In 1990, the Rev. Michael Lapsley had both hands and an eye blown off by a letter bomb. The Anglican priest’s public opposition to the government of South Africa and his membership in the African National Congress had made him a target. Six years later, Father Lapsley gave testimony to South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. First, he described the fateful moment: opening a religious magazine that had arrived in the mail, he had unwittingly triggered a sophisticated explosive device that maimed and burned him badly. But then he went on to speculate about the person who had made the letter bomb:
…there was somebody obviously who typed my name on an envelope…. And I have often asked the question about the person who made it—the person who typed my name. What did they tell their children that night that they did that day, how did they describe…when they said, “how was your day today?” What were they saying that they actually did on that day?
On the day last month when hundreds of pagers exploded in Lebanon, I had a similar thought. Who were the creators of these devices that killed and wounded both Hezbollah members and bystanders? They were meticulous—that is clear. The batteries in the pagers seem to have been laced with explosives in a way that was virtually undetectable. The planners had infiltrated a supply chain, created multiple shell companies in different countries, altered the pagers in what must have been many long hours of work, and then ensured the devices would be delivered to Lebanon without raising suspicion. Finally, a message went out simultaneously to all of the pagers, telling them to detonate.
The following day, there were similar explosions, this time of walkie-talkies. In total, 42 people were killed, including two children; 3,400 were injured; countless others were terrorized.
What, I wonder, did the creators of those exploding devices tell their children that day, after their many months of work had finally yielded this terrible fruit? The many critical responses to these attacks have rightly pointed to the ways in which these attacks violated international law. There is the indiscriminate nature of the attacks: Once these devices were unleashed, the designers had no way to know the circumstances under which they would explode. Where? How? Who would be affected?
To be sure, this was more discriminate than the other bombings Israel has carried out in Lebanon and Gaza: Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was killed in attacks which used U.S.-made 2,000-pound “bunker buster” bombs to destroy entire apartment buildings in civilian areas, making a mockery of the principle of noncombatant immunity.
Nasrallah’s crimes were many, but vengeance does not equate to justice; international law places limits on the permissible methods to bring someone to justice. The same principle applies to the Hezbollah rank and file. Booby traps are also illegal under international law. Hiding explosives in everyday items like pagers and walkie-talkies is a violation of the 1899 Hague Convention, which prohibits “treacherous killing.” Such an insidious insertion of violence into everyday objects offends our sense that war simply must not be permitted to intrude into daily life, into grocery stores, funerals, soccer games. It must remain an opus alienum, an “alien work,” as Karl Barth termed it. Volker Türk, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, said as much in his cri de coeur before the U.N. Security Council:
These attacks represent a new development in warfare, where communication tools become weapons, simultaneously exploding across marketplaces, on street corners, and in homes as daily life unfolds. Authorities have reportedly dismantled unexploded devices in universities, banks, and hospitals. This has unleashed widespread fear, panic, and horror among people in Lebanon….This cannot be the new normal.
The tendency of humans to normalize more and more violence is partly what led the Christian tradition to develop just war thinking. It was an attempt to limit war by circumscribing the conditions under which it could be considered “justified.” Given the extreme violence that characterizes modern warfare, recent papal teaching on warfare has tended to exclude the possibility that any contemporary war could be regarded as “just”: Pope John XXIII wrote in “Pacem in Terris” in 1963 that it is “it no longer makes sense to maintain that war is a fit instrument with which to repair the violation of justice,” and Pope Francis has made it clear that he sees the idea of a just war as something that must be left behind in favor of a renewed focus on nonviolence.
Nevertheless, many of the core insights that have emerged from the just war tradition are important to preserve. It is worth remembering that the just war tradition evolved not only to try to limit the deleterious effects of warfare on the victims, but also as a way to try to protect the souls of those who would wage war. The Christian tradition of moral reasoning about war goes beyond the principles of international law; it attends also to the human heart.
St. Augustine, for instance, was more concerned with the moral evils involved with war than he was with the deaths it may cause: “What is the evil in war?… The real evils in war are love of violence, revengeful cruelty, fierce and implacable enmity, wild resistance, and the lust of power, and such like.”
Observing just war principles, therefore, is not only about protecting the victims of war, but also about trying to limit the corrupting effects of violence upon its perpetrators. The recent bombings in Lebanon are not only disturbing because of their effects, but also because they bespeak a level of evil intent which is so deeply corrupt. Just war principles are also an effort to hold space for some kind of shared future. The principle of “right intention” reminds us that our ultimate goal must always be peace. This requires avoiding the kind of “treacherous killing” that is so disturbing as to make any kind of normal future virtually unimaginable.
For those of us who feel that we are far from the violence, it is important to remember that it threatens our own souls, too. St. Augustine, writing in TheCity of God, speaks of the danger of letting our hearts become callous to the suffering that is taking place: “Let everyone, then, who thinks with pain on all these great evils, so horrible, so ruthless, acknowledge that this is misery and if any one either endures or thinks of them without mental pain, this is a more miserable plight still, for [s]he…has lost human feeling.”
Particularly when our own country bears a great deal of responsibility for the events taking place, we must not look away. The other threat to our souls is hopelessness; resignation in the face of evil is contrary to the Gospel of the resurrection. Last week in Paris, a survivor of World War II gave an impassioned reminder that war is not inevitable, and that we must continue to imagine and work for peace even when it seems remote. Speaking to representatives from all of the major religions of the Middle East (and beyond) who were gathered in Paris to pray for peace, Gilberte Fournier said:
I want to say this especially to the younger generations: War destroys everything. War destroys lives, like those of many of my little friends from my street, rue Saint Martin, or the neighborhood, who were forced to wear the yellow star and whom I have never seen again. A sad time that weighs heavily on your heart. Those who have not lived through it do not know what it is like. When I hear people talk as if war were a game! They do not realize. They have not lived it. I am here, in front of you, to tell you that we must not lose the memory of the great evil, the great defeat of humanity that is war.
Continuing, she said:
That is why I testify today. To unite the young with the memory of the elderly like me. I want to tell you: do not let yourselves be convinced that war is inevitable, but keep and nurture the peace that my generation imagined after the war. Love peace! Love the others. And build a common future.
