Opinion: The way of peace

Smoke rises following an explosion in the Gaza Strip as seen from southern Israel, Thursday Dec. 5.

Smoke rises following an explosion in the Gaza Strip as seen from southern Israel, Thursday Dec. 5. Ohad Zwigenberg / AP

By JOHN BUTTRICK

Published: 12-15-2024 7:00 AM

John Buttrick writes from his Vermont Folk Rocker in his Concord home, Minds Crossing.

Christmas this year reminds me of an uneasy congruency between the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territory and the Roman occupation of Palestine over two thousand years ago.

Jesus’s birth was burdened by the oppression of the Roman occupation. There was a Roman decree demanding that everyone must travel to the place of their birth and register for taxation by the empire. Jesus’s parents had to travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem where Jesus was born.

Soon after, the story goes, the family must evacuate and escape to Egypt to avoid being a victim of the Roman purge of baby boys under the age of two. The king feared that one of those boys would grow up to lead a terrorist attempt to overthrow his reign and Rome’s presence in Palestine.

Over two thousand years later, Israel, occupier of Gaza and the Palestinian territory, is consumed by a similar fear of those identified as Hamas terrorists in Gaza and the occupied Palestinian territory. The resulting war has impacted the births of children even more severely than Jesus’s birth in a stable.

They are born in the war-torn rubble of occupation. We are touched daily by the accounts of the war in our newspapers, on TV, and discussed on favorite social media sources. We are updated daily on the numbers of children killed and injured in the Israeli Gazan war, as well as the buildings and infrastructures destroyed, the hospitals attacked, and Israeli military orders to thousands upon thousands of civilian Gazans to evacuate from an area of a planned attack to go to another area just as dangerous. It is a tragic account of brutality and abusive political ideology of an occupying power.

We read less about the conflict in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. “According to new data gathered by the left-wing Israeli NGO Kerem Navot, which monitors Israel’s dispossession of Palestinian land in the West Bank, at least 57 Palestinian communities have been forced to flee their homes since October 7 as a result of Israeli settler attacks.”

The World Health Organization has reported more than 600 Israeli attacks on healthcare facilities and workers in the occupied West Bank since the Israeli war on Gaza began on Oct. 7, 2023.

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According to OCHA, between Oct. 7, 2023, and Oct. 21, 2024, 732 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Between Oct. 14 and 20, eight Palestinians were reported killed in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. During this period, there were at least 147 Israeli Forces operations recorded inside the West Bank, including inside refugee camps. Israel’s justification for these actions is “security.” It is similar to the Pax Romana, 27 B.C.E. to 180 C.E. Very little has changed.

This brings us back to one of the oft-quoted lines at Christmas, “Peace on earth and goodwill to all people.” In contrast, the One whose birthday we celebrate, after going through the trauma of living under occupation, stood on a hill overlooking Jerusalem and said, “If only you knew the way of peace.”

Yet all of the music, glitter, “Merry Christmases,” purchasing and giving gifts, the lights on the tree, the special food and drink, Santa and reindeer, and Christmas Eve worship all cry out, “We know the way of peace!” Could this be the year we put our knowledge to the test?

Where is the way of peace in the Gaza war and West Bank oppression? Where is the way of peace in United States military aid to Israel? Where is the U.S. president-elect’s way of peace in his vengeful pronouncements, immigrant policies, and income protection for the wealthy?

The way of peace was not then, it is not now. However, perhaps Christmas this year may break away from the injustice of Pax Romana and Israeli apartheid. Perhaps the way of peace is the path into the future: a vision, an aspiration, a hope to be fulfilled. Perhaps the way of peace will become congruent with life in the future.