Seeking Shalom: Working Toward Just Atonement

The Wrong Story

The Tales of Two Brothers

By Rodney Sadler

I am so devastated by the current crisis in Palestine/Israel… In fact, I am angry!

Angry at the leaders of Israel and Hamas, who use much the same tactics to the same ends!

Angry at the comments from people who seem to take only one side and—worse—believe that only one side is right!

Angry at the fact that this demonic, murderous activity continues to unfold and America keeps saying stupid things like “We stand with Israel” while they offer them only guns and no solutions! (If you’re going to “stand with” me, don’t leave me in a gunfight…tell me how to get to lasting safety!)

Angry that we don’t equally “stand with” the Palestinian people who are caught at the intersection of a dehumanizing occupation, the persistent loss of their land, the constant attempt to make their already-difficult lives more difficult, and the likelihood that, on any given day, they or their children may be murdered or arrested by an enemy force against whom they are never even allowed to defend themselves!

Angry that we in the larger world have not made the simplest of moves to end this conflict for once and for all; instead, we say it is intractable, and we throw our hands up and watch the blood flow!

I have to admit it: I am not just heartbroken, not just sad, not just frustrated—I am ANGRY!

But I think what I am ultimately most angry about is how we got here. This is not a forever conflict! This is not the continuation of some Biblical battle! This is not two groups who have always hated each other, refusing to be reconciled.

No…this is a conflict between brothers! (The word “siblings” would be more gender balanced, but the violent nature of this conflict makes me intentionally choose to use masculine terminology.)

I know the narrative we hear in the west is that this is the continuation of the Biblical battle between the Israelites and the Canaanites. We hear that Israel are those led by Moses to dispel the Godless, false-god-worshipping infidels. We hear that God is on Israel’s side and wants Israel to have its land!

I know the narrative that is told in Arab nations is that Israel is an expression of colonialist power! They are not the people who left this region years ago, but loosely connected Europeans coming to steal Arab lands! The Arab nations hear that they are Godless, false-god-worshipping infidels. They hear that God is on Palestine’s side and will ultimately give Palestine its land back!

I know that both of our narratives impugn the Other, demonize them, paint them in tones of deep red like blood that prevent us from seeing them—their faces, their similarity, their humanity. But what if we could actually see Them—the Other—and realize that they are really just our brothers? Well, that requires some explanation. So before I get there, let me say this…

This is a relatively recent conflict. It started at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. It is a conflict born of European colonialism. Part of the strategy used by the colonial powers was to set the people in a region at odds with each other to create endless conflict and therefore make them pliable and easier to control. And it worked!

It worked well when the minority Alawite Muslims were put in power in Syria and the Sunni majority was subjugated to them. It worked well when the Sunni Muslims were put in power in largely Shiite Iraq. It worked well when Hindu Indians were told that the Muslims with whom they had lived for centuries were not just another religion, but a people incompatible with their way of life—a people who must be removed—and then came Muslim Pakistan and a seemingly ceaseless conflict. It continues to cause problems in a host of places around the world. We saw how well it worked when European colonizers determined that some people were Hutus and others were Tutsis and that they had opposing interests, which led to a genocide of brothers in Rwanda that we can still remember!

I remember a dear Ethiopian friend once told me that if you see a nation in conflict, you can almost be assured the British (or other European colonists) were there!

This is the source of the “wrong stories” that animate the hatreds in the Land Become Unholy! Europeans with designs on controlling both the Israelis and the Palestinians, reducing their collective power, setting them at odds with each other, preventing them from becoming all that they could be if they actually worked together.

After all, it was the Germans who slaughtered six million Jews (among a host of other peoples) in a genocide that nearly wiped out an entire people! It was the European nations who refused to offer liberated Jews a portion of Europe to establish a new land where they would be safe. It was the Westerners who proposed that they should be given a portion of another people’s land as their homeland (not to say that they did not live there at some point before, but, when they “gave” them the land, there were other people living there at that point…Muslims and Christians and JEWS!).

It was these Western powers that promised the Arabs of that region a homeland while also making separate promises to the displaced and imperiled Jews. Talk about fostering enmity! It was Western powers (including Americans) that forced Palestinians from their ancestral homes—homes where their families had lived as Muslims and Christians and JEWS since…well, since they ALL were Jews! It was Western forces that created the false equivalencies of Palestinians to Canaanites and Jews to Israelites and framed a contemporary conflict as a theologically and Biblically based God-ordained call for the removal of the infidels.

[Hold on, now. Palestinians are not Canaanites. They are not idolaters worshipping a foreign deity. They are Muslims and Christians—those who believe in the God of Abraham! Oh, and those Christians—they are the offspring of Jesus’s brothers and sisters. They are the children of the original disciples. They are the offspring of the first Christians…shoots off of the original root. To claim that they do not belong to that land is to say that the Jew Jesus did not belong…and the Jew Peter…and the Jew Paul…and the Jew…well, you know where I’m going with this.

The Muslims—many of whom were descended from an original Jewish root, who were converted over the centuries—really have no other land. This was, for them, like the original Christians, the only land their families had ever known. They were farming the olive trees their families farmed in the days of Jesus! They were tending the grapevines that once were used to make Pesach wine! They are the descendants of those who did not leave—though some had changed, or had to change. But they worshipped the same God!

And they told the same stories of origin. And they all called on Jesus, and Moses, and Abraham, and Adam. These are not those infidels, idolaters, heathens, and Canaanites whom God is said to have once told Joshua to eliminate. THESE ARE THOSE WHO WERE ALSO PROMISED AN ETERNITY IN THIS LAND!]

This is a “right” story! This is a “good” story to tell. It finds its origins in the Bible and in history and in reality. The “wrong” story is a product of colonialism and the attempt to control by division. The “right” story can be seen not just in books, but in peoples all devoted to One God! The “right” story can be seen in faces that bear similar features and similar ranges of colors and similar body morphologies! The “right” story is evident in customs and cultures that are remarkably similar—in foodways and concepts of the Holy and stories of common ancestors and other almost identical ways of being! The “right” story tells the tale not of two peoples, not of two families, but of two brothers!

The Story of Two Brothers:

Yes, the “right” story is an account of a single father who had two sons. One son was born, grew up, faced conflict, and left home for an extended time to find his fortune. He lost touch with his land and his father, but he kept both alive in his memories and in his heart. He had not heard about the birth of his brother, but he longed to return home to take over his inheritance.

While he was gone, that same father had another son who grew up in the land. He stayed at home with the father. He grew the same grapes, cultivated the same olives, and raised the same grains. He kept the same customs, the same culture, the same belief in the same God. While he had heard of his older brother, those stories became faded memories. He lived his life with his father and protected his inheritance.

Then one day, the father died.

Then one day, the older brother’s life was put at risk. He was forced from his new home, his fortune—all that he had made—and his longing for home and his inheritance became a necessity for survival. When he returned to his childhood home, he found another living there. Having been gone so long, he forgot his former life. He forgot his father’s face…so he did not see it in this his brother’s face. He forgot his father’s voice…so he did not hear it in his brother’s speech. He forgot his father’s ways…so he did not recognize them as the ways of his brother. So he imagined him a thief, a robber, a squatter, a villain, a threat. Bigger and stronger, the older thrust the younger out—out of the home and into a corner of the yard.

The younger brother was distraught. Dispossessed, dislocated, discarded, he found himself on the margins of a homeland that had been forever his. His inheritance had been stripped away—by a strange man with strange customs and strange beliefs. As his tears flowed, he could not see in his brother his father’s face, could not hear from his brother’s mouth his father’s voice, could not comprehend in his brother’s ways his father’s welcome.

So these two men fought for a common inheritance of a common home on a common land, not knowing that their common father had left all he had to BOTH of them. These two men failed to see and hear and recognize that they were not two, but one—one family from one father who called on one God. And they fought and fought and fought…

Until one day, the older brother heard the younger brother, in his distress, pray. And in that moment, it brought back for him the sound of the father’s voice. In that moment, compassion softened his face…and the younger brother finally could see clearly the beloved face of the now long-gone father. And as they stood there in stunned disbelief, they realized who the other was, as they each retained their father’s ways.

This is the “right” story. This is the truth about Israel, the nation Palestine, the land, and the people called Jews, Muslims, and Christians who are blood brothers—not bloody enemies. May this story come to define them all, bring the killing to an end, bring reconciliation to their common inheritance, and bring peace to their common home! It is time we stopped telling the “wrong” story and allowed the “right” story to heal forgotten brothers who have grown tired of war.

---