Gaza today is reminiscent of the Warsaw Uprising in 1944, when the Red Army stood back and allowed the Nazis to massacre the Polish Home Army- today Israel’s “allies” mouth calls for “restraint” while they arm the bombing and slaughter. The UK shares in this with £300 million of parts manufactured in Scotland for US fighters used by Israel (Alistair Burt, the MP for North-East Bedfordshire until 2019, and Minister of State for North Africa and the Middle East, claims it could be illegal under international law). Ending this would make a significant impact on Israel.
How should Israel deal with Hamas? Negotiation is the only ultimate method (talks are already happening in Qatar), but Israelis are fearful of the Hamas aim to destroy the State of Israel- does that involve killing Israelis? Is a powerful exclusive state the only guarantee of security (and for Palestinians equally), or is a shared state at all possible? People are unwilling to negotiate if they think they have the power to achieve their aims (and Israel appears to think that now).
Similarly in Ukraine neither side has the resources or ability to achieve its total aims: Russia to return Ukraine to its own “sphere” and prevent its joining NATO/EU; or Ukraine to “win back” the Donbass and Crimea (Gorbachev said that Ukrainian Bolsheviks only added Donbass and Kharkiv to their state to ensure the majority they would otherwise have failed to achieve- and Khrushchev handed Crimea to Ukraine in 1954, because of their “close economic and cultural ties”- decree of the Supreme Soviet). At some point negotiation and compromise must happen (though Russia can probably afford to waste manpower more than can Ukraine).
Ephesians 1, verses 15 to 21 talks of Christ “seated at God’s right hand… far above all rule and authority and power and dominion”. And chapter 6, verse 12 says “Our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, the authorities, the cosmic powers of this present darkness.”
Such language can be misunderstood (and so ignored) as “magical” and purely “supernatural”, whereas in fact it is dealing with the political realities of this world- how human communities feel driven by their fears to try to control one another (“if we don’t dominate them they will us”), and how that translates into the policies of nations and power blocs.
By contrast Jesus, who could have called together and led powerful forces of rebellion, refused to use that power, and instead made himself vulnerable by openly challenging the religious and political “authorities” of his day. But does that achieve anything? Ephesians claims that his action places him “at God’s right hand.. far above all rule….etc”- that what he did is ultimately the only way to deal with the destructiveness of human power-seeking (though other methods can restrain it to some extent). But is that credible in today’s world?
It is certainly true that tiny groups of people can “crystallise” a movement which creates space where humanity can flourish and develop, but they can be snuffed out by jealous “principalities and powers”. Confronting them is a daunting task- we are afraid to put our “hand into the flame” (and compare the story in Daniel chapter 3). Perhaps there are two kind of situations where we find the courage to do what is needed: the first if we are confronted with an unexpected “crisis”, and we act by instinct without thinking about it; the second when we have been set on a course of action for some time and its momentum carries us through a moment of extreme danger- even if we say “let this cup pass from me” as it approaches (Matthew 26, verse 39).