Category: Zionism

My Views on the Current War Against Gaza

For some time now I have particiated in an informal discussion group consisting of a mix of Christian Zionists and non-Zionists, such as myself.

The group is largely composed of academics from around the world. We meet by Zoom calls one per month to talk across the theological chasm that separates us on the question of modern Israel and Palestine.

Christian Zionists believe that Israel remains God’s chosen nation; that occupation of the land is an essential precondition to the return of Christ; and that political loyalty to Israel is a necessary value for faithful Christians to uphold.

I, and my fellow non-Zionists, do not believe these things. Jesus is free to return at any time, and Israel has nothing to do with when or how that can happen.

As you can imagine, we have strong disagreements. But the group’s reason for being is to exercise and to model civil, loving discourse among brothers and sisters in Christ who have strong theological disagreements with each other.

As you can imagine, the outbreak of Israel’s war against Gaza has turned up the heat considerably within the group. We recently had a lengthy email exchange debating the horrific events that have erupted, beginning with the dastardly Hamas attack on October 7.

To briefly explain my own position on this war, I have reproduced below my final contribution to that debate. (For a fuller picture of why I think the way I do, please read my book, Like Birds in a Cage.)

I share this email with you, my subscribers, in order to illustrate and to explain what I believe is the proper Christian response to the events unfolding in Israel and Gaza today:

In the course of our conversation, several folks have asked the (rhetorical?) question, “What else is Israel supposed to do to root out Hamas?” The implication being that Israel’s current actions in Gaza are necessary and unavoidable – what else could Israel do?

Allow me to suggest that the question reveals a lack of imagination. At the risk of offending some, I will go further and suggest that the question reveals a deficiency of Christian discipleship. The calculations of Realpolitik are tangential, if not irrelevant, to the moral requirements of citizenship in God’s kingdom. The basic problem, I believe, is that the pro-Zionist conscience is truncated and distorted by its loyalty to a secular nation-state. Thus, the demands of loyalty to Zionist, nationalistic ideology is allowed to stifle both imagination and discipleship. This is a failure to fully inhabit our intended citizenship in God’s peaceable kingdom.

The two factions of our group are separated by seemingly irreconcilable differences, differences that we cannot, or at least, do not, talk about. These differences lead us to vastly different opinions and commitments concerning the current bloodshed, among both Israeli Jews and Palestinians.

My theological commitments lead me to believe that the history of American imperialism makes us very comfortable taking the colonizer’s side in anti-colonial conflicts. I believe that implied belief in Israeli exceptionalism and Palestinian/Hamas barbarism subtly runs throughout our conversation.

As many others have said, there is no military solution to this so-called conflict. Zionist dreams of “replacing Hamas” with something or someone else continue to ignore the root causes of this violence. The only lasting solution will be political, that is a just, humane ending of Israel’s military occupation and all that goes with it. Currently, Israel is an apartheid state. Those who are discriminated against will always resist their oppressors. It’s human nature. No amount of carpet bombing will beat the impulse for freedom and equality out of Palestinian hearts and minds.

I hope that sharing this statement with you may be of some interest and/or help to those wrestling with the moral questions raised by both Israel’s carpet-bombing of Gaza and the Hamas attack against Israel.

If you have questions or comments, please send them to me. I will respond to everything.

A Christian Look at the War in Gaza: Episode Two, Dr. Mae Cannon

The Rev. Dr. Mae Elise Cannon is the Executive Director of the organization, Churches for Middle East Peace (CMEP), an organization with which I am involved.

She is also a friend of mine. (By the way, Mae has two doctorates.)

In fact, we were both recently in Phoenix, AZ attending the same conference sponsored by the Netword of Evangelicals for the Middle East (NEME). I am a member of the NEME leadership committee.

Today, Rob and Mae discuss the political dimensions of the current war against Gaza. Mae’s work keeps her heavily involved in a great deal of lobbying and activism in Washington, D.C.

There is a lot of vital information here about what is happening right now in Israel, Palestine, and the USA. Check it out.

A Christian Look at the Conflict in Gaza, Episode One with Rob Dalrymple

My good friend, Dr. Rob Dalrymple, is hosting a series of podcasts discussing the current Israeli war against Gaza.

Rob will host a number of informative guests over the next several weeks (including yours truly) discussing different dimensions of this ongoing conflict.

Today, Rob introduces the issues himself. He is a former pastor, the author of several books, has visited Israel/Palestine numerous times, and is deeply involved in Christian activism for peace in the Holy Land.

I encourage you to  watch, listen, take notes, pray, respond and come back tomorrow for another installment.

Israel’s Intelligence Ministry Leaks Plan for Gaza’s Ethnic Cleansing

The online magazine +972 has published a 10-page policy paper produced by Israel’s Intelligence Ministry which argues that the only solution to the current war with Gaza is wholesale Palestinian population transfer.

According to the report, all the people of Gaza must be removed from their homes, relocated to the Sinai desert, and then redistributed as refugees throughout hospitable nations.

The document (which is included within the +972 article; you can read it for yourself) is remarkable for its colonial hubris and moral blindness.

Members of the Israeli establishment are conducting serious conversations about the best ways to stage manage, i.e., manipulate and control, the lives of 2.3 million native people.

The goal is to eliminate the inconvenience these uncooperative Palestinians pose to Israel’s settler-colonial status quo.

Since Palestinians continue to resist their colonization, the colonizing power — blinded by its imperial privilege and nationalistic arrogance — can only think to intensify its historic criminality.

Folks, population transfer is a war crime. It was a war crime in 1948. It remains a war crime today.

Here are some select excerpts from the +972 article. It is titled “Expell all Palestinians from Gaza, recommends Israeli gov’t ministry.” The author is Yuval Abraham. (All emphasis is mine):

The Israeli Ministry of Intelligence is recommending the forcible and permanent transfer of the Gaza Strip’s 2.2 million Palestinian residents to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, according to an official document revealed in full for the first time by +972’s partner site Local Call yesterday.

The 10-page document, dated Oct. 13, 2023, bears the logo of the Intelligence Ministry — a small governmental body that produces policy research and shares its proposals with intelligence agencies, the army, and other ministries. It assesses three options regarding the future of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip in the framework of the current war, and recommends a full population transfer as its preferred course of action. It also calls on Israel to enlist the international community in support of this endeavor. The document, whose authenticity was confirmed by the ministry, has been translated into English in full here on +972 . . . 

The document recommends that Israel act to “evacuate the civilian population to Sinai” during the war; establish tent cities and later more permanent cities in the northern Sinai that will absorb the expelled population; and then create “a sterile zone of several kilometers … within Egypt, and [prevent] the return of the population to activities/residences near the border with Israel.” At the same time, governments around the world, led by the United States, must be mobilized to implement the move. . . 

The transfer plan is divided into several stages. In the first stage, action must be taken so that the population of Gaza “evacuates south,” while the air strikes focus on the northern Gaza Strip. In the second stage, a ground incursion into Gaza will begin, leading to the occupation of the entire Strip from north to south, and the “cleansing of the underground bunkers of Hamas fighters.”

Concurrently with the re-occupation of Gaza, Palestinian civilians will be moved into Egyptian territory, and not be allowed to return. “It is important to leave the travel routes to the south open to enable the evacuation of the civilian population toward Rafah,” the document states. . . 

Last week, the Misgav Institute, a right-wing think tank headed by Meir Ben-Shabbat, a close associate of Prime Minister Netanyahu and a former head of Israel’s National Security Council, published a position paper that similarly called for the forced transfer of Gaza’s population to the Sinai. The institute recently deleted the post from Twitter and from its website after drawing strong international censure. . . 

You can read the entire piece here.

Check Out “If Americans Knew” for Information About Events in Palestine/Gaza

“If Americans Knew” is an independent newsite that provides the news coverage on Palestine/Israel that you will never see on mainstream, corporate media. I read it regularly.

For example, here is a recent story with an accompanying video posted on X.

It reminds us of the long-running peaceful, non-violent marches that occurred in Gaza for several years prior to the attack on Israel on Oct. 7.

The message reads:

Before the Hamas attack, media didn’t tell you about the thousands in #Gaza protesting non-violently every week from March 2018 through December 2019, Israeli snipers picking them off one by one…
Watch the video here.

John Mearsheimer: What Israel is Doing is Sickening.

I am convinced that extensive Israeli settlement throughout the West Bank has made the fabled two-state solution an impossibility.

New solutions must be sought. But the ethnic cleansing of Gaza cannot be one of them.

Aside from that caveat, Prof. Mearsheimer offers a good summary of the present situation in Gaza:

Bad Theology is Helping to Drive America’s Support for Israel’s Massacre in Gaza

All Christian theology has practical results in the way believers live their lives. Unsurprisingly, bad theology will have bad results.

The immoral legacy of Christian Zionism is helping to drive US congressional support for Israel’s slaughter in Gaza today.

How Can Christians Support Genocide?

Israel is inflicting genocide upon the people of Gaza.

Since the horrific Hamas assault against southern Israel on October 7, which killed approximately 1,400 people, the death toll in Gaza has risen to over 7,000, more than 3,000 of them children.

This grossly disproportionate death toll is deliberate.

The Israeli military doctrine of Dahiya dictates that Israel will always respond with overwhelming force, deliberately killing many more of their opponents than the opponents have killed Israelis. The Dahiya doctrine is supposedly intended to serve as a deterrent in limiting hostilities. It has been consistently applied throughout the West Bank as well as in the five wars inflicted on Gaza over the past fifteen years.

Which raises the question: does the Dahiya doctrine work? Has it deterred Palestinian resistance to Israel’s military occupation?

The answer is two-fold: As a deterrent to Palestinian resistance, the answer is No. Dahiya is a failure. And Israeli leaders are insane for believing that another round of carpet bombing in Gaza will eliminate the Palestinian urge to resist their seventy-five-year military occupation. It hasn’t worked yet. Why should anyone except Israeli and American arms manufacturers imagine that it will work now? This is the classic definition of insanity.

The second answer gets to the heart of the issue. Dahiya does not deter Palestinian resistance against Israeli oppression, but it does kill a massive number of Palestinians. This is the crux of the issue in Gaza today.

If you cannot kill a person’s dream of freedom, you can always kill the dreamer. Killing the dreamer kills the dream, unless of course there are many, many more dreamers waiting in line. In which case, all the dreamers must be killed by those who oppose the dream.

This is what Israel is trying to do right now. A number of Israeli leaders have explicitly addressed the “need” (in their view) to eradicate every Palestinian from Gaza, to “wipe them out,” to send them all to the grave or to Egypt; anywhere but in Israel.

Similar plans are being implemented in the West Bank. More than 100 Palestinians have been murdered by Israeli soldiers, 30 of them children, in the past few days. For, you see, they share the same dream as the people of Gaza – freedom from Israeli military occupation; equal rights and equal citizenship in a sovereign state where they can live their lives out from under an occupier’s bootheel.

Yes, the Hamas attack on October 7th was a war crime. If possible, all the perpetrators should be arrested, brought to trial and punished.

But October 7th was not the beginning of this tragic story. That sad and bloody day unfolded within the context of another crime against humanity, a prior crime that created the conditions for the Hamas attack against Israel.

Israel has occupied Gaza for 75 years; 17 years ago, Israel imposed a strict military blockade that has killed its economy and starved its people. Now Israel imposes a siege, cutting off all water, food, fuel, and power to 2.3 million people. This also is a war crime.

As I wrote in a post yesterday, Israel’s objective is to ethnically cleanse Gaza of all Palestinians — men, women, children, the elderly and disabled, everybody.

I personally know a number of Christian Zionists (Christians who believe that Israel is God’s chosen nation with a right to own all the land of Israel) who remain in lock-step with Israel’s Dahiya strategy. When challenged on this question of genocide, their responses fall into two categories.

First, they say that Israel has the right to defend itself, especially against an antisemitic aggressor like Hamas. Hamas poses an existential threat to Israel, they insist, which gives Israel the right to use whatever means are necessary to eliminate that threat.

Second, they say that the Palestinians have brought these troubles onto themselves. The people of Gaza elected Hamas as their government, voting them into power. You reap what you sow, I am told. Terrorist leaders can only bring catastrophe onto their people.

I have several responses to these popular excuses for why someone claiming to be a Christian could possibly sanction Israel’s current bloodlust.

First, Palestinians are human beings loved by God. They are created as the Image of God, as are all Israelis, Americans, and every person on this planet. However, the racism of western news coverage is blatant, if unrecognized, in the subtle ways that Palestinian humanity is minimized or even denied. For whatever reason, their humanity is not equal to the humanity of Israelis and other westerners.

The Israeli defense minister has called Palestinians “human animals.” Others have called for the army to “wipe out” all Palestinians. US Defense Department spokesmen lament the loss of Israeli lives in the tragic terms of family loss and personal grief. Whereas, Palestinians deaths are dismissed as mere collateral damage, the unavoidable consequence of war. Palestinians are dehumanized as the inconvenient byproduct of a necessary (and glorified) war machine now grinding its way towards victory.

Second, Christians are called to live as citizens of God’s kingdom, a divine, heavenly kingdom that has no allegiance, much less an alliance, with any earthly nation-state. No nation on this earth can ever claim to be carrying out God’s plan for the salvation of humanity. No nation can ever claim my allegiance since I (as a Christian) have already sworn my loyalty to God’s peaceable kingdom, where I am commanded to be a peacemaker – never a warmonger.

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, supporting Israel does not please our Lord. In fact, supporting war and slaughter grieves our God, for it is the antithesis of all that Jesus came to accomplish for humanity.

Third, yes Israel may have a right to defend itself, but no one has the right to commit genocide, nor to execute their Dahiya doctrine in response to an attack. Just war theory has always maintained that Christians insist on a proportional response to an attack. There is nothing proportional about Israel’s reactions to Hamas. This is anything but a just war.

Fourth, when do the Palestinians gain the right to defend themselves? The Hamas attack did not occur in a vacuum. Rather, it is the symptom of a deeply rooted, deadly disease called Israeli military occupation. As long as Israel’s occupation continues, Palestinians will continue to resist. You can count on it. It is human nature.

God did not create the Image of God to suffer interminable abuse. There is something innate to every human being that leads us to stand up against such abuse, to rise up, to raise our hands, and to say, “No more. You cannot beat me any longer. This is wrong. I will resist your efforts to dehumanize me.”

Furthermore, it is more reasonable to ask what the state of Israel expected would happen after 75 years of oppression? You can only persecute people for so long before they resist their persecutors. Why should anyone be surprised that a group like Hamas now exists in Gaza? It is the obvious and easily anticipated outcome of Israeli policies.

What we are witnessing now in Palestine is comparable to any number of anti-colonial uprisings that occurred throughout the “third world” in the 1960s and ‘70s. Israel has always been a settler-colonial state where European settlers have taken away the land of indigenous Palestinians.

Or think of the American slave revolts, like Nate Turner’s revolt in the 1830s. History has taken sides with the slaves (and the colonized) who revolted, throwing off the heavy shackles of their onerous oppression. Does anyone now applaud the slave owners who murdered black men, women and children as if they were animals in order to put down the slaves’ struggle for liberation and maintain their own brutal domination?

History will judge Israel’s current oppression of the Palestinian people in the very same light. Israel is the abusive master brutalizing the brown skinned people now resisting their enslavement.

Finally, on a thoroughly pragmatic note: Gaza has not held any elections since 2006. This means that the vast majority of the Palestinian population were either not yet born or were too young to vote in Gaza’s last election. So, how can  all Gazans be held responsible for voting Hamas into office 17 years ago? Half the Gazan population are minors. The median age is 16.

Most Gazans have never had any say in who does or does not govern them. By blaming the people of Gaza for causing their own genocide, Israel’s defenders are actually promoting grotesque acts of collective punishment (illegal under international law) that have nothing to do with “who voted Hamas into office.”

I am sorry, but my fellow Christians who are now defending Israel’s actions in Gaza have lost touch with the mind of Christ, if in fact, they ever possessed it.

On this matter, they have lost connection to the Head, the Lord of the Church.

Their failure to speak out, to protest against Israeli war crimes, makes them complicit in Israel’s crimes against humanity.

May God have mercy on us all.