They persecute Christians too
Palestinian Christians are feeling abandoned and betrayed. They are suffering a genocide in Gaza while huge swathes of their land are being stolen in the West Bank. But there’s been a deafening silence from Western churches.
And Christians are not asking for special treatment. They are just as keen that their Muslim brothers and sisters in Palestine are saved from the slaughter. Dr Munther Isaac, Palestinian Christian pastor and theologian in the West Bank, gave a scathing sermon at Christmas in 2023 that went viral. He claimed that Christ would have been born in the rubble of Gaza had he come today.
He has now published a book Christ in the Rubble. In an interview in the Church Times he says the global church has failed to stand in solidarity with the people of Gaza while Israel perpetrated genocide against the Palestinians. “If faith leaders are not willing to speak up and present accountability, then who will?” he said.
“As long as Israel knows it is above international law, then nothing will change.” He accused the “diplomatic Church” of caring about its image too much. “Calling for peace is a safe option,” he said. “You come across as holier-than-thou. War is wrong, and so on. Let’s love one another, and so on. But you’re not willing to call out war criminals and call for accountability, because that would create controversy, and you don’t want that.”
And this Easter in a further interview he said the West Bank is now fragmented and each community has become isolated.
“We face the yoke of checkpoints on a constant basis – that’s a daily reality,” he said. “But now, it’s having its toll on us, to the extent that we just avoid them. But, more than that, we avoid travelling out of fear – what will happen at the checkpoint, or on the roads that settlers control or have access to?” Christian schools in Jerusalem are struggling because many teachers live in the West Bank. They are no longer allowed to cross into Jerusalem and have lost their livelihoods.
Goodbye to The Holy Land
The Christian world fears that there will soon be no more followers of Jesus in the land where he was born. There have been Arab Christians right from the beginning. They are mentioned in the Bible as being present at Pentecost when the Holy Spirit is said to have descended upon the followers of Christ.
Palestinian Christians were not converted by European missionaries. They will tell you proudly that their roots go back to a few centuries before Britain was Christianised. And contrary to popular belief, they have always lived together with their Muslim neighbours quite happily.
The two communities congratulate each other at Christmas and Eid. Indeed, for over 800 years, Muslim families have held the keys of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem where it is said Jesus was buried. But now Christians are leaving the Holy Land at an alarming rate. Israel claims it’s due to Muslim persecution but there is no evidence of this.
Christian NGO Embrace the Middle East says: “Like their fellow Muslim Palestinians, Christians in the West Bank face restrictions on their movements, military check points, settler expansion and attacks and military raids. “Access to water, electricity, and healthcare is limited, and the use of child detention and forced displacement represents a denial of human dignity.”
Armageddon – Israel and the End of Days
The antisemitism of a British statesman is as responsible as Jewish Zionists for the creation of the State of Israel. But these days, it’s Christian Zionists who support Israel no matter how many international laws are ignored, and the White House is full of such people.
Today there are thought to be over 30 million Christian Zionists in the US alone. Many believe there will be a massive battle – Armageddon – during the “End Days” when all Jews have “returned” to modern-day Israel.
Some believe in the Rapture when good Christians will go straight to Heaven. Sensible Jews will convert to Christianity and the rest will be wiped out.
The idea of a Jewish state emerged in the late 19th century. Hungarian-born Theodor Herzl set up the World Zionist Organisation which aimed to build a state in Palestine. Jews were being slaughtered in large numbers in Tsarist Russia in the late 1800s. But in 1905, the Aliens Act by prime minister Lord Arthur Balfour was designed to stop Jewish refugees from Russia coming here.
Balfour committed the government to a Jewish homeland in Palestine – to persuade the US to join the First World War, to encourage US and Jewish war loans and to set up a regional ally. Lord Shaftesbury backed Balfour’s memo but his motivation was religious. Shaftesbury, like millions today, thought that a state for the Jews was God’s plan.
He is credited with the sound bite “a land without people for a people without land”.
But the leaders of Zionism knew very well that Palestine was inhabited. David Ben Gurion who became Israel’s first PM wrote in 1937: “We must expel the Arabs and take their places.”
The Zionist dream came true and some of today’s settler leaders speak of Greater Israel “from the Euphrates to the Nile”. And Mike Huckabee, the US ambassador to Israel, has defended Israel’s “right” to take over the occupied Palestinian territories. Despite international law forbidding any such thing, this is where we seem to be heading.
