This is my second post made in response to an article by Dr. Russell Moore, 
of Christianity Today magazine. My first response, issued quickly late last Wednesday night, was a reply to Moore’s previous editorial, “American Christians Should Stand with Israel Under Attack.”
Now I am at it again.
Several days ago, I received a request from my friend Steve, who pastors a church in Northwest Washington. He sent me a new article from Russell Moore’s Newsletter and asked if I might write a response. Dr. Moore’s second article is titled “’Bothsidesism’ About Hamas Is a Moral Failure.”
Although Dr. Moore does not clearly define what he means by “bothsidesism,” he does clearly insist that there is only one moral position to take when viewing the current war between Israel and Hamas: Hamas is a terrorist organization that launched “a vicious and unprecedented attack” against Israel. Any attempt to explain Hamas’ motivations, anything that sounds like excuse-making or a justification for terrorism, has entered “a morally dangerous place” leading to “hackery,” according to Moore.
So, please excuse me while I put on my hackery hat for a moment.
One of the first lessons I learned in graduate school is that I cannot pretend to understand an issue until I have first examined all of the evidence available for all sides of a question. Knowing only how to defend one side – my side – of an argument demonstrates that I do not understand the argument well enough to talk about it. What are the strengths of the opposing views? Why are others convinced of things that I am not? Why do I think that my arguments are sufficiently convincing that I can, in good conscience, persuade others to share my opinion rather than anyone else’s?
It’s called being educated. Others may call it bothsidesism. I call it the essential foundation of a well-considered opinion.
Only after I am sufficiently educated on a subject (whether a question of war or a doctrinal controversy) am I in a position to then form a moral judgment about the matter at hand. Ill-informed, knee-jerk judgments are cheap and easy, especially when they keep us singing the same moralistic tune as all the other folks in our favorite community choir.
Condemning a well-considered educational process as bothsidesism is only a high-falutin, moralistic sounding way of dismissing the importance of knowing what one is talking about.
Explanation is not the same as making excuses. To excuse Hamas is one thing – a completely unacceptable thing. But explaining the motives behind Hamas terrorism is another thing altogether; something that can easily coexist with moral outrage over Hamas’ actions.
So, on the one hand, Dr. Moore is right. Our first response to Hamas’ slaughter of Israeli civilians can only be condemnation. All the innocent victims, their families and friends deserve our deepest sympathies and whatever humanitarian assistance we can provide in their hour of need.
On the other hand, I am able to walk and chew gum at the same time. My second response is to insist that we apply the terrorism label even-handedly.
Terrorism is commonly defined as the use of violence against civilians to achieve a political or military aim. By that measure, the Hamas attack on October 7th was a massive act of terrorism. Firing Hamas rockets (which typically lack a guidance system) into Israeli territory is terrorism.
But it is pure, unadulterated, blind prejudice not to recognize that the Israeli government practices terrorism against the Palestinian people on a daily basis, and has done so for decades. Israeli leaders boasted about their deliberate terrorism when their defense minister promised to “wipe out” the “human animals” living in Gaza.
Israel commits terrorism when they slaughter over 3,000 human beings, including more than 1,000 children, while bombing the residential neighborhoods of Gaza.
Israel has committed crimes against humanity for over 16 years by imposing a strict military blockade around Gaza, reducing the population to extreme, dehumanizing living conditions as an act of collective punishment.
The Israeli sociologist, Baruch Kimmerling, once described Gaza as “the largest concentration camp” in the world. Can you blame the inmates of a concentration camp for eventually attacking the prison guards who starve them, bomb them, and dehumanize them daily?
Israel is a settler-colonial, apartheid state that continues the state-sponsored land theft begun in 1948. The official government term is
“Judaization.” All throughout Israel and the West Bank “legal” mechanisms are applied to dispossess Palestinian land-owners and replace them with Jewish settlers, settlers who frequently attack and kill innocent Palestinian civilians. (For more on the role of the Israeli military in Israel’s Judaization process, see my book Like Birds in a Cage.)
I can’t help but wonder if Dr. Moore has ever expressed the same moral clarity in writing an editorial condemning Israeli war crimes as he now possesses in condemning the recent Hamas attacks. At several points in his essay, he offers the bland bromide that we cannot grant “unthinking acceptance of anything the modern state of Israel does,” but when and where has Dr. Moore ever publicly criticized Israeli actions in the way he now justifiably criticizes Hamas?
I am happy to be corrected, but I suspect that he never has. In general, Israeli crimes are quietly accepted. Only Palestinian crimes are condemned.
So, excuse me while I find Dr. Moore’s warnings about bothsidesism to be a one-sided excuse for poo-pooing those who are working to describe an educated appraisal of the way war crimes beget war crimes.
It’s long past time to extend our criticisms even-handedly to both sides. For Hamas and Israel are both guilty. While Israelis and Palestinians are all suffering.