Embedded Hypocrisy: Hamas and the Christian Right
There is an old saying that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. Hamas soundly rejects the first and embraces the second. As such, Hamas members justify their activities, indeed their very existence, including the current campaign of violence and terror, with claims that they work to end Israeli oppression in the name of the Palestinian people.
On the surface, the argument is persuasive. Palestinian land was seized as far back as 1948 and Israeli policy during the extended and unfortunate Netanyahu era has inflamed both Palestinian anger and world condemnation. Much of that anger and condemnation is justified, especially when Israeli settlers burrow ever deeper into the West Bank, treating Palestinians living there much as the United States once treated Native American tribes living on land its own settlers coveted.
Still, while the Palestinian cause needs both advocates and to gain worldwide support, the question remains whether Hamas is the right choice for either. It is difficult to take seriously their insistence that they value the lives and welfare of their people when they gleefully commit unspeakable atrocities that demand overwhelming retaliation, and then take hundreds of innocent Israelis hostage, everyone from eighty-year-olds to young children.
That this response would cause death and destruction inside Gaza was no secret to the Hamas leadership. They counted on it. Israeli counterstrikes, they had convinced themselves, would spark an all-out regional war from which, they, Hamas, would emerge more powerful and influential.
But what about the thousands of innocent Gazans who would die and the hundreds of thousands who would lose their homes and their livelihoods? Prompting devastation seems an odd way to protect those whose fortunes you claim to cherish.
For this Hamas retreats to the glory of martyrdom, but that rings hollow as well. Even if they are correct that any of their fighters who die in battle will go to heaven as martyrs, that happy fate does not await anyone else.
As one Muslim scholar wrote, “At least in early Islam, the application of the term martyr was not limited to the person who is killed in the way of God on the battlefield. Martyrdom is an act of jihad (striving) in the way of God. Jihad, however, contrary to the commonly view held in the West, is not simply militance…it is the jihad against one’s own soul and in society.”
Whichever definition is adopted, martyrdom is only achieved through active and personal choice. How then can Hamas, by embedding themselves in mosques, schools, and hospitals, justify instigating the deaths of thousands of their fellow Muslims who they made certain would be given no choice?
In fact, Hamas has proved themselves little more than self-aggrandizing hypocrites, contorting a tragic situation for their own gain, with no real interest in improving the lives or fortunes of those they claim to represent. They diverted millions of dollars of aid to build tunnels and purchase munitions as well as enriching themselves at Gazans’ expense. (There are reports that the group is worth as much as $1 billion.) One reason Israel initially targeted the most upscale sections of Gaza City is because that is where the Hamas leadership lived.
Israelis came to the sad realization that only if they were not deterred from retaliation that might lead to the death of some or even all of hostages could they protect themselves from facing the same agonizing decisions in the future.
Which brings us to the United States and the Christian Right.
Like Hamas hiding behind the Quran, proclaiming oneself a Christian and announcing that every key government decision demands prayer before a choice is made, seemingly with God’s approval, absolves the person praying from any responsibility for the aftereffects of that decision. Thus, forcing a twelve-year-old girl who has been raped to bear the rapist’s child can be passed off as God’s will, although, since these same Christians regularly vote against childcare, God does not seem interested in what happens to that child after it is born.
Mike Johnson, the new default Speaker of the House, when asked how others can know how he feels about any issue, replied, “Well, go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it. That’s my worldview.” Johnson is proud of using the Bible as a political science text and takes its words literally. It does leave one to wonder how he feels about Ephesians 6:5, “Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ.”
There goes the 13th Amendment.
In fact, this new group of self-proclaimed Christians are, quite cynically, promoting policies their constituents will vote for but that God, who is supposedly benevolent and loves all His children equally, would abhor. (Nothing is more telling than, after a string of shellackings at the polls, the calls by many Republicans to rethink their position on abortion. God must have changed His mind.).
With this and many other issues, gun safety, for example, just as Hamas uses innocent civilians to shield themselves from attack, the Christian Right employs convenient interpretations of Scripture for the same purpose. And just as the Israelis learned that the only way to defeat an intractable enemy employing such tactics is to cut the ground out from under them, those in government who care about what Christianity—or Judaism or Islam, for that matter—actually promulgates must denounce these modern day Pharisees, publicly, vocally, and indefatigably, for the hypocrites they are.
God would approve.