The Blogs: Did Gaza Hostages encounter any ‘Good Samaritans’?

The Good Samaritan by Aime Corot (public domain) Were any Palestinian Christian, Samaritan, or Muslim citizens enacting secret mercy missions towards hostages in Gaza? Did any secretly succor and help those victims, as many people did for Jews during WWII?

Three culturally diverse groups could have made some impact in the Gaza hostages’ lives.

Did Palestinian Christians fail to reenact the powerful ‘Parable of the Good Samaritan’? The biblical man of mercy saw an injured and robbed person in need of assistance. He put the victim on his donkey and took him to an inn. He paid the innkeeper, with instructions to care for him, vowing to pay for any extra expenses on his return trip. – Luke 10: 25 – 37 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%2010%3A%2025%20-%2037&version=MSG
2. There are 1,000 Samaritans in the Mount Gerizim area of the West Bank, who see themselves as being politically neutral. Being neither Muslim nor Jew, they seemingly function well in both societies. Did they use that unique religion-cultural role to play any meaningful and humanitarian role in helping to succour the inhumane treatment of hostages? “We can be a bridge between both people, to show that there are similarities and that it is possible to live together.” – Hosni Cohen, Samaritan priest

3) The Muslim majority in Gaza have some reckoning to do also. Sheikh Faysal Mawlawi, Deputy Chairman of the European Council for Fatwa and Research, states:‘Islam forbids targeting non-combatants (women, children, the elderly etc) by killing them, kidnapping them, taking them as hostages, or inflicting any kind of harm on them…Should a non-combatant be held as a hostage [by a Muslim person or group], he or she is to be set free immediately.’ https://fiqh.islamonline.net/en/taking-hostages-permissible/

How do intellectual Muslims in Gaza respond to that challenge? Perhaps a primal fear of Hamas’ brute fascistic force paralysed any potential heroic acts of mercy?

Was the seeming humanitarian inaction from Muslims and Christians in Gaza due to ‘bystander effect’, or ‘bystander apathy’? That social psychological theory posits that individuals are less likely to offer help to a victim in the presence of other people.

Have Palestinians become “compliant citizens” under Hamas – similar to onetime upstanding Third Reich-colonised citizens across Nazi-invaded Europe? Were there any Christian or Muslim “Good Samaritans” in Gaza over the last two years? Time and hostage survivors will tell…

Among the Yad Vashem memorial to ‘Righteous Among the Nations’ are Muslims from Albania, Bosnia, and Turkey. https://www.yadvashem.org/righteous/stories.html?id=421

In Albania, the Muslim mindset was informed by ‘Besa’. Besa is one who who keeps their word, someone to whom one can trust one’s life and the lives of one’s family.’ Albania was the only European country with a Muslim majority where most Jewish refugees and nationals were saved during WW2.

What might give a smidgen of hope to hostage families is Yahweh’s promised judgement in the Torah:

‘But Adonai is enthroned forever;

he has set up his throne for judgment.

He will judge the world in righteousness;

he will judge the peoples fairly.’

– Psalm 9: 6 & 7

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm%209&version=CJB

—

“Our parents were devout Muslims and believed, as we do, that ‘every knock

on the door is a blessing from God.’ We never took any money from our

Jewish (refugee) guests. All persons are from God. Besa exists in every

Albanian soul.”

Besa: a photo book portraying Muslims Who Saved Jews in World War II. Over a five-year period, (American Jewish) photographer Norman H. Gershman sought out, photographed, and collected powerful and moving stories of heroism by Muslims in Albania. https://www.normangershman.com/besa-events-and-books

Inn from the Good Samaritan Parable Becomes a Museum. https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-sites-places/biblical-archaeology-sites/inn-from-the-good-samaritan-parable-becomes-a-museum/