Middle East Amnesty Produces Chaos

Many observers applaud a move to release Palestinian criminals from Israeli jails. Contrasting this with an October 2002 release of prisoners in Iraq exposes fatal flaws in the U.S.-sponsored road map to peace. What is the biblical answer?

by Cecil Maranville

One of the most urgent needs of Iraq’s 22 million people is the restoration of law and order. A few months before coalition forces undertook the liberation of the country, Saddam Hussein released some 100,000 prisoners, ostensibly as a "thank you" to the nation for its 100 percent vote for him for another seven-year term as president.

Abu Ghareb is one of many prisons Hussein emptied with a wide-ranging amnesty decree in late October 2002, when the dictator was facing increasingly negative world public opinion. Abu Ghareb was "a serious crimes prison," housing up to 9,000 men guilty of capital crimes. Ahmed Ibrahim, deputy warden of the prison, assured the public that the freed prisoners were ready to become a part of society again, because the prison "fixed their behavior."

Now, many of these former convicts wreak murder and mayhem in postwar Iraq, as the country struggles to reestablish police forces and a justice system. Most aren’t looting, but rather are committing armed robbery, rape and murder, according to the U.S. Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance. Clearly, assertions that Saddam’s prisons rehabilitated the criminals was total propaganda. Some wonder if Hussein’s declaration of amnesty was a calculated move to create chaos for coalition forces—and for the nation he pretended to thank for its "support" of his dictatorial rule.

The power to imprison or release from prison affords a leader like Hussein incredible leverage in controlling a nation. He detained not only hardened criminals, but also multiple thousands of innocent people, guilty only of disagreeing with him. His penchant for imprisoning people by whim is well known. Political prisoners were tossed into cramped and filthy cells with the worst of criminals and kept imprisoned for many years to maintain his control-by-fear rule.

Many of these innocents were kept in jail when Hussein turned tens of thousands of felons loose. The claim was that the political prisoners were spies for the United States or Israel. Coalition forces had the joy of releasing the innocent ones in concert with liberating the country. The power to release the innocent (or to genuinely rehabilitate the guilty and return them to society) is as great a tool for good as Hussein’s methods were a tool for evil.

Hussein’s amnesty was a feint, serving neither his country nor the people he freed. The United States is adamant about the fact that these criminals greatly impede the orderly reconstruction of Iraq and urgently seeks to rearrest and incarcerate them. They were not ready for freedom.

Juxtaposing the present situation in Iraq with the pending release of another group of Middle Eastern prisoners, we find a glaring inconsistency in U.S. foreign policy.

United States takes different stand regarding Palestinian prisoners

Israel currently holds more than 6,000 Palestinians in jail, and the Bush administration is pressuring the Israeli government to release them in an attempt to move forward the American-led road map to peace in the Middle East. Anger runs deep in Israelis and Palestinians alike.

Representing one side is a bitter, unforgiving young Israeli man whose young sons and wife died at the hands of a Palestinian terrorist—the wife while she shielded her children with her own body in a vain attempt to spare their lives. The widower sobs as he tells a reporter his life is over, that he cannot forgive the murderer, who is among those the Israeli government may soon release.

Representing the other side of the issue is 17-year-old Bannan, a Palestinian girl who must fill in as the head of the house for her three younger brothers and sister while her mother, older brother and her father—a local leader of the terrorist group Hamas—all sit in Israeli jails. Bannan expresses her joy at the prospect of her family obtaining freedom soon. Then she declares harshly that the Palestinians don’t consider any Israeli victims innocent, even women and children.

Israeli Prime Minister Sharon and Palestinian Prime Minister Abbas are both under pressure from their respective constituencies, each people bitterly conscious of the blood spilled by the other. Sharon has said repeatedly in the past that he will not free "those with blood on their hands." Palestinian Information Minister Nabil Amr publicly warned Abbas that the Palestinian legislature could vote him out of power if he could not successfully negotiate the release of the prisoners.

Deep-rooted issues in the recent and distant past blur the lines between an innocent political prisoner and a terrorist to the Palestinians, who believe every one of their citizens detained by the Israelis is a political prisoner, regardless of crimes he or she committed. The Israelis see murder and other violent crimes as deeds that must be punished under the law; they are bitterly angry that anyone would be willing, in the name of politics, to simply overlook what they see as terrible wrongs.

The United States appears hypocritical by putting pressure on the Israelis to release the prisoners, in light of its own vigorous prosecution of the war on terror, including the detaining of many foreign nationals.

You can’t have it both ways, seeking to establish peace through the rule of law and at the same time allowing unrepentant criminals to go free for the sake of political expediency.

Numerous people or groups detained in prisons around the world declare themselves to be "political prisoners" and claim they’re being held unjustly. But is someone innocent, no matter what he does, simply because he acts out of his personal beliefs? What chaos that would produce!

In order to sort between those who are obviously innocent and those who may be guilty of crimes, members of the human-rights group Amnesty International use the term "prisoners of conscience" in this complex world. By it, they mean people imprisoned or otherwise physically restrained merely because of their political or religious beliefs or because of their ethnic origin, gender or social or economic status.

They define "political prisoner" as those people detained in all other cases that have a significant political element, including such obvious criminal acts as terrorism. But even the relatively liberal Amnesty International doesn’t lobby that the latter go free—rather, that they have a fair and legal trial.

A general amnesty for prisoners can help the peace process, but only when the prisoners are ready and able to be productive citizens. The true basis for national and international peace is law-abiding citizens of every country.

Liberty in law

The national representatives who will attempt yet again to negotiate peace in the Middle East may well pray privately for God’s guidance. Without doubt, U.S. politicians will bring His name into speeches on the subject. Yet none would dare to bring religion officially into the discussions.

The simple truth is that it is impossible to separate the present pursuit of peace from true Christianity and Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace. We have to say "true Christianity," for much that passes itself off as Christianity today is just as political as the nations are. By contrast, true Christianity wouldn’t compromise the rule of law for the sake of mollifying special interests.

Further, there’s much more depth to true Christianity than there is to the counterfeit version that dominates the present world.

For example, few realize that Christianity points us to lawful living and that the essence of Christianity deals with amnesty for prisoners. When Jesus stood in the synagogue to announce His ministry, He quoted Isaiah’s messianic prophecy: "The Spirit of the LORD is upon Me, because He has anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed; to proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD" (Luke 4:18-19).
In drawing on the Old Testament prophet, Jesus directed discerning minds to two distinct but related roles He fills. The first is that of Savior—known to most people who read the Christian Bible. The second role, that of liberating King, is one that few Christians realize. By liberating King, we mean the same type of liberating undertaken by the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq—only on a worldwide scale.

The portion of Isaiah He quoted speaks of a time when the age-old squabbles of the peoples of the Middle East will be resolved. Rather than an artificial agreement that only temporarily papers over unhealed divisions, this will be a genuine, lasting peace. See Isaiah 42:5-9 and Isaiah 61:1-4. The last verse shows that Christ will lead the way to rebuilding that which many generations consistently destroyed, a poignantly apt description of Middle Eastern history.

In His role as Savior, Jesus enables Christians to escape that which imprisons us in the spiritual sense: Satan, this world’s system and our own human nature. An evil despot such as Saddam Hussein is but a faint shadow of the great evil one, Satan the devil, who has an enormous capacity to influence people wrongly (2 Timothy 2:26). Christians are told to resist Satan and trust in God’s protection (James 4:7-8). Secondly, the world system inspired and manipulated by Satan incarcerates us in its confining web (Galatians 1:4). Finally, our own intrinsic nature detains us (Romans 8:7).

Let’s look at that last reference, for it explains that Christ’s liberty has its basis in law. "Because the outlook of disordered human nature (the way every person thinks by nature) is opposed to God, since it does not submit to God’s Law, and indeed it cannot" (New Jerusalem Bible).

Human nature restrains or detains us in spiritually criminal behavior. Through conversion, Christ frees us from our imprisonment; it is how He rehabilitates us.

Don’t dismiss this by spiritualizing it away, for this is the way Jesus showed He would bring about a peaceful world government. (For the full story, request our booklet The Gospel of the Kingdom.)

In His role as King over the earth, Jesus will enact the principles that bring peace to individuals and bring peace to the nations. He will free prisoners, "proclaim liberty to the captives." But prisoners will not be free to break national laws, international laws or the laws of God. Their freedom comes in the context of genuine rehabilitation (unlike the prisoners Saddam Hussein freed last October) and a willingness to become law-abiding in their spirit, as well as in their actions.

Jesus Christ personifies a treaty (a covenant) that will enable the liberation of prisoners and the restoration of normal government functions (Isaiah 49:8) to ensure prosperity and peace—the same issues with which the U.S.-led coalition is dealing in Iraq.

Speaking of that covenant or treaty, Hebrews 8:10 says: "For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put My laws in their mind and write them on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people."

Liberty is based in law. The amnesty Christ grants is in the context of rehabilitation and lawful living. This is the way peace will actually come to the Middle East. Now, place this model over the approach underway in the pressured prisoner release between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Will the present approach bring about peace? Sad to say, there’s not a chance that it will. Without a change of heart and genuine rehabilitation, criminals who go free are criminals still.

Although we may applaud any effort to restore peace to the troubled Middle East, the Bible shows that unlawful means do not justify the end. Ultimately, only the second coming of Jesus Christ will bring a real and permanent peace to the Mideast. —WNP

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