Have you ever seen the sticker on the back of someone’s much loved car: “You touch my car and I smash your face”? That’s the law of the jungle – unlimited revenge. From the earliest days Israel was given a higher principle: “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” limited the response of a wronged party in terms of what we now call proportionality. The response you make must be proportional to the injury you suffered. It was a marked step forward in the principle of justice and is one of the principles still applied in international law.
Jesus took things a big step further when he added to his followers “but I say to you: Love your enemies”. That is a higher principle which has never become a standard of international law but it remains a Kingdom standard in the Kingdom of God. So how do you or I measure up to that higher standard in our work-place? And how should Israel respond to attack in the modern world?
Since Israel withdrew its troops from Gaza in 2005 and enforced the withdrawal of Israeli settlers from this narrow strip of land that borders the Mediterranean, Israel has suffered thousands of rocket attacks. In the last month the number of rockets and mortar shells fired from Gaza at Sderot and Ashkelon in Israel sometimes exceeded 150 in a day. Over 80% of children in Sderot suffer psychological trauma as a result. So what should Israel do? The rockets from Gaza are fired indiscriminately into civilian areas, regardless of international convention.
How would any other country respond? If hundreds of rockets were being fired daily from Wales across the border into England towns, what would the British army do? Suppose at first the attacks from across the border were based on a grievance that English settlers had established homes in Wales. Then suppose the British Government insisted that the English gave up their homes, even their holiday cottages in Wales, to leave Wales to govern itself internally. But the rockets continued to come, day after day and year after year. What would any country do then? What would English MPs demand?
The remarkable thing is that Israel, though under fire, continues to provide an uninterrupted supply of electricity to Gaza from its power station in Ashkelon. And this power supply continues even though power is being used in Gaza to manufacture rockets and fire them at Israel! Yes, even when those rockets put the Israeli power-station engineers themselves in danger!
Israel’s response is to continue humanitarian supplies across the border, to continue electricity supplies from Ashkelon, and at the same time to try and target the people actually firing the rockets. But when those people are seen to be using children to accompany them at the rocket launchers, Israel desists from firing at them as a matter of policy to avoid danger to innocent lives. This level of restraint cannot continue forever even when suicide bombers infiltrate into Israel to blow themselves up in shopping malls, as they did this week, deliberately killing and maiming innocent civilians on the Israeli side.
So how should we as intercessors respond? Ours is not to debate the level of proportionate response but to pray for the victims of terror and hardship on both sides of the border. But we need to go further than that. As Israel’s friends for the gospel’s sake, we need to pray for her enemies if we are to follow the commands of our Lord.
That means we pray for the leaders of Hamas, and for the leaders of Iran and Syria that train Israel’s enemies and supply them with equipment.
Even before the time of Jesus, an Israeli called Jonah was called by God to do something similar to pray for the leaders of Nineveh. Jonah ran away. But God brought him back to the task. And amazingly the ruler of Nineveh did repent and change his mind. The king of Nineveh decreed that everyone should turn from their evil way and from the violence that was in their hand. You can read about it in Jonah 3 verse 8.
Geoffrey Smith is the Director of Christian Friends of Israel.