Allegiance to Israel Should Not Deafen the Heart of Compassion

By Norman Franklin

By Norman Franklin

The global community is convulsing with wars, conflicts, and carnage resulting from opposing sides determined to impose their will. War is hell someone once said; wars and armed conflicts are widow and orphan makers.

When elephants fight the grass suffers, is a proverb that speaks to the moment. Wars and rumors of war. There are many: Ukraine, Haiti, Sudan, the Congo, Ethiopia, Somalia, Israel-Palestine. Hundreds of thousands are perishing, millions displaced, millions of refugees daily striving for the basic needs of food, shelter, and clean water.

The global community responds with prayers and protests; neither the prayers nor the protests are congenially carried out. The world worships differently; all exalt some ethereal being, or sublunary thing as greater than themselves.

And that is the case even in America.

We are a multiethnic, multi-faith, and multi-religion nation. Christianity is the nation’s preferred faith identity. Our prayers and our allegiance are for Israel. Our faith says be a friend of Israel.

We look to the God of our faith as the Creator of the universe, He is the creator of all that exist, He is the God who made all humanity in His image.

I have bowed my head in congregations, denominational and nondenominational, as we prayed for Israel; the destruction in Gaza, the displacement of millions, the dispiritedness of families, old men, old women, and children – the grass under elephant’s feet – certainly tugs on our heart strings but is never mentioned. There is something skewed in our prayers.

Does God only hear our compassionate prayers for Israel? Does He hear us when we pray for Haiti, for Somalia, and for Ukraine? There are humanitarian crises in those countries that we cannot ignore. Human suffering, devastation of war, displacement, and hunger. Prayer is needed also. God’s love has no borders, and He is not partial to any, withholding His grace from none.

America vows to always stand with Israel, however, the prayers rising from the altars of this nation of Christians lacks compassion for the broken, the dispirited, the widows, and those in the grips of desperation. These are innocent victims of birth amid an unending geopolitical conflict between Israel and Palestine.

Hamas fighters launched a surprise attack against Israel on October 7, 2023. Hostages were taken and more than a thousand Israeli were killed. In the seven months of retaliatory strikes, Gaza has been decimated, more than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed. More than 24,000 of the war dead are women and children. Disease is spreading throughout the nearly 2 million displaced who are gathered in refugee encampments.

Hamas fighters are still holding Israeli hostages seized in the October attack. One hundred have been released. Reports are that there are brutal rapes of the women, dehumanizing treatment, and unsanitary holding cells, and some are mercilessly killed.

Things are a horrid mess. No one is willing to listen to the other. Conflicts do not arise in a vacuum. Tensions and resentments, anger and frustrations have simmered for decades. Diplomacy has failed to make inroads to any resolution. Diplomatic solutions have been attempts to address the consequences of the problem without addressing the causes.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu, South African social rights activist during the apartheid era, nailed it when he said, “We will stand and pull bodies from the river but never go upstream to see who is throwing them in.”

The colleges campuses in the length and breadth of America are awash in protest. The tone of the protests is not necessarily antisemitism, the protesters want to be heard, they want the carnage to stop, they want to see the Palestinians humanized, they want to see evidence of compassion for the widows, the children, the injured and displaced.

Speaker Mike Johnson paid a visit to the Columbia University campus amid peaceful protesters. He didn’t come to listen to the voices of the protesters, he came to affirm that America stands with Israel; he came not to promote listening, understanding and peace; he issued the threat of the National Guard deployment to quell the protests.

He trampled the grass already suffering from the elephants fighting.