Photo by Simon Takatomi on Unsplash

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​Supporting Pockets of Hope
​in a Time of Despair

A Jewish Hope for Palestinian Liberation
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A key idea in process theology is that God is present in human life, individually and collectively, as a fresh possibility for healing and wholeness, even amid devastation, horror, and tragedy. God is in the possibility itself, which is always on the side of life, of love, of hope. The possibility, discovered by intuition and imagination, must be realized or actualized by human beings. God needs humans to respond.

In the middle of devastation, where so many are suffering, it can be blasphemous to bring up hope, especially for those not directly affected. It is a time to lament. But it is noteworthy when a dim hope is brought up by those who know the tragedy from the inside. Peter Beinhart, a journalist and commentator who writes frequently about American foreign policy, and editor-at-large at Jewish Currents, offers a Jewish hope for Palestinian Liberation.

He knows it is a distant hope. He does not plan to see it realized in his lifetime. And it requires collective awakening on both sides. But it affirms and supports non-violent resistance on the part of Palestinians combined with a rejection of Hamas, and it insists that Jews recognize that Israel's treatment of Palestinians is "profoundly wrong." 

"In Israel-Palestine and around the world, pockets of Palestinians and Jews, aided by people of conscience of all backgrounds, must slowly construct networks of trust based on the simple principle that the lives of both Palestinians and Jews are precious and inextricably intertwined."

If we are neither Jewish nor Palestinian, we are are among the "people of conscience" of whom Beinhart speaks. We must find our ways of "aiding" the pockets of hope. This is the lure of God for us. It is not enough to despair. Yes, despair, too, is a holy emotion. And anger can be as well. But if we rest in them, paralyzed by our sadness or rage, we offer nothing to the world. The offering must come in the support of pockets of hope, nearby and afar. The support of small, beloved communities that may seem like small flowers in a very dark forest, but which are where God is present, if God is present at all.

There Is a Jewish Hope for Palestinian Liberation. It Must Survive.

Oct. 14, 2023, NY Times

By Peter Beinart 

Mr. Beinart is a journalist and commentator who writes frequently about American foreign policy.

excerpt, click here for entire article in NY Times

Israelis have just witnessed the greatest one-day loss of Jewish life since the Holocaust. For Palestinians, especially in Gaza, where Israel has now ordered more than one million people in the north to leave their homes, the days to come are likely to bring dislocation and death on a scale that should haunt the conscience of the world. Never in my lifetime have the prospects for justice and peace looked more remote. Yet the work of moral rebuilding must begin. In Israel-Palestine and around the world, pockets of Palestinians and Jews, aided by people of conscience of all backgrounds, must slowly construct networks of trust based on the simple principle that the lives of both Palestinians and Jews are precious and inextricably intertwined.

Israel desperately needs a genuinely Jewish and Palestinian political party, not because it can win power but because it can model a politics based on common liberal democratic values, not tribe. American Jews who rightly hate Hamas but know, in their bones, that Israel’s treatment of Palestinians is profoundly wrong must ask themselves a painful question: What nonviolent forms of Palestinian resistance to oppression will I support? More Palestinians and their supporters must express revulsion at the murder of innocent Israeli Jews and affirm that Palestinian liberation means living equally alongside them in safety and freedom.
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From those reckonings, small, beloved communities can be born, and grow. And perhaps one day, when it finally becomes hideously clear that Hamas cannot free Palestinians by murdering children and Israel cannot subdue Gaza, even by razing it to the ground, those communities may become the germ of a mass movement for freedom that astonishes the world, as Black and white South Africans did decades ago. I’m confident I won’t live to see it. No gambler would stake a bet on it happening at all. But what’s the alternative, for those of us whose lives and histories are bound up with that small, ghastly, sacred place?

Like many others who care about the lives of both Palestinians and Jews, I have felt in recent days the greatest despair I have ever known. On Wednesday, a Palestinian friend sent me a note of consolation. She ended it with the words “only together.” Maybe that can be our motto.