Palestinian Christians call on western churches to ‘humanize’ the children of Gaza

The human rights group, Amnesty International, recently issued a report concluding that Israel’s actions in Gaza constitute a genocide.

The war in Gaza has led to widespread calls for a ceasefire. This situation, and its ripple effects globally, have also raised questions and reckonings among varied communities and institutions around how to respond to suffering and how to witness and hope for transformation.

In a recent message for the first Sunday of Advent, the Rev. Munther Isaac, one of the foremost Palestinian Christian theologians, issued a letter pleading for the world to “humanize the children of Gaza, the children of Palestine.”

Similar pleas are also being made from Muslim and Jewish voices in support of Palestinian human rights. Such faith-based communities protesting Israel’s occupation and genocide say that criticizing Zionist ethnonationalism is not to be equated with antisemitism. Israel disputes the accusation of genocide and states that it is acting in self-defence following the Oct. 7 attacks.

As a Christian theologian and a professor of religion and culture, I have been considering what this call to “humanize” means for Christian churches and theologians.

I co-authored a recent article with theology professor Michel Andraos of Saint Paul University, “A Sin against Humanity and God: the Genocide of the Palestinian People and the Churches’ Silence.” This article explores how and why many abiding silences pervade western church responses to the crisis in Gaza.

Last year, at his church in Bethlehem, Isaac created a manger scene featuring the Christ-child in a keffiyeh amidst strewn rubble, a reminder of the one whom many liberation theologians, like Isaac, believe to be on the side of the marginalized and the oppressed.

This crêche aimed to remind Christians of the Christ-child whom they believe was born in a makeshift shelter, in a land under military occupation, and to prompt new acknowledgement of Palestinian suffering. Isaac put it in his Christmas sermon/lament last year: “I invite you to see the image of Jesus in every child killed and pulled from under the rubble.”

This year, Christ is STILL under the rubble in Gaza. An advent message from Munther Isaac pic.twitter.com/ApjzNidZmQ

— Munther Isaac منذر اسحق (@MuntherIsaac) December 1, 2024

Silences around settler colonial ideologies

Some churches and church agencies in Canada have called for a ceasefire, humanitarian aid and an end to all weapon transfers to Israel. Last Feburary, some urged the Canadian government to live up “to its obligation to prevent the crime of genocide where it might plausibly occur.”

Yet, many silences pervade church responses. One is around settler colonial ideologies. As Palestinian theologian Mitri Raheb writes in his book Decolonizing Palestine: The Land, The People, The Bible, there is a need to unpack connections between western settler colonialism, Christian theology, Zionism and the Palestinian territories.

Palestinian theologian Mitri Raheb discusses his book ‘Decolonizing Palestine: The Land, The People, The Bible’ at the Harvard Divinity School.

In October 2023, an Open Letter to Western Christian leaders and theologians from Kairos Palestine, a Christian Palestinian movement, called on churches in the West to “repent of their indifference to Palestinian suffering.”

The letter said this indifference is reflected in a western double standard that “humanizes Israeli Jews while insisting on dehumanizing Palestinians and whitewashing their suffering.” This double standard reflects “an entrenched colonial discourse that has weaponized the Bible to justify the ethnic cleansing of Indigenous Peoples in the Americas, Oceania, and elsewhere.”

Since the letter was issued, the death toll in Gaza has sharply increased.

While conservative Christian Zionism is a well-known phenomenon in North America, lesser recognized forms of Christian Zionism can be seen in Catholicism, Anglicanism and Lutheranism.

Church calls

Professors Jane Barter and Michel Andraos discuss their recent article on western churches and Gaza with graduate student Daniella Maatouk.

Another way churches reflect silences towards violence in Gaza is in interfaith dialogue. We argue that the mainline or liberal churches remain bound to what the late Jewish theologian Marc Ellis called an “interfaith ecumenical deal.”

Ellis argued that this deal consists of the churches repenting of their long-standing history of anti-Judaism and antisemitism largely by remaining silent on Zionist ethnonationalism and the oppression of Palestinians. In other words, Palestinians become the sacrificial victim of Christian guilt over Christian anti-Judaism/antisemitism and for their complicity in the Holocaust (Shoah).

Christians in Canada and elsewhere must challenge older models of interfaith dialogue that do not address Israel’s occupation. Israel continues to receive support from the West, including the churches, in part because of their commitment that the genocide of the Jewish people should happen “never again.”

This reasoning is flawed. For one, it supports an ideology that Jewish safety is only secured through military ethnonationalism. Second, it offloads the responsibility to protect Jewish life onto Israel alone. Jewish people must experience security throughout the world.

Christians must reject the ideology that protesting the genocide of the Palestinian people is an assault on Jewish freedom. Jewish and Palestinian freedom are inextricably bound, and unless we understand liberation in universal terms, we create new forms of tyranny.

Neutrality equates to complicity

Palestinian Christian theologians maintain that western Christian neutrality equates to complicity. As Isaac put it:

“Regrettably, many western Christians across wide denominational and theological spectra adopt Zionist theologies and interpretations that justify war, making them complicit in Israel’s violence and oppression.”

The stances of most mainline churches when it comes to Israel are a marked exception to their historical responses during other atrocities and large-scale human rights abuses, which they roundly condemned, such as Apartheid in South Africa.

Need to support BDS strategies, arms embargoes

Effective actions reflecting concern for Palestinian lives can be seen in some church responses. At the United Church of Canada’s recent General Council meeting, the church adopted a resolution which:

“affirmed the application of justice principles to the conflict in Israel and Palestine in such a way that enables the adoption of Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) strategies and joins in the consensus of the international human rights communities in recognizing and rejecting Israel’s apartheid system.”

Some other church leaders are speaking up. Pope Francis has called for an investigation to determine whether genocide is taking place in Gaza.

In August, the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby said “the State of Israel has been denying the Palestinian people dignity, freedom and hope,” and called for an end to the occupation.

These latter comments signal steps in the right direction, however church leaders must go beyond words toward action. Actions should include lobbying western governments to impose arms embargos, and explicitly advocating for a lasting ceasefire to stop the genocide.

Roles for theologians

A significant contribution towards church responses of solidarity can come from Canadian theologians. Theologians can contribute by investigating the abiding connections between the theological justification of settler colonialism in both the Palestinian territories and in Canada, the genocide of Indigenous Peoples and Christian anti-Judaism and antisemitism (for example, ideas around Christians “replacing” Jews as God’s “covenant people”).

Working with Palestinian, Muslim and Jewish and decolonial groups campaigning against Israel’s occupation can be a source of interfaith solidarity and action.

Soon, two Christmases will have passed with no end to the killing and destruction. Two Christmases in which Palestinian Christians have called out to western churches to repent and to respond, and two Christmases in which their cries have fallen largely on unhearing ears.