Real Christian Talk about Israel and the Palestinians
It’s tempting to grow weary of the cycle of violence in Israel and the Palestine. Hamas attacks Israelis, usually civilians, and Israel responds with overwhelming force. A cease-fire holds this Friday after a horrid week. Already the Palestinian death toll has exceeded 250, including 62 children, with a dozen Israelis dead. And the devastation in Gaza exceeds the death toll.
It’s easy to grow weary because the cycle keeps repeating itself from decade to decade — and because we don’t understand the conflict well enough. The loudest Christian voices tell us we should support Israel no matter what. Other loud voices tell us that any criticism of Israel and its policies amounts to antisemitism. The news media misleads as much as it helps. Its policy of neutrality obscures the scale and nature of the violence. Sources like the New York Times describe a “conflict,” “Israeli-Palestinian Strife,” and “fighting” even when describing Palestinian kids throwing rocks at Israeli soldiers who fire automatic weapons. An impressive new study by MIT undergraduate student Holly M. Jackson shows the media is far more likely to apply violent language to Palestinians than to Israelis. We can all decry Hamas’ terrorist tactic of firing rockets into Israeli neighborhoods. We should. But Monday night and Tuesday morning, 62 Israel fighter jets attacked targets in Gaza with 110 “guided armaments,” also known as smart bombs.
The conflict is not symmetrical. News coverage is not symmetrical.
Nor is the reality on the ground. Whenever it wants, Israel makes life impossible for ordinary Palestinians. It can turn a three mile commute into a three hour ordeal. It can destroy olive orchards that take a decade to reestablish. It can cut off the supply to food and medicine. Israeli settlers violate treaties and take over Palestinian neighborhoods. Israel holds most of the power, leaving the Palestinians in what former president Jimmy Carter famously described as an “apartheid” situation, “total domination and oppression of Palestinians by the dominant Israeli military.”
We Christians recognize our faith’s roots in biblical Israel and in Judaism. We also confess Christianity’s long and brutal history of antisemitic violence.
The state of Israel represents an effort to establish a homeland for Jews in the wake of the Holocaust, a nation safe and free. For reasons of both faith and human rights, Christians have good reason to support an Israel that lives in peace and security.
That baseline commitment does not preclude criticism of Israel when its policies are unjust. The current wave of violence follows significant Israeli provocations: a court ruling that removed Palestinians from their homes so that Israeli settlers could displace them, followed by an incursion of Israeli police into the Al-Aqsa mosque during Ramadan that led to Palestinians throwing rocks and Israelis firing rubber bullets and stun grenades.
Some Christian preachers will tell us that Christians should support Israel regardless of its policies. Citing biblical passages that proclaim God’s love and loyalty to Israel, they blur the Israel of the Bible with the modern secular state of Israel. They also forget that the biblical God judges all nations, including Israel, with equity. Modern Christians have every good reason to support the Israeli state. But support does not exclude accountability.
We should also recognize how profoundly the Christian Right’s teaching regarding Israel is shaped by a perverted end-times scenario. Prominent pastors Robert Jeffress and John Hagee participated in the dedication of the new United States embassy in Jerusalem. Both preachers are end-time prophets who declare that Israel must exist in order for Jesus to return. Jeffress preaches that Jews who do not embrace Jesus will go to hell, while Hagee preaches that all Jews will convert to Christianity upon Jesus’s return. Although they claim to love Israel, it is no more than a prop in their perverse end-time fantasies.
Others will accuse anyone who criticizes Israel as being antisemitic. We should not fear them. Israeli public opinion is heavily divided on how Israel should relate to the Palestinians. Israeli activists join the majority of global opinion in decrying the illegal occupation of Palestinian lands. So is opinion among American Jews. As The Forward editor Judi Rudoren wrote this week, “We can support Israel’s right to exist and criticize its government’s treatment of Palestinians — just like we believe in the United States but might think the way it treats immigrants or poor people is unfair.”
The 1967 Six-Day War set up the fundamental conditions that led to Palestinian oppression. Israeli forces defeated those of Egypt, Syria, and Jordan. After the war Israel occupied the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and the Golan Heights to provide a buffer zone. Although the United Nations has called on Israel to withdraw from these occupied territories, about six million Palestinians yet live under Israeli domination. Their own formal government is subject to dysfunction and cannot defend them from Israeli actions.
It is possible to think several things at once. We should condemn Hamas for using terrorist methods to intensify conflict, even as we condemn Israel for oppressing Palestinian people and occupying their territory. We can value Israel’s right to exist and protect itself without extending a moral blank check. We can value Israel’s national integrity and work for a free and safe Palestinian state. As Christians, we can honor our Jewish heritage and value the Jewish people without smashing our moral compass.
Despite the media’s efforts to promote over-simplified narratives, it’s possible for us to hold multiple truths in tension with one another. Let us not grow weary in our insistence upon justice for the Palestinians.
Resources:
Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and United Church of Christ declarations.
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America: “A Social Message on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.” (1989)
Presbyterian Church (USA): “Resolution on Israel and Palestine: End the Occupation Now.” (2003)
United Church of Christ: resolutions, 1967-2019.
United Methodist Church: “Opposition to Israeli Settlements in Palestinian Land.” (2016)
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops: statements related to “a just peace between Israelis and Palestinians.”
