Column

Change

Gaza

Israel

Leading

Middle East

War & peace

18 October 2023

8 min read

Israel-Hamas war: the courageous leadership that might solve this most intractable of problems

Amidst the horror of the Israel-Hamas war Graham Tomlin recalls the revolutionary leaders who were prepared to take the bold path away from violence and bloodshed.

Graham Tomlin

Graham is the Director of the Centre for Cultural Witness and a former Bishop of Kensington.

People walk across the rubble beside a recently bombed building.

Residents of Gaza City walk past a recently bombed building.

WAFA.

How can you say something sensible about the horror that has unfolded in Gaza and southern Israel? The actions of Hamas on October 7th were deplorable. Whatever the perceived justice of a cause, using rape as a weapon of war, kidnapping and killing babies and children, parading terrified kids as trophies of war in a pre-meditated campaign is abhorrent and indefensible. However sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, surely no-one who can imagine the terror felt by teenagers taken hostage, parents fearing what is happening to their children, or the notion of cutting the head off a fellow-human being can celebrate the actions taken by Hamas. The irony of western liberals expressing loud support for Hamas, an Islamist group that is fundamentally opposed to all the ideals of western liberalism is a strange quirk of our confused contemporary moral life.

Of course, these developments need to be seen in the light of the long-running hostility between Palestinians and Israelis, and their supporters elsewhere in the world. The issue cuts right along the already existing fissure of the culture wars, with those on the left generally supporting the Palestinians, sometimes veering into outright anti-Semitism, as the Labour party has discovered, and those on the right supporting Israel, sometimes veering into uncritical support of any action by the current Israeli government – a concession few would offer to any other national government worldwide.

The result is a depressingly familiar pattern. Since then, Gaza has endured constant bombardment, food and power shortages, death, destruction and huge suffering. The infrastructure of the enclave has been destroyed yet again, although more severely this time, leaving the problem of rebuilding hospitals, schools, houses, sewage systems that take years to construct. The people who suffer, like the Israelis who have had loved ones cruelly taken from them, are the ordinary people of Gaza. It may lead to the satisfaction of having punished the perpetrators, but will leave behind a legacy of continued hatred and resentment of Israel that will only erupt again in a decade or so’s time.

The idea that Nelson Mandela would one day wear a Springbok rugby shirt, the symbol of the oppressor, was unthinkable for the young ANC activist – as unthinkable as an Israeli Prime Minister wearing an Arab keffiyeh, or an Arab leader waving an Israeli flag.

Successive world leaders, American Presidents and international commissions have tried to solve this most intractable of global problems. And failed.

Yet other seemingly intractable problems have managed to find a way forward. Tensions between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland haven’t gone away but the violence that accompanied them has largely ceased. Racial inequalities in South Africa remain, but apartheid as a policy is discredited, and again, the threat of violence has diminished.

The common denominator in these places where deep divisions have found some resolution, is a new, re-imagined and bold leadership - on both sides of each dispute. It required a willingness to think the unthinkable and do the undoable. In South Africa it was the courageous and mould-breaking leadership offered by both Nelson Mandela and FW de Klerk. Both did things unimaginable in their respective camps beforehand. The idea that Nelson Mandela would one day wear a Springbok rugby shirt, the symbol of the oppressor, was unthinkable for the young ANC activist – as unthinkable as an Israeli Prime Minister wearing an Arab keffiyeh, or an Arab leader waving an Israeli flag. The idea that FW de Klerk would dismantle apartheid, free Mandela and fully back an election that he was likely to lose to the ANC was again inconceivable when he took power as Prime Minister in 1989.

Similarly in Northern Ireland, the idea of Ian Paisley the embodiment of Protestant ‘No Surrender’ and Martin McGuiness, second in command of the IRA in Derry at the time of Bloody Sunday in 1972, shaking hands and sharing power was literally unimaginable when the troubles were at their height. These were all flawed men, each with some measure of blame for the suffering involved in their countries, yet who saw a better way and had the courage to take it.

Israeli soldiers console each other while searching a home attacked by Hamas.

Two soliders console each other as they search a house that has been ransacked.

Israeli soldiers console each other while searching a house attacked by Hamas.

As is often observed, if the Palestinians had had wiser leaders, there might have been an independent Palestinian state years ago.

Of course, these very public gestures of reconciliation took years of careful negotiation and sensitive diplomacy to achieve. Yet they happened. And they happened because these leaders gradually recognised that the path they were walking down would only lead to ongoing mutual destruction, continued conflict and suffering. As the saying goes, an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.

This is what has been lacking in the Israel-Palestinian conflict. The Palestinian people have been badly let down by the ineffectiveness and corruption of Fatah, and the senseless Islamist terror of Hamas, exploiting the understandable sense of injustice in Gaza in particular for violent ends. Hindsight is a great thing, but if the Palestinians had had wiser leaders, there might have been an independent Palestinian state years ago, whether through the UN Partition Plan in 1947, which offered 46 per cent of the land to an Arab state, in the 1990s through the Oslo Accords or other opportunities in between.

On the Israeli side in recent years, Prime Ministers like Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu have played on the (to be fair, often justified) fear of Israelis, to offer themselves as the security candidates who can keep Israel safe by building a wall or enact tight border controls around Palestinian communities, restricting their movement, as if long-standing Palestinian resentment at the loss of their land will just go away one day if you keep the pressure on long enough.

If his vision of Zionism had won out over the more aggressive version of David Ben Gurion, might this long history of conflict have been avoided?

There have been glimmers of hope. In the lead up to the creation of the Jewish state in 1948, the Zionist philosopher and politician Martin Buber argued for the right of Jews for a homeland, yet also believed the moral test of that homeland was going to be the way they would treat their Arab neighbours. For him, the call on the new Jewish state was bigger than just to provide a safe place for Jews to live, but, in alignment with the Old Testament call on the people of Israel, was to be a blessing to the nations. As he wrote in his visionary book A Land of Two Peoples:

“A true Zionist wants not to rule over his Arab brothers but to serve together with them.”

If his vision of Zionism had won out over the more aggressive version of David Ben Gurion, might this long history of conflict have been avoided?

In the 1980s, Anwar Sadat moved from being the leader of Egypt’s attack on Israel in the Yom Kippur war of 1973 to the architect of a ground-breaking peace treaty with Menachem Begin, Israel’s Prime Minister at the time. Later still, the Oslo Accords of the 1990s offered the possibility of a resolution – land for peace. Yitzhak Rabin and Yassir Arafat shook hands on the White House Lawn, as hopes began to rise of a new dawn for the Middle East.

Yet in both cases it cost these leaders their lives. Sadat’s assassination by an Islamic extremist in 1981, Rabin’s assassination by a Jewish militant in 1995 and the subsequent refusal of both sides to build on these delicate beginnings effectively put an end to the fragile hopes for peace.

Over many visits to that extraordinary land, I have experienced two communities with much in common, living alongside one another, yet with little direct interaction, and often living in fear of the other. Many Jews believe all Arabs want to kill them. Many Gazans think all Israelis want them dead. Of course, some do on both sides, but most people simply want to live in peace without the threat of explosions or being killed, or home demolitions and feeling like second class citizens.

If I have a prayer for the land of Israel/Palestine, it is for bold, imaginative leaders. There was once such a Jewish leader in Israel. There were at the time, as now, fights over who really owned the land - the Jewish people with their roots in the story of Abraham, Moses and King David or the Gentile Roman empire, with might on their side. The question of how should you deal with your enemy was a live one. Different Jewish groups argued that you should hate the Gentile enemy and kill them (the Zealots), blend in with them (the Herodians), avoid any contact with them (the Pharisees), or feel superior to them (the Sadducees). Jesus of Nazareth came up with the crazy idea that you should love them and pray for them, and thus be true children of the God who made both you and your enemy.

Unrealistic? Maybe. And also today, perhaps much too early to talk about such a thing when emotions are so raw. Such a call doesn't deny Israel’s right to reasonable self-defence and the Palestinian right to legitimate protest. But this was the basic idea that lay behind the revolutionary leadership of Nelson Mandela, FW de Klerk, Martin McGuiness and Ian Paisley. Here were leaders who were prepared to take the bold path away from violence and bloodshed.

In each case, it took leaders on both sides to find a way forward. A commitment to such a path on one side alone is not enough. If that is all you have then you get killed, just as Jesus did. And of course, such a path does not avoid the possibility of suffering and even death, as both Sadat and Rabin found out. Yet, in the strange mystery of God’s working, even that - especially that - was the path to peace.

In the depressing cycle of hatred and death, the grieving families of Israel and Gaza, the weeping sons and daughters of Isaac and Ishmael, we can only pray for new leaders who will walk the difficult yet fruitful path of making enemies into friends.

Interview

Change

Community

Faith

S&U interviews

2 October 2023

6 min read

Cost of living crisis: faith and food banks combine to tackle destitution and its causes

The Trussell Trust wants food banks in its network to reduce the need for their services. Robert Wright finds out why the trust regrets they still distribute so much food.

Robert Wright

Robert is a journalist at the Financial Times.

A man stands in front of a food bank's shelves of cereals and boxes labelled by foot type.

Howard Wardle at Eastbourne's food bank.

When Howard Wardle was making plans to set up a food bank in Eastbourne, in East Sussex, he received little support from his fellow church leaders. Speaking in the industrial estate warehouse that has been the food bank’s headquarters since 2017, Wardle recalls how at a meeting called to discuss the idea he largely encountered bafflement. At the time, Wardle was pastor of the town’s Community Church.

“They said, ‘There isn’t a need in the town – you’re wasting your time doing it’,” Wardle says of the meeting in 2011.

Wardle nevertheless received encouragement from Eastbourne’s Citizens’ Advice Bureau, from the major of the local Salvation Army congregation, the local authority’s social services – and the Trussell Trust, the UK’s largest organiser of food banks. The food bank, of which Wardle is now chief executive, last year handed out 280,000 meals.

Yet for Wardle and the Emma Revie, the Trussell Trust’s national chief executive, it is a matter of regret that its members are distributing so much food – organisations affiliated with the Trussell Trust handed out 2.99mn parcels in the year to March 2023. The figure was a 37 per cent increase on the year before, a rise largely down to the cost of living crisis started by the spikes in energy and food prices following Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

“It’s incredibly worrying and upsetting that so many people – more people – are having to come to food banks,” Revie says.

Workers at the Eastbourne Foodbank and others nationally are following a strategy of campaigning for policies that seek to ensure no one needs to seek emergency food support. They also employ staff who help clients to navigate the benefits system, prepare for work or take other steps to find a permanent solution to their problems.

“We were absolutely resolute that enough is enough. We needed to do whatever we needed to do to reduce the number of people needing to come to food banks.”

Emma Revie

The Trussell Trust centrally provides organisational support for affiliated food banks but deliberately does not undertake functions such as purchasing food.

Revie says it adopted the strategy of trying to put itself out of business five years ago, after experiencing significant growth in demand for its services. The trust was founded in 1997 in Salisbury by Carol and Paddy Henderson, a Christian couple. Christian principles have been core to the trust’s operations ever since.

“We reached a decision point where we either had to accept that this situation was likely to increase and would always be needed or we had to decide that that was not acceptable and change the way we thought about our work,” Revie says.

The trust recognised how inadequate food parcels were to the fundamental needs that member food banks were seeing among clients, she adds.

“The reason people are coming to food banks is they don’t have enough money to afford the essentials,” Revie says. “They know it’s not going to put credit on the gas meter. They know it’s not going to pay for school shoes.”

The organisation had to decide whether it accepted as inevitable that so many people needed its services or would reorient itself towards working to end that need, she adds.

“We were absolutely resolute that enough is enough,” Revie says. “We needed to do whatever we needed to do to reduce the number of people needing to come to food banks.”

“We’re not just here to get people on benefits. If we think they can work, we try to encourage people to get into work.”

Robert Crockford

In Eastbourne, the strategy of reducing dependence on food banks has been in place from the start, according to Wardle.

“When we started, we felt it was one thing to have a food bank giving out food but another to have people not need to come to food banks,” he says.

After receiving some grant funding, the food bank took on staff to help clients to resolve their financial problems and ensure they were receiving all the welfare benefits to which they were entitled.

“We built a welfare benefits team, a debt team and a medical benefits team so that we could help clients,” Wardle says.

Robert Crockford, the food bank’s senior advocacy officer, says he helps food bank clients to navigate issues such as the two-child limit and the overall benefits cap that restrict the amount benefits recipients can receive.

The two-child limit stops parents from receiving child benefit for any more than two children if the additional children were born after 2017. The benefit cap - £283.71 for a single person living outside Greater London – was introduced in 2013. It limits the total amount a person or family can receive from the system.

Crockford explains that he seeks to help clients to explore whether they count as disabled, a carer or have some other status that might enable them to receive higher benefits.

The group also works with People Matter, a charity that helps to prepare people for work.

“We’re not just here to get people on benefits,” Crockford says. “If we think they can work, we try to encourage people to get into work.”

Revie bemoans the overall inadequacy of the benefits system, pointing out that many recipients of Universal Credit – the main income-support benefit for most people who are unemployed or on low incomes in the UK – cannot afford food.

“When almost half the people on that benefit are unable to afford food, something systematically is failing,” she says. “So do you tackle the symptoms or do you tackle the actual problem?”

That emphasis on tackling problems is clear at another food bank affiliated with the trust – in Kingston, on the south-western edge of London.

Ian Jacobs, director of Kingston Foodbank, says his organisation works closely with Citizens’ Advice to try to develop permanent solutions for people seeking help.

“We do deep-dive investigations into people’s circumstances to try to see if we can get more money into people’s pockets,” he says.

Kingston Foodbank currently operates six foodbank centres and one pantry, where referred clients can select and buy reduced-price food. Jacobs says he would like one day to reverse the proportion, so that it operates six pantries and one food bank.

Jacobs, a member of the Doxa Deo Community Church, an independent evangelical church, also makes it clear that many volunteers are working at the food bank out of Christian conviction.

“We’re always open to pray with clients,” he says.

Revie says the trust is “deeply rooted” in the local churches.

“Many of our volunteers and staff are motivated in the work that they do by their Christian faith,” she says. “Our values of community, compassion, dignity and justice are deeply rooted in the Christian faith.”

Revie points out that the trust was founded by Christians and that its network grew through approaches by individual churches to the trust.
"We as an organisation work with people of all faiths and none and we certainly support people of all faiths and none," she says. "But we are deeply rooted in the local churches and many of our volunteers and staff are motivated in the work that they do by their Christian faith,” she says.
Faith has a "very special role to play" in the trust's work, Revie adds.
“Our values of community, compassion, dignity and justice are deeply rooted in the Christian faith," she says.

“We don’t believe there should be food banks in today’s society,” Jacobs says. “That’s why we do all the extra work to make sure people aren’t dependent on the food bank.”