Peace at Any Price?

There's another place on the planet that I'd love to go back to some day with Katrina. I spent a semester studying in Israel and surrounds in the spring of 2000, just before Mr. Sharon ascended the Temple Mount and all Gehenna broke loose. I remember walking from our campus outside the Old City to Bethlehem, and from the northern suburbs of Jerusalem down the rocky canyon to the oasis of Jericho. It's a beautiful place full of beautiful people.

Beautiful but hopelessly lost.

I remember being back at school the following fall and reading the headlines of bombs exploding in markets in Jerusalem and Haifa. One in particular went off in a Sbarro restaurant in the New City not far from the hostel where I lived. Another man was fatally wounded when the building he was in (an interfaith learnng center that I had visited) was caught in the crossfire between the Arab town of Beit Jalla and the Israeli settlement of Gilo. It felt like my own memories had somehow been violated, even though I was thousands of miles away living in safety.

I guess that's why I react strongly against any one-sided view of "peace in the Middle East." My prayer is that some form of a two-state solution will eventually be palatable to all sides, acknowledging that certain injustices will go unpunished. But those who want to press the case for reparation to be made for every life lost--those are the ones standing in the way of permanent peace.

The former president Jimmy Carter is one such example. His latest book on the crisis is so full of inaccuracy, distortion, and cheap shots that it is hard to believe that he had anything to do with the Camp David Accords at all. He paints a more sympathetic picture of Palestinian suicide bombers than al Jazeera. Even the famous liberal legal scholar Alan Dershowitz was so hopping mad when he read it that he has challenged Carter to a debate. How exactly does this sort of thing further the cause of peace?

I am equally frustrated, however, when I read about well-meaning Christians who believe that the only road to peace is an unfettered, hegemonic Israel. Those are such that have recently banded together to write a Letter of Repentance to the Jewish people for all the crimes committed against them in Jesus' name. While I agree that such repentance is necessary and surely to be welcomed by those who have suffered, the letter does nothing to suggest that Christians have anything to offer Jews (or Israel for that matter) but brotherhood and good feelings. This is disingenuous, especially for evangelical Christians who believe that Jesus is the God of Abraham in the flesh and that his commands are equally binding to those found in the Torah.

Peace in the Middle East is surely an elusive hope, but one we should work for nonetheless. But it will certainly not be achieved by those who care more about being loved and accepted by one side or another more than they care about the greater good of peace itself. The path to peace is not ultimately good feelings or even tolerance. Instead, peace is the product of humiliation, sacrifice, and the willingness to overlook many offenses--past, present, and future. Peace is a by-product of love.

Love is not speaking truth to one side and not the other. Love is not a half-truth. Love is not withholding from someone their greatest good, namely, the complete knowledge of God as he is revealed in Jesus.

This is something that no "peace broker" or thinly-veiled political organization can accomplish. Love is accomplished when people who love God and neighbor more than self are willing to lay their lives on the line for those who don't know the first thing about it.