The ceasefire between Israel and Hamas is to be celebrated, says George Pitcher. But true shalom demands justice too
It’s been a joy to watch those for whom Donald Trump can do no right – a sizeable proportion of the population – eat their hearts out as he wears the laurels for pushing through his peace deal in the Middle East.
Through clenched teeth, we have to admit he’s done something good for once.
Yes, it’s ridiculous to suggest that peace is sustainable so long as Hamas (and many others throughout the Arab world) want Israel erased from the atlas. And it’s true that the deal with Gaza isn’t even done until the bodies of dead hostages are returned and Hamas is disarmed. A two-state solution isn’t going to descend like manna from heaven any time soon.
Against that backdrop, Trump’s claims for his plan are simply the boosterism for which he’s renowned: “This is not only the end of a war, this is the end of an age of terror and death and the beginning of the age of faith and hope, and of God.”
Messianic, or what? And yet we have to be careful that reasonable concerns over the fragility of the peace don’t morph into illicit hopes that it will fail in order to discredit Trump. This is not “eternal peace”, as he claims, it’s a ceasefire, but we’ll do well not to make human good the enemy of the divine perfect.
Examining the roots
What we are entitled to do is to examine the difference between the two. And to do that we need to ask what peace really is. Because it’s not simply the absence of war.
Jewish theology may be a good place to start. Hebrew peace was a positive and holistic concept, closer to what the modern mind might know as ‘wellbeing’. As a greeting, shalom carries with it the wish of wholeness and prosperity as gifts of God. It was a correlation of the spiritual and the material which was active in the Jewish mind.
Ultimately, there may be no point talking about peace until justice is served
As a Gentile, I don’t mean to tell the Israeli Knesset its own business here, but this etymology isn’t just about war, nor about private sins, but relates to injustices and oppressions that destroy peace.
In ancient Hebrew thought, peace was primarily a relational and social concept, rather than an individual’s serenity and inner tranquillity. The bidding of shalom wishes something tangible and visible on its recipient, a harmonious relationship between people and peoples, including nations. It’s the word with which the risen Christ greets his disciples.
Islam contains within it the same Semitic root as Judaism – salaam isn’t just a wishful greeting, it emphasises not only spiritual peace but external harmony with neighbours and strangers. One presumes Hamas didn’t get the memo.
The heart of the gospel
It would be insufferably twee, as well as impossibly anachronistic, to suggest that Christianity can offer some sort of synthesis to these doctrines of peace, not least because they demonstrably don’t oppose each other. But peace is at the heart of the gospel and it’s true that it’s indivisible from justice.
If love is the fundamental Christian virtue in the realm of personal relations, one can claim that peace is its corresponding global virtue (with its resonance in the risen Christ’s greeting). And if peace is to be more than the absence of violence, it must be founded as much in justice as love.
Justice is therefore a prerequisite for peace. The darkness comes in all cultures when justice is delivered by the sword. It’s worth noting that Justice holds her sword alongside her scales in British iconography.
Shalom, as a greeting, carries with it the wish of wholeness and prosperity as gifts of God
There is a primal instinct, or folk memory, of this to be found in repeated demands for justice for the Gazan people - and in corresponding demands for justice for Israel in the wake of the Hamas atrocities that triggered the conflict. Ultimately, there may be no point talking about peace until justice is served.
If so, that’s a tough truth to digest. It suggests this particular peace deal, while welcome at surface level is, at root, a sham because there’s unfinished business. That’s not just something President Trump fails to understand – we all do, so long as we pursue peace solely as the opposite of war.
What we need to acknowledge is that true peace isn’t of this world. In all humility – and in the Christian blessing – it’s the peace of God that passes all understanding.
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