by Martin Davie
On the 22 May this year, the House of Bishops issued a statement about the war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas. I do not normally comment on political matters on this blog, and I wish I did not have to do on this occasion since I am fully aware that I will be accused of not caring about the suffering of the people of Gaza or supporting the present Israeli government (neither of which are true).
However, given that I am unaware of anyone else having done so, I feel I have duty as a theologian to respond to the unequivocal statement by the bishops that the actions being undertaken by the Israel Defence Force (IDF) in Gaza are ‘a grave sin that violently assaults God-given human dignity and the very integrity of God’s creation.’ The accusation is not just that what the IDF is doing is regrettable or tragic, but that it is a ‘grave sin’. That is a very serious theological accusation and in the remainder of this blog I want to ask a series of questions about whether what the bishops say in their statement gives grounds for believing that this accusation is fair.
It is, I think, particularly important for Christian theologians to ask such questions because the kind of accusations levelled against the IDF, and by extension the state of Israel as a whole, by the bishops has been an important factor in the current rise of antisemitism across the world and therefore, if this accusation is untrue, it needs to be publicly challenged. Silence is not a moral option.
The bishops’ statement runs as follows. I have numbered the paragraphs for ease of reference.