On second thought: By the waters of Babylon

The opening of Psalm 137 is haunting:

“By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.”

In a few lines, the poem evokes the sorrow of a people defeated, and taken in slavery from their homeland by an enemy who slaughtered their loved ones, and now mocks the survivors.

“For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion.’

Still the wish of the final lines may shock:

“O daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed; happy shall he be, that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us.

Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.”

If that last image is disturbing, it is because we are distant from those who first heard the psalm, a people enraged by recent rage and the loss of their children. Three thousand years later we, of course, have no claim for vengeance against the long-dead children of Babylon.

As Americans, we have a special responsibility to remember our distance from suffering elsewhere. The immense power our own country exercises makes it essential that we Americans not claim for ourselves the victim’s hunger for revenge each time we hear of some new atrocity in Africa or Ukraine or Israel. Because we are not the ones suffering, we should be able to recognize that the first child victims were not those recently murdered in Israel by Hamas, nor those incidentally shot by Israeli defense forces policing Gaza over the years, nor those who fell when Jewish settlers expelled Palestinians from what was just becoming Israel 75 years ago, nor those who died in the camps when the United States refused refugees from the Holocaust (some survivors of which would later establish Israel in what had been somebody else’s home) ... Nor will the children dying now in the Gaza ghetto as Israel cuts off the water, sends in troops and enforces an exodus to nowhere be the last unless ...

Unfortunately, too many American leaders speak to distant conflicts as if they themselves were still caught up in the rage fueled ethics of childhood quarrels. From the White House, in response to this moment in the ongoing Israeli/Palestinian fight, we hear, “Billy is absolutely right: Joey started it. Billy is going to do the right thing with that gun we gave him.”

From presidential aspirant and former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley: “And I say to Billy, shoot Joey, and Ralph too — he’s part of it. End all those evil doers.”

And from the congressional chorus: “If Billy accidentally shoots Sally too, it’s on Joey: he started it.”

The United States has the power to do better. Not only has Israel long been a chief beneficiary of American military aid, American dissent in the UN Security Council has repeatedly protected Israel from censure over accusations of crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip and on the West Bank. Since Secretary of State Blinken has included depriving residents of occupied areas on the list of Russians war crimes in Ukraine, he ought to be able to make the case to Israel for turning the water and electricity back on for people in the Gaza Strip. If the United States is to continue supplying weapons to Israel, it is in a position to say a ground invasion into the most-crowded place on the planet is not a good idea, especially while the Israeli defense minister and president indiscriminately speak of the inhabitants of that place, average age 19, as “beasts” and “animals.”

Because there is no Palestinian state, there is no state power to influence on the other side of the conflict. Humanitarian aid directed through the Palestinian Authority could, however, undercut the support of a terrorist organization like Hamas.

Some Americans say it is time to leave the world’s problems to the world and attend to our own. Considering the unintended consequences of recent interventions in the Mideast — from creating an opening for ISIS by destroying Iraq 20 years ago, to more recently aggravating the people trapped in the Gaza Strip and on the West Bank by encouraging Israel’s neighbors to forget about the Palestinians in the name of peace — that sentiment is understandable.

But whether Americans wish to continue as the world’s essential nation, or decide it is time for fewer foreign entanglements, we should be able to agree that, “No babies dashed on stones,” needs to be the first rule of our foreign policy.

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Will Rawn of Havre is a retired Montana State University-Northern professor.