A Catholic’s letter to an Israeli soldier

The Israel Defence Forces is investigating after one of its soldiers was photographed smashing a statue of Jesus during operations in southern Lebanon. The I.D.F. has confirmed that the photograph is genuine. Below, I have penned a letter to the soldier responsible.

Achi,

It probably feels like the whole world is thundering down on your head right now, and I don’t want to add to that. By now, I guess it has been impressed upon you, in raised voices and by officers many ranks higher than yours, just what a gravely stupid thing you have done.

You have handed Israel’s enemies a piece of propaganda the likes of which they could never have dreamed. You have created for the Jew-haters a masterpiece of deicide, an antisemitic artwork for the ages. You have conspired to offend and disgust Israel’s millions of Christian Zionist admirers, in the United States and elsewhere, and for at least some of them this will mark a breaking point.

You have severely damaged your country’s reputation and, in alienating her friends, especially in America, you could be responsible for developments that reduce U.S. backing for Israel and therefore weaken her security. You have hurt Israel more than Peace Now, Breaking the Silence, and B’Tselem put together. I hope it was worth it, bro.

I guess I ended up adding to all the condemnation, after all. I didn’t mean to. I’m writing this, though I know you’ll never read it, because I am a supporter of Israel and I am also a Catholic. Not a terribly common combination.

If you want to verify my Zionism, which is political and not religious, just check my back catalogue. I must have written hundreds of articles defending, consoling, and extolling Israel over the years. If you want to verify the Catholic part: I forgive you.

Personally, that is, for desecrating the holiest symbol in my faith. I’m afraid I can’t forgive you on anyone else’s behalf, but while seeing the image of you smashing a statue of my lord and saviour with a sledgehammer appalled and angered me, I forgive you.

I don’t hate you, I don’t think you’re a bad person; I think you did a cruel, obnoxious, sacrilegious thing, possibly because you thought it would be funny. I don’t think you intended to wound the world’s billion Christians, and even if you did, this wounded Christian wishes you only the best in return.

Whether your motive was ignorance or bigotry, whether you acted out of belligerence or boredom, I want you to understand what it feels like for a Christian to witness the display you put on for the world. My most guttural reaction was not for the sledgehammer but for Christ’s positioning.

When the Romans martyred Saint Peter, the first Pope, he insisted on being crucified upside down in humility to Christ. He was not worthy, he maintained, to die in the manner Jesus had died. Here was a man who was going to be put to death in the most gruesome way imaginable, but his first thought was for how others would see his hanging body.

He was concerned with the image of his death and whether its resemblance to the demise of Jesus of Nazareth might cause observers to believe — falsely — that he was a creature equal in majesty to Christ. Images matter a great deal in Catholicism, just as words are immutable in Judaism. You didn’t just pummel a Christian religious artefact, you humiliated an image that reminds us of the Divine.

For Catholics, and other Christians, Jesus Christ, a Jew born in Bethlehem, raised in Nazareth, and who preached in Jerusalem, throughout Judea and Samaria, and beyond, is not just a holy man who died two millennia ago.

He is our redeemer, the Word of God made flesh, who died for our sins, sins we keep falling back into time and again, and when we do we feel as though we are Romans hammering nails into His hands and feet all over again.

He is Love, a love so intense and inexhaustible, that He accepted a commission to be a blood sacrifice for us that we might be made worthy in the eyes of God to share eternity with Him one day. Willingly he went to Hell that we might go to Heaven.

Christians love Christ as a son loves his father, as a man in the desert loves water, as a sick person loves health, as someone in despair loves hope. He is the centre of our lives. He is our lives. You might as well have taken that sledgehammer to an image of our mothers, our brothers, our children.

I don’t know what will happen to you but I hope the military authorities show mercy. I hope they remember their duty of care to a soldier who has, for reasons only he can explain, though I suspect you probably can’t, thrust himself into the global spotlight in a terrible and provocative way.

I hope the IDF takes good care of you, including your emotional wellbeing, and I would urge you to take good care of yourself. Don’t go looking for the hatred being heaped upon you. You already know it’s there and seeing it won’t change anything. Take your lumps, make your apology, and get on with your life.

Then, once enough time has passed for you to reflect on your actions, you should give an interview to Haaretz or Arutz Shtaim or whoever, and, while accepting that the blame for the crucifix desecration lies squarely with you, perhaps raise some questions that Israelis might otherwise not want to hear.

Are the IDF’s rules of engagement equal to the nature of contemporary warfare, where a single image seen around the world can inflict more harm than a barrage of missiles? Should Israeli soldiers be better trained on the minority religions and cultures of the state and how to treat holy sites and symbols?

And, finally, the big one: could the unprofessional conduct in which you engaged, like other images of unprofessional conduct by soldiers during operations in Gaza, be avoided by Israel accepting the need for an all-professional army?

Given the status of soldiers in Israel, I doubt if this question would go down well, but you are better placed than most to start a conversation on the shortcomings of a military of reservists who lack the judgement, self-discipline and strategic nous of career soldiers. (Maybe you are a career soldier, in which case I hope you get the opportunity to learn from this and develop as a warrior and a man.)

I wish I was writing this letter under different circumstances. I wish you hadn’t behaved with such wanton disregard for my faith. I wish your doing so hadn’t handed a truckload of ammunition to miserable, fetid Jew-haters and anti-Zionists. I wish a lot of things, but most of all I wish you, your people and your country well.

Yours in strained but enduring friendship,

Stephen