of the United States as a moral order? Will the legitimacy of international law survive?
What’s at stake here isn’t just human lives, as if that weren’t enough. Also at stake is the integrity of nations, of churches, of you and me.
Please don’t wait to choose sides with whoever wins the oppression Olympics. Choose the side of peace, and get active making it happen.