The Christian idea of ‘bearing witness' has never been more vital

Irish Times

4 hours ago

Written in stone: 'Thou Shalt Not Kill'. Carved into tablets for eternity: 'Thou Shalt Not Steal'.
With the passage of time, it's apparent that writing into rock does not ensure an enduring message. These basic commandments are reflected in similar guidelines in my own Buddhist tradition; and they, too, often go ignored.
Stealing and killing doesn't get any bigger than colonial expansion. Theft on a grand scale is the grabbing of Ukrainian territory by Russia. It is Israel 'seizing territory' and 'dividing up' Gaza. It is the US trying to take Greenland to rob it of its natural resources.
When Donald Trump says 'Gaza is ours', he is acting like Sykes and Picot, the British and French colonial overloads who divided up the Middle East like a cake in 1916, fuelling the conflict and tragedy we are still living with today.
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This colonialism is nothing short of stealing what does not belong to you. And, in order to do it, it's often necessary to break that other grave commandment, and to kill. But to kill, one has first to dehumanise and demean.
Anti-Semitism is what allowed Hamas to murder without guilt when it committed its October 2023 pogrom in Israel.
A man I know recently suggested that every man, woman and child in Gaza are terrorists and, therefore, legitimate targets for killing
Anti-Semitism is what allowed German Nazis to attempt to liquidate a people on a scale we had not seen before or since. Whenever an entire people are reduced to 'a problem' that needs to be removed, we are in similar, genocidal territory.
Anti-Semitism is real; and so is anti-Palestinianism. A man I know recently suggested that every man, woman and child in Gaza are terrorists and, therefore, legitimate targets for killing. When I suggested that the thousands of children killed there cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, be terrorists, he dismissed my point. 'Their parents are,' was his chilling response.
There is now widespread, institutional discrimination against Palestinians and their supporters. In Ireland, this anti-Palestinian sentiment is rare. It was an aberration when An Garda Síochána recently detained mothers demonstrating for Gaza outside Dáil Éireann. But in the US, peaceful protesters have been routinely incarcerated in a way worthy of Putin's Russia.
New York University cancelled a scheduled presentation by Dr Joanne Liu
in which she planned to mention aid cuts to Gaza. She is a professor at McGill University, as well as former international president of Médecins Sans Frontières.
Such examples of authoritarian heavy-handedness and the curtailing of free speech go on and on. What emerges is a pattern of systematic oppression
In Germany recently, two Irish citizens faced deportation for taking part in pro-Palestinian demonstrations. In 2025, some democratic states are willing to jettison basic human rights in support of the Israeli state.
It's staggering that academic staff are losing jobs and funding in North America for speaking out. A classic witch hunt is in progress. Such examples of authoritarian heavy-handedness and the curtailing of free speech go on and on. What emerges is a pattern of systematic oppression.
Speaking out for the oppressed is a demand of the Christian call to witness. In these times, the call is urgent, like never before. In that spirit, what is not true and right must be called out. Unfortunately, today, that's quite a long list.
It is not true that children are terrorists. It is true that
a genocide is happening
in Palestine right now. It is true that Russia is the aggressor in Ukraine. It is not right to arrest peaceful protesters and to intimidate and abuse them. It is not right that Ireland facilitates Israel by allowing Israeli-bound armaments to pass through its ports, on the way to their civilian targets. It is not true that people who condemn the killing in Palestine are Hamas supporters and anti-Semites.
It is true that we are late into a climate emergency. It is true that truth itself is under threat with the emergence of artificial intelligence and the fake 'reality' of ever-powerful social media platforms.
This Christian idea of 'bearing witness' is vital and important now. But so, too, is an understanding of the Buddhist teaching of Karma, which shows us that actions conform to the principle of causality – in short, actions have consequences.
The lesson that security comes with the open hand of friendship and not the closed fist of violence seems to have gone unlearned
The mass killing and theft that Israel and the US are engaged in will have consequences for many generations to come. The hatred planted deep in the hearts of brutalised Ukrainians will echo for more than a century.
A whole new generation of fighters will be created through this brutality. The lesson that security comes with the open hand of friendship and not the closed fist of violence seems to have gone unlearned.
To achieve peace in our time, we need to see 'the other' as an equal human being. This was the great lesson of the Belfast Agreement. We need to stop feeding the endless cycle of violence, perpetrating the cycle with more violence.
As the Buddha taught, 'Hatred does not cease through hatred at any time. Hatred ceases through love. This is an unalterable law'. Even when international justice is corrupted, some laws are eternal and never change.
Rev Myozan Ian Kilroy is a Zen Buddhist priest and abbot at the Dublin Zen Centre. His new book, Do Not Try to Become a Buddha, is out now from Wisdom Publications