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The joyful dancing of Israeli men swirled behind me. Fervent prayers in thick, passionate Hebrew resounded around me amid a sea of furry shtreimel hats on every side. As I stood at the Western Wall of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem — otherwise known as the Wailing Wall — I was struck by the harmony of the worshippers around me, both with their fellow Jews at the wall and with the Muslims worshipping in the mosque just behind it.
During my trip to Israel this June with Hillsdale students and other young journalists, I saw Jews, Christians and Muslims worshipping freely — and peacefully — in the same place. In the Old City of Jerusalem, Al Aqsa Mosque sits right next to the Western Wall, both only a few blocks from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
This peaceful concord of three divergent religions is only possible insofar as Israel recognizes the reality of inherent human worth. The conflict that perpetually surrounds Israel is inseparable from the battle of ideas — of what it means to be human and how we should live together on this earth. However, the battle for ideas should not be equated with the battle between people groups.
Westerners may take the idea of human dignity for granted. But in the Middle East, it’s a novelty. Just outside Israel in Gaza, Islamism, the branch of Islam that Hamas adheres to, reigns supreme with the goal, stated in its charter, of imposing Sharia law wherever it can while killing all Jews. This was the point of the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre, where, as survivors like 27-year-old Shalev Biton explained to us, Hamas militants crossed into Israel and murdered more than 1,200 of his Israeli neighbors.
Gazans have suffered immensely as well. Thousands of Gazans have died in the Israeli military offensive that ensued in the wake of Oct. 7, often as human shields put in harm’s way by Hamas. While Israel has undoubtedly done wrong in the midst of the conflict, the root of the problem is how Islamism conceives of what it means to be human.
As its charter attests, Hamas, and the Islamist philosophy it represents, denies the worth of the individual; instead, it conceives of human worth in terms of groups: are they for Allah or against Allah? As opposed to loving God and one’s neighbor, the calling of mankind in the Judeo-Christian tradition, sacrificing for Allah is the best thing an Islamist can do — even if that means using civilians as human shields. Israel, even as a mostly secular country, retains a general belief in the dignity and sanctity of individual people.
However, it would be equally foolish to reflexively condemn or applaud one group of people as it would be to ignore their ideas.
As the Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote, “The line between good and evil passes not between states, nor through classes, nor between political parties either — but right through every human heart — and through all human hearts.”
In the spirit of Solzhenitsyn, we would be wise to resist the temptation to generalize, equating one people group with evil, ignoring their humanity. Just as importantly, we must call out ideologies like Islamism that succumb to that same temptation and deny the humanity of a group of people, equating them with the evil of the world.
It’s easy to scapegoat and hard to take responsibility for our words, resisting generalizations and speaking carefully. But as Americans, we cannot abdicate this responsibility because, like it or not, the fate of our own country is deeply intertwined with Israel as a fellow democracy built on the same vision of human dignity. Furthermore, if you’re a Christian, you’re called to love your neighbor both in word and deed.
Good citizens and Christians alike should be ruthless with ideas and gentle with people. Bad ideas like Islamism should be fought because they destroy people, while even the people fully committed to those bad ideas must be treated with all the dignity and respect that becomes an image-bearer of God.
During my trip, I heard both Israelis and Palestinians express a deep desire for peace — a lasting, holistic peace, what the Israelis call “shalom.” In line with Solzhenitsyn’s thinking, this peace can only be achieved when each person recognizes and repents of the evil in his own heart, instead of simply scapegoating it on someone else.
If those of us in the West want to make a difference for said peace, we must take this kind of responsibility for our own words. We must be ruthless with the ideas that cause suffering and gentle with the people who are suffering, resisting generalizations and speaking with compassion and clarity.
And remember that both Israeli and Palestinians bear the image of their Creator.
Daniel Johnson is a junior studying philosophy and theology
