FATHER FRANK’S RANTS - Eyeless in Gaza‏

Rant Number 334 5 January 2009

Eyeless in Gaza

The death of Samson, the Hebrew hero, is the most glorious case of ‘suicide’ in the Bible. It happened in Gaza, the unhappy city now hammered by Samson’s pitiless posterity. This afternoon, as I was being interviewed by Press-TV about the humanitarian catastrophe there, proudly wearing my Palestinian scarf, I imagined Samson’s eyeless shadow still haunting the land of his exploits. Is he trying to tell us something?

Born in answer to a prayer, and bound throughout his life by a special vow to the Lord, Samson was a man of prodigious strength, capable of titanic feats. Such as slaying a lion with is bare hands and carrying the massive gates of Gaza on his shoulders to a hilltop. (Read all about it in Judges, chapters 13 to 16.) Later, armed only with the jawbone of an ass, he killed a thousand enemies. No one could withstand him. Until – cherchez la femme! - he fell in love with a woman called Delilah. ‘The secret of my strength lies in my hair’, he unwisely confided to her. So crafty Delilah made him sleep on her knees and, the seven locks of his hair shaved off, at once the hero’s strength departed. The heathen Philistines hence gouged out Samson’s eyes and brought him in chains to Gaza, to ground in prison at a mill. As his hair grew again, however, the hero’s strength returned. He took his revenge in pulling down the pillars of the temple of Dagon, the Philistine god, where thousands of his tormentors were gathered. ‘Let me die with the Philistines’, he cried out. So indeed he perished.

Eyeless in Gaza. John Donne, priest, poet and Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral, regarded Samson as an emblem of Christ. A type, a token, a foreshadowing of the Deliverer to come. Hmmm… Tricky. Like Christ, Samson died for his people, yes, but, unlike Christ, he revelled in revenge and bloodshed. The hero’s death was definitely voluntary suicide, Donne claimed. Hence St Augustine was wrong when he argued that the Holy Spirit had guided Samson’s action in the temple, which would rule out self-killing. In fact, the Bible has Samson address God in prayer before shaking the pillars. Although Scripture is silent, who knows whether God may not have spoken back? Anyhow, for Christian ethics suicide is a grave sin. Indeed, suicides were normally refused burial in consecrated ground.

Eyeless in Gaza. Samson was blind but he his mind perceived clearly what he had to do. By hypothesis, God guided him. The question is: have Samson’s problematical heirs, the Israelis, eyes to see? Do they have hearts that feel compassion? Humane minds that can judge, see the difference between right and wrong? Justice and injustice? Do they not see the massacres of the innocents, the slaughter of women and children of Gaza? Don’t their televisions show the swamped hospitals, the blood-soaked clothes, the weeping mothers and fathers, the terrified old people? The pathetic tiny corpses of little kids? Their eyes closed, last night on the News three children looked almost asleep, maybe ready to get up, looking for their toys and resuming their childish games. Instead, death, the spoiler of worldly mansions, the steward of the graveyard, the annihilator of happiness, possessed them. The tragedy is: why did those children have to die such an untimely, cruel death? Why?

I told Press-TV how the huge billows of smoke caused by the Israeli bombs rising over Gaza appeared to me almost satanic. I felt there was something nearly demonic about that smoke. Because of the now well-documented quasi-indiscriminate nature of the strikes. I added that going up in smoke were not just the houses, the dwelling and the lives of the victims, the poor Palestinian people. Going up in that smoke I thought I also saw the honour, the reputation, any presumed ethical character of the policies of the state of Israel. Samson’s self-immolation brought about the destruction of his enemies. The current Israeli actions, by contrast, look like self-inflicted harm. Their bombs kill fighters but mostly the innocent - thus destroying any moral status the perpetrators may possibly claim. Suicide, yes, with no likely redemption I can foresee…

Yet, the Manichean temptation must be resisted. This is not a struggle between light and darkness. Hamas too is guilty of brutal wrongs – even against fellow Palestinians, for example, when it engaged in savage, fratricidal killings of Fatah people last year. And to call for targeting of Jews abroad is sheer madness – as well as a gift to the Israeli propaganda machine.

Hamas is basically a resistance movement to occupation but it should be realist. It should not be eyeless but far-sighted. It should accept that the state of Israel is there to stay. It is fantasy to argue, as it sometimes does, that the Israelis will vanish from the Holy Land, as the Crusaders did way back. The alternative is a nuclear war – I hope to God no one is crazy enough to wish that.

Certainly, not all Jews are morally eyeless. Far from it. Noam Chomsky, Gilad Atzmon, Ilan Pappe, Norman Finkelstein, the Neturei Karta people: only a few names amongst many. Noble Jews who at dear cost to themselves uphold the best ethical and spiritual heritage of God’s ancient people. An extraordinary people which, to quote Pope John Paul II ‘continues to bear signs of divine election.’ Actually, John Paul was echoing the Apostle Paul. Check out Romans, 9 to 11. God’s plan for His chosen, holy nation – it is all prophesied there, have no fear.

Eyeless in Gaza. The ongoing bloodshed may seem to make appeals to peace and reconciliation piously utopian. To despair, or even to be cynical, however, is morally one-eyed. (The one-eyed in Islam is Dajjal, an Anti-Christ figure.) You need both eyes to understand, and to fully respond to what’s happening. Above all, you need the eyes of faith. Faith in the One True God. The Father of us all. The God of Peace. Faith in His peace is the only guarantee that ultimately, beyond fire, blood and sword, it is the men of peace that will prevail.

Revd Frank Julian Gelli

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