We Are All Responsible For Our Enemies

Fr. Raymond Helmick, S.J. is a copious correspondent. For the past three years, the Jesuit priest has written nearly 20 letters to Khalid Mishal, founder and political leader of the Palestinian movement Hamas, urging him to abandon militancy, unify with Fatah, Hamas’ political rival, and organize the Palestinians in a disciplined campaign of nonviolent resistance to the Israeli occupation.

“Your military weapons are too puny to stand against Israeli weapons, but that mobilized power of a people denying, without violence, any cooperation with its occupiers is something Israel could not withstand,” wrote Helmick in a Feb 2006 letter sent weeks after Hamas won the Palestinian parliamentary elections.

“What do you want of the Israelis?” the Catholic priest asked. “Do you want them to remain in this hateful quest for vengeance or do you want to elicit from them compassion and justice? We are all responsible for our enemies, for their souls, and must seek to bring them to righteousness and repentance. That will only happen if you act with a higher morality than theirs in emulation of the compassion and righteousness of God.”

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