Anniversary of anguish

As we pass the anniversary of the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel, we are witnessing the predictable horror that unfolds when the arithmetic of revenge – “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” – is taken as an exponential license to crush and exterminate.

The Hamas attack killed 1,200 people, and 254 people were taken hostage from Israel. As of today, 70 of the hostages are known or believed to be dead, and 101 are still in captivity. More than 40,000 Gazans have been killed in the retaliatory attacks by Israel, Gaza’s infrastructure has been decimated, and famine is unfolding. The conflict has recently widened geographically to involve Lebanon, and politically and militarily to Hezbollah and Iran.

Last week, Liam Minielly published an opinion piece in The Record, our student newspaper, detailing how arms deals from the United States are enabling the Israeli attacks. Without debating the disparate words being used to describe this war effort, which include terrorism, counter-terrorism, self-defense, and genocide, there is no possibility that the ongoing violence is bringing about a solution. 

The question before us, on this anniversary of anguish, is how we might act for peace. I offer you these beginning ideas. Please add to them.

• Actively imagine peace, pray for peace, long for peace.
• Study peacemaking. Peacemaking can be art, or social work, or science, or music, or theology or wherever your passions lie!
• Courageously examine how the impulses toward retaliation and revenge act in your own life.
• Act in solidarity with the nonviolent resistance movements happening in Palestine and Israel and around the world. Write to your political leaders. Speak in support of the families and heritages of our Middle Eastern students, colleagues and friends.
• In the face of this suffering, embrace life! Be gratefully attentive to the daily acts that we can do that are life-giving to ourselves and one another.

We cannot succumb to the illogical arithmetic of violence and hatred. Even small actions for peace are a source of hope. 

Rebecca Stoltzfus, president