The Spiritual Foundation of a Future Peace in the Holy Land

The Deeper Resolution Requires Re-Humanization

If you are like me, the war in Israel and Gaza is heartbreaking.

The eruption of violence in the Holy Land hurts the heart of humanity in a profound way partially because it is the epicenter of so many higher human aspirations.

Multiple religions honor it as a sacred place, which means it is consecrated to what is best and most holy in humanity.

So when it is torn apart by violence and destruction, it does real harm to our belief that a better and more peaceful world is possible.

In moments like this, the human tendency is to choose sides and assign blame, which justifies an escalation of aggression to right the wrongs of the aggressor. But that tends to foster ever-worsening cycles of violence.

What is clear to me is that Israel and Gaza are in a tangled mass of karma that is born out of millennia of dehumanization that have hardened millions of hearts against the humanity of the Other.

For far too long, Jews were isolated, villified, persecuted, and slaughtered by those who fanned the flames of hatred of the Other. They bore (and still bear) the heavy brunt of humanity’s hardened hearts and dehumanization.

Their story of reclaiming a homeland from their ancestral lands has beauty and nobility in it. It led to a thriving and entrepreneurial culture in an area of the world that has often faced oppression.

And yet it carried the shadow side that the Palestinians were not equally respected in their human dignity or seen as equal partners in making the Holy Land live up to its promise as a beacon of light for humanity.

The Palestinians, on their side, also acted out of the patterns they had inherited to reject the aspirations of the Jews and the two sides became trapped in a negative and escalating cycle of dehumanization that has become a frozen quagmire of suffering.

Gaza became something like an open-air prison, with its people prevented from flourishing. 95% of its people do not have reliable clean water. It is a desperate place, especially with the relentless bombing that is eroding even the basics of life for two million people

The festering wound of Gaza’s isolation and abject poverty has fed the hate and the dehumanization of the Jews on the other side of the wall, many of whom do wish for brotherhood and shared humanity. Watch this emotional video of the mother of an Israeli hostage who speaks, even in the moment of her desperation, of the humanity that unites both Israelis and Palestinians.

The attack by Hamas against Israel was terrible, brutal, and wrong. That bears saying.

And the devastating reprisals against Gaza, one of the poorest parts of the Earth, only deepen the cycle of suffering. The lives lost there are equally part of our human family. Each human life lost to war leaves behind a massive trauma of grief in all the loved ones left behind.

War escalates the forces of dehumanization, which currently hold more political, military, and economic power than the peaceful people on both sides of the border wall.

I don’t purport to know the details of how this situation will be transformed but I do know the spiritual ground from which a real resolution has to emerge. It has to emerge from a shared commitment to re-humanizing the Other, to take seriously the needs, aspirations, and dreams of those who do not share the same heritage, religion, or language.

It has to emerge from the deepest principles of all the faiths that together see the Holy Land as a source of inspiration. It has to include a thriving future for Jews and Palestinians alike. It has to have space for everyone’s dreams and everyone’s needs.

And it has to create spaces to address everyone’s inherited traumas. Centuries-old lineages of trauma do not dissipate overnight. They have ingrained deep patterns of suspicion, fear, and anger. It takes remarkable people who arise within such a lineage but transcend it to hold the torch of healing and mutual respect that are prerequisites for real solutions.

While we cannot impose those solutions from outside, I do think we can all hold the space of love and prayer for all parties to remember that we are one human family and that it is to all our benefit for the better angels of our nature to prevail. Terror is beneath the sacred principles of the Holy Land. War is beneath the sacred principles of the Holy Land. And underneath both is the tendency to dehumanize the Other.

So how do we, in our homes around the world, contribute to a positive outcome? It begins in our hearts. When we can read or watch the stories of loss, heartbreak, and devastation in Israel and open our hearts to another level of understanding the traumas of the Jewish people. I have been moved by understanding just how deep the fear of the return of past persecution runs, even in Jews who live in what I think of as very safe places.

It continues as we read or watch the stories of loss, heartbreak, and devastation in Gaza and open our hearts open to another level of understanding their plight, unable to feed their families and make a reasonable life for themselves. They are also part of our human family and deserve a future of dignity.

Upon that sacred ground of truly seeing each other’s pain, we can recommit to a shared sacred mission to make the principles of our wisdom traditions real. And that requires us to see the divinity in each other’s humanity, and to champion a flourishing future for every member of our human family, even if they are not part of our closest tribe.

Can our hearts open that wide?

Can we remember that we came here to create something noble, beautiful and whole?

Moments such as this are our test.