Bethlehem Pastor Proclaims a Prophetic Word to the Western Church

Rev. Dr. Munther Isaac is a professor at Bethlehem Bible College as well as the pastor at the bethlehem Lutheran Christmas church. Terry and I often  worship at this church whenever we are in the West Bank.

Pastor Isaac understands that now is the time for a prophetic word addressed to the western church. He declares hard truths powerfully.

He is a Christian leader speaking to his fellow believers in the western Church — a Church that largely approves of Israel’s current campaign of destruction against his people. How can this be?

Our only proper response is repentance.

Bethlehem Churches Live Out the Biblical Tradition of Lament in War Time

I am privileged to count both the Rev. Drs. Mitri Raheb and Munther Isaac among my friends. You will meet them in this video from Democracy Now.

Together with the other Christian leaders of Bethlehem, they are speaking prophetically to the rest of the world as public celebrations have been cancelled in Bethlehem this Christmas.

Oh, they are not neglecting the wonder of Jesus’ birth. But they are grappling with the contexual realities of remembering Jesus’ birth while also suffering brutal Israeli attacks in both Gaza and the West Bank.

Thus, they haver turned to the Old Testament tradition of lament, that is crying out to God in protest against both worldly injustice and his apparent absence.

The western Christian church has become immune to the biblical concept of collective, corporate lament. Even when we try to construct a lament service, we don’t really know how to be comfortable with it.

In part, this awkwardness is due to American isolationism, ignorance, and lack of empathy for others.

We fail to identify with our Palestinian brothers and sisters in Christ because many don’t realize that Palestinian Christians exist.

We ignore the news of literal genocide occurring in Gaza because we are generally disinterested in the rest of the world.

And when we go to visit Israel, we are more feverish about visiting Zionist synagogue services than we are about worshiping with Palestinian brothers and sisters.

The Palestinian church is showing us once again what biblical lament means as they endure a multitude of the cruelest war time injustices.

Bruce Fisk and Jonathan Kuttab Discuss a Christian Perspective on Israel’s War Against Gaza

I am happy to say that these two men are both friends of mine. In this video from the Network of Evangelicals for the Middle East (NEME), Bruce asks the questions and Jonathan offers a discussion drawing from his years of experience as a lawyer of international and humanitarian law.

Jonathan does a good job of explaining the Christian perspective on the horrors of war.

What it’s like to live in the occupied West Bank amid Gaza war

Here is a brief (30 minute) documentary explaining what it is happening now in the West Bank as tensions flare during the Gaza war.

I feel that this information is especially important for American audiences as I find Christian news networks devoting more and more of their resources to spreading right-wing, Israeli propaganda.

CBN is especially guilty of this. I have recently watched several stories on their network accusing Palestinians in the West Bank of harrassing, attacking and terrorizing Jewish settlers.

Anyone who has lived in this area will recognize the absurdity of such claims. It is noteworthy that the so-called Christian journalists telling these stories never produce any evidence to substantiate their claims — no recordings, no films, no interviews — only bald assertions.

This documentary provides everything needed to arrive at an informed judgment about what it means for Palestinians to live under Israeli occupation, and who is attacking who in the West Bank.

The video is age restricted, so I cannot embed it into this post. Instead, copy the web address below (minus the quotation marks) into your web browser. It will take you to YouTube where you can watch it directly on your computer or phone.

“https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vk8jRFu3HRg”

Ben Norton Catalogues the Many Times Israeli Leaders Have Openly Announced Their Plans for Ethnic Cleansing in Gaza

Independent journalist Ben Norton has compiled a litany of statements made by Israeli leaders, both political and military, loudly proclaiming their goals for ethnic cleansing in Gaza.

They make no bones about it. Israel’s final objective is to eradicate all Palestinians from the Gaza Strip. Carpet bombing the people is a piece of their strategy.

And they are accomplishing their goals. Thus far, 1.5 million people have been displaced. Over 11,000 have been killed; 4,500 of them children; over 20,000 are missing.

The USA and other western powers remain silent.

A Christian Look at the War Against Gaza: Episode Nine with Dr. David Crump

Rob Dalrymple has become a good friend of mine, so it was fun to do this interview with him. We began with a few technical difficulties, but it smooths out quickly.

We discuss several different but related topics: Palestinian life in the Occupied Territory of the West Bank; Christian Zionism and its relation to the modern state of Israel; the current war against Gaza; and the ethical demands for citizenship in the kingdom of God today.

I hope you find this conversation interesting, challenging and educational. I pray that it will move you to action in protesting the current war, calling for a ceasefire and negotiations.

Call you elected representatives and ask them to please demand an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.

A Christian Look at the War Against Gaza: Episode Eight with Greg Khalil

Greg Khalil is a Palestinian American who is also a graduate of Yale Law School. In the early 2000s he was a negotiator with the Palestinian team talking with Israeli negotiators about peace in Israeli-Palestine.

Drawing from his family background and his own first-hand experience, Greg discusses the history of Gaza, Hamas, the American church, and possible pathways forward towards an end to the current bloodshed.

Chris Hedges: Israel’s Final Solution

In his latest article for Consortium News, veteran journalist Chris Hedges gets the story exactly right when describing Israel’s genocidal plans for

Chris Hedges

both Gaza and the West Bank.

When a sociopath like Bibi Netanyahu (and members of his coalition government) repeatedly tell you that he/they plan to murder you and steal your home, it’s best to take them at their word.

Below is an excerpt of the article titled “Israel’s Final Solution.”

I covered the birth of Jewish fascism in Israel. I reported on the extremist Meir Kahane, who was barred from running for office and whose Kach Party was outlawed in 1994 and declared a terrorist organization by Israel and the United States.

I attended political rallies held by Benjamin Netanyahu, who received lavish funding from rightwing Americans, when he ran against Yitzhak Rabin, who was negotiating a peace settlement with the Palestinians. Netanyahu’s supporters chanted “Death to Rabin.” They burned an effigy of Rabin dressed in a Nazi uniform. Netanyahu marched in front of a mock funeral for Rabin. 

Prime Minister Rabin was assassinated on Nov. 4, 1995, by a Jewish fanatic. Rabin’s widow, Lehea, blamed Netanyahu and his supporters for her husband’s murder.

Netanyahu, who first became prime minister in 1996, has spent his political career nurturing Jewish extremists, including Avigdor LiebermanGideon Sa’arNaftali Bennett and Ayelet Shaked

His father, Benzion — who worked as an assistant to the Zionist pioneer Vladimir Jabotinsky, whom Benito Mussolini referred to as “a good fascist” — was a leader in the Herut Party that called on the Jewish state to seize all the land of historic Palestine. 

Many of those who formed the Herut Party carried out terrorist attacks during the 1948 war that established the state of Israel. Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt, Sidney Hook and other Jewish intellectuals, described the Herut Party in a statement published in The New York Times as a “political party closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to Nazi and Fascist parties.”

There has always been a strain of Jewish fascism within the Zionist project. Now it has taken control of the Israeli state.

“The left is no longer capable of overcoming the toxic ultra-nationalism that has evolved here,” Zeev Sternhell, a Holocaust survivor and Israel’s foremost authority on fascism, warned in 2018, “the kind whose European strain almost wiped out a majority of the Jewish people.” Sternhell added, “[W]e see not just a growing Israeli fascism but racism akin to Nazism in its early stages.” 

The decision to obliterate Gaza has long been the dream of Israel’s crypto-fascists, heirs of Kahane’s movement. These Jewish extremists, which make up the ruling coaltion government, are orchestrating the genocide in Gaza, where hundreds of Palestinians are dying daily. They champion the iconography and language of their homegrown fascism. Jewish identity and Jewish nationalism are the Zionist versions of blood and soil.

Jewish supremacy is sanctified by God, as is the slaughter of the Palestinians, who Netanyahu compared to the Biblical Amalekites, massacred by the Israelites. Enemies — usually Muslims — slated for extinction are subhuman who embody evil. Violence and the threat of violence are the only forms of communication those outside the magical circle of Jewish nationalism understand. Millions of Muslims and Christians, including those with Israeli citizenship, are to be purged. 

leaked 10-page document from the Israeli Ministry of Intelligence dated Oct. 13 recommends the forcible and permanent transfer of the Gaza Strip’s 2.3 million Palestinian residents to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. 

It is a grave mistake not to take the blood curdling calls for the wholesale eradication and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians seriously. This rhetoric is not hyperbolic. It is a literal prescription. Netanyahu in a tweet, later removed, described the battle with Hamas as a “struggle between the children of light and the children of darkness, between humanity and the law of the jungle.” 

These Jewish fanatics have begun their version of the final solution to the Palestinian problem. They dropped 12,000 tons of explosives on Gaza in the first two weeks of the assault to obliterate at least 45 percent of Gaza’s housing units, according to the U.N. ‘s humanitarian office. They have no intention of being detoured, even by Washington.

“It became evident to U.S. officials that Israeli leaders believed mass civilian casualties were an acceptable price in the military campaign,” The New York Times reported.

“In private conversations with American counterparts, Israeli officials referred to how the United States and other allied powers resorted to devastating bombings in Germany and Japan during World War II — including the dropping of the two atomic warheads in Hiroshima and Nagasaki — to try to defeat those countries,” the paper continued. 

The goal is a “pure” Israel, cleansed of Palestinian contaminants. Gaza is to become a wasteland. The Palestinians in Gaza will be killed or forced into refugee camps over the border in Egypt.

Messianic redemption will take place once the Palestinians are expelled. Jewish extremists call for the Al-Aqsa mosque — the third holiest shrine for Muslims, built on the ruins of the Jewish Second Temple, which was destroyed in 70 CE by the Roman army — to be demolished.

The mosque is to be replaced by a “Third” Jewish temple, a move that would set the Muslim world alight. The West Bank, which the zealots call “Judea and Samaria,” will be formally annexed by Israel. Israel, governed by the religious laws imposed by the ultra-orthodox Shas and United Torah Judaism parties, will be a Jewish version of Iran.

You can read the entire article here.

A Christian Look at the War Against Gaza: Episode Seven with Lisa Loden and Richard Harvey

My friends Lisa Loden and Richard Harvey are both Jewish Christians. Lisa lives in Israel. Richard resides in England.

Today Rob talks with them about their Jewish, Christian perspectives on the current war. Their commitment to following Jesus as the Prince of Peace during a time of war provides a powerful testimony to the presence of God’s kingdom in this world.

I will make only a few brief comments of my own to follow up on some of the issues raised in the interview:

First, I believe it is long past time to stop using the history of Jewish suffering, as horrific as it is, to excuse Israel’s current oppression of the Palestinian people.

Second, by Richard’s own definition of terrorism, Israel is now committing acts of terrorism against the people of Gaza.

Finally, I completely agree with Lisa when she says that this war is not about Israel’s self-defense.

I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did.

A Christian Look at the War Against Gaza: Episode Six with Jonathan Kuttab

Jonathan Kuttab is a Palestinian Christian from East Jerusalem. He is a human rights lawyer who has practiced law in the USA, Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Jonathan is also the author of several books, including Beyond the Two State Solution, which I highly recommend.

Today Rob talks with Jonathan about the war against Gaza, the death of the two-state solution, as well as his Christian commitment to non-violent living in the kingdom of God.