“At least 50,000 innocents have died in Gaza since October 2023 and the failure of the Jewish, Muslim and Christian religious leaders to join together and exert strong and repeated pressure upon the warring participants reveals the chasmic gap between religious teaching and religious-based conduct,” writes HUGH SELBY. 

The Creator is not happy, not happy at all. The aftermath of war has not brought wisdom to humans, nor have tsunamis, fire infernos, and earthquakes.

No matter how high the death toll, we humans do not learn how to thwart
“the evils that men do”. We lurch from one war to another, from one ethnic cleansing to another, always at the instigation of others who care only for power. 

Their answer to mind-boggling natural disasters is to pretend that fault lines don’t exist, to claim that climate change is a myth. They understand that most people can be fooled most of the time.

A documentary that faithfully records the unfolding Los Angeles nightmare is not a likely crowd pleaser. Investors won’t see much return. But a big-screen “natural disaster” movie with freakish winds and a fire front that moves faster than screaming humans, with lots of CGI and well-known actors, should reward investors.

Not nearly so well though as those who receive dividends from the supply of arms to the middle east, to Russia and Ukraine, to Myanmar, and to the Sudan. Surely, I will have left out a couple of war-torn places from which the far-away investors in arms profit, but where hapless non-combatants see the sunrise but not the sunset.

Killing is more remunerative than saving lives. How quickly drones became weapon carriers. Their use to deliver medicines urgently needed in remote villages to save lives hardly balances the books of life and death. 

Diplomacy has ensured only that the supply of more weapons to kill innocents continues. 

The sounds of silence

One might have hoped that religious leaders would lead the way in working together to make the killing stop. Which is not to say that some have not tried. 

Type into a search engine, “religious leaders call for an end to the bombing in Gaza” and the 2024 examples of multi-signatory letters calling for a ceasefire and peace is as encouraging as it is a cause of despair. It is despairing because these letters are only from members of Christian churches.

Type “Australian Islamic leaders calling for interfaith action on Gaza”. The results are depressing. There is a body called the Jewish Christian Muslim Association; however, two rabbis resigned from it following the Hamas murder of some 1300 Israelis that precipitated the retaliatory carnage rained upon Gaza this past 15 months. 

A search of its website is interesting only because there is no mention, not one, of either those murders or the subsequent genocidal conduct of the Netanyahu government.

Likewise, ’tis a vain search to find a Jewish religious leader in Australia calling for the carnage to stop, and for the notion of “love thy neighbour” to have room to breathe. Even in the US there is an active Rabbis for Ceasefire group.

In September, the Muslim religious leaders along our east coast released a statement that strongly condemned Israeli aggression but made no mention of the Hamas murders. Ironically, on the same page there is a call to rebut bias and inaccurate reporting.

At least 50,000 innocents have died since October 2023 and the failure of the Jewish, Muslim and Christian religious leaders to join together and exert strong and repeated pressure upon the warring participants reveals the chasmic gap between religious teaching and religious-based conduct. 

Let there be one voice

There can be religious leadership which is gutsy, courageous, not indifferent. Remember the “Truth and Reconciliation” efforts of Bishop Desmond Tutu in South Africa. Among his memorable quotes is: “God’s dream is that you and I and all of us will realise that we are family, that we are made for togetherness, for goodness, and for compassion”.

Tutu was not alone. Among the many useful, timeless quotes of the Dalai Lama is: “Hatred expressed as anger will lead to destructive action, compassion expressed as anger leads to positive change.”

In truth, the ubiquity of social media means that the influence of religious leaders for common good can be greater than ever before, but if and only if they take each other’s hands, find common cause, and speak with one voice.

We are often told of the evil done by “influencers” with messages of hate on social media. But these people are minnows in comparison with the resources available to the leaders of religions. 

The answer to pathetic graffiti on synagogue walls around Sydney is not the politics of division and fear. The answer is to build a collective message from the religious leaders from mosques, synagogues and churches that reaches out around Australia, that tells all those looking for moral leadership that there is a way to bring light to the Middle East, not from explosions, but the dawn of reconciliation. 

Those who claim to best understand the Creator – by whatever name – should lead by example.

To be silent, or worse, to speak with partisan animosity, is both to deny the Creator and to betray those who look for guidance from their religious leaders. 

To refashion for our times Pastor Martin Niemoller’s famous poem from the Nazi era:

First they came and killed, and I did not speak out – because I was not one of their kind. 

Then they came for the truth, and I did not speak out – because their truth was not my truth.

Then they came for the Believers, and I did not speak out – because I was not a Believer like them. 

Then they came for me, my family, my community – and there was no one left to speak for us.

Hugh Selby, a former barrister, is the CityNews legal affairs commentator. His free podcasts on “Witness Essentials” and “Advocacy in court: preparation and performance” can be heard on the best known podcast sites.