Olmert vs. the Amish

So...I couldn't help myself.

I read the following headline and my mind just started making all sorts of connections:

"Three killed in Jerusalem bulldozer attack" (link, link, etc)

First I felt saddened. This kind of violence will not heal the hurt of the Palestinian people, especially of those living in Gaza. I don't agree with this kind of action. It's wrong and it doesn't help anyone.

Second, I saw this picture of the bulldozer and this video. And I began to understand a little of what the bulldozer driver might have been thinking...

- The bulldozer is a Caterpillar bulldozer of a similar variety and lineage to those used to destroy Palestinian homes throughout the past 60 years. (1, 2, 3, etc.)
- I wondered if the bulldozer driver thought he was enacting some form of poetic justice by using the same kind of instrument for a similar kind of destruction.

Third, I ran across this headline: "Barak: Israel must respond immediately to Jerusalem attack" with the followup text: "Shortly after the attack, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert ordered ministers to examine the possibility of razing the terrorist's home in East Jerusalem."

In this incident we have a microcosm of the conflict. A classic revenge for revenge for revenge situation. A Hamas spokesman is quoted as calling the incident, "the natural result of continuing Israeli aggression and crimes against our people in the West Bank and occupied Jerusalem." An Israeli journalist in a section of the Ha'aretz newspaper entitled "A Special Place in Hell" toys with branding Palestinian people as bent on vengeance and exterminating "the Jews".

This is what I don't yet want to admit: that for all these years, in 2008 no less than in 1902, what a critical mass of Palestinians want most, perhaps even more than statehood, may be as simple as the vile thrill of vengeance, as straightforward as nothing more than seeing Jews dead and gone.

Each side strives for revenge out of a sense of righteous indignation.

Fourth, my mind drifted back to the events of October 2, 2006 when "a gunman took hostages and eventually killed five girls (aged 6-13) and then committed suicide at West Nickel Mines School, a one-room schoolhouse in the Old Order Amish community of Nickel Mines, a village in Bart Township of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, United States." (Quoted from Wikipedia)

I remembered how they dealt with terrorism. They refused to think in terms of the lowest common denominator (revenge). As people of faith, believing in a God both Just ("Vengeance is Mine") and Merciful ("you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity"), they chose to relinquish their right to revenge. As a community, they comforted the hurting family of the killer as well as their own hurting families. They chose, in love, to assume the best of the killer's family. They believed he acted on his own and did not extend hatred to his innocent family.

What a dramatic difference in response!

Ehud Olmert wants to destroy the bulldozer driver's home!

- & -

The Amish choose to comfort the family of the killer!

I recognize the complexity of Israel-Palestine conflict but I still have to wonder...

How would you respond?

7/3 Update: Further discussion of destroying homes and cutting off neighborhoods from Jerusalem. link, link