Walter Suza guest column: God, how can it ever be OK for children to be killed?

Dear God,

I have struggled to write this column. If you ask: “Why?” I shall answer: “I feel sad and frustrated.”

I must be honest that I also fear being chastised. The “Israel-Hamas” war in Gaza has resulted in bitter confrontations in the United States. Hate for Jews and for Muslims is high. People’s First Amendment rights are being violated. College students are labeled radicals for protesting the war. Student protesters are being doxxed. Employers are rescinding job offers to “Palestinian sympathizers.”‘ A Palestinian-American Congress woman was censured for a social media post deemed antisemitic.

Please allow me to return to the war. I must admit, I will never know what it felt like to experience the war. I live in the United States safe and protected. All I see and hear about the war is through the media. But despite being far away from the war, what I have seen from afar leaves me no choice but to implore you to intervene. God, please save the children in the Middle East.

On Oct. 7, Hamas attacked kibbutz residents in Israel, leaving about 1,400 dead, including “an infant in a pool of blood,” and a “charred body of a child,” which are just some of the gory details made public by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to Reuters. Hamas also kidnapped 240 people. Please allow me to ask: Where were you that day?

Where have you been since Israel initiated the purge of Hamas, which also according to Reuters, has left over 4,100 Palestinian children dead from air strikes, rocket blast burns and collapsed buildings?

TV footage of a massive crater from Israel’s aerial bombardment of a Gaza refugee camp helped me learn that the adults who were wailing believed children were buried under the rubble. A child emerged from the living adults, looked into the crater, then turned his head toward the camera. The child’s eyes met mine. “Will you do something?” That's what I felt the child was asking. “Why must children be subjected to such a fate?” I asked you in tears.

When I was a child, I was taught that you are a God of forgiveness. But I became confused by more teaching that, if I did something wrong, you will get angry and punish me. I used to stare at your white face on the church walls and your white statue on the cross. Looking at your image made me wonder: “If your father loved me, would he truly burn me for eating the candy and lying to my mom about it?”

During times such as these, when wars are decimating children, I find myself going back to my childhood question of whether your father is a God of retribution. If he is, then I wonder: Because the United States believes Hamas is a terrorist organization, is it possible that your father also believes that a child of a Hamas terrorist deserves to be destroyed?

I must protest: Why, God, would a child, even a child of someone labeled a terrorist, be blown to pieces by the weapons of war, be crushed under the rubble of pain and despair?

What would it take for a child, even a child of a terrorist, to be forgiven by you and us? And if that child of a terrorist must be killed in war, is it possible that you will not welcome that child into your heaven?

Are you a God for some and not everyone? If you have forgiven the descendants of those who descended on Greenwood Tulsa to massacre hundreds of Black people in 1921, who descended on Wounded Knee South Dakota to massacre hundreds of Native Americans in 1890, why would you also not forgive the children in Gaza, even those whose last names might belong to the “terrorists” who attacked Israel?

It read somewhere that if “God is with us, who will be against us?” Are you against children in the Middle East? Do you choose to be with some and not others in these times of war? Was I mistaken that you love all humans? Was I mistaken that you inspired one of the saints to advise us to “Not repay evil with evil?”

If we label groups such as Hamas as terrorists, what about individuals who commit mass shootings in the United States? Are they also fit to be labeled terrorists? Are the insurrectionists who descended on the Capitol on Jan. 6 also fit to be labeled terrorists? Is the United States spending hundreds of billions to curb such domestic terrorism? Such hypocrisy. Forgive me, I digress.

To mourn the death of Israeli children as well as Palestinian children is not being antisemitic. To demand that Israel minimize loss of innocent lives is not being antisemitic. To call for an end to the war in Gaza is not being antisemitic. To call for a two-state solution to the conflict in the Middle East is not being antisemitic.

The United States, Israel and all nations must not forget these words: "They shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more."

Please bring peace in your Holy Land. Please stop the war.

Yet you remain silent.

Walter Suza of Ames, Iowa, writes frequently on the intersections of spirituality, anti-racism and social justice. He can be contacted at wsuza2020@gmail.com.

This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Israeli, Palestinian children die, and I wonder where God is