In the gospel reading today, Persian court astrologers travel to Jerusalem to visit Herod I, a client king set over the administration of the province of Judea by the Roman Empire. They ask Herod: “Where is the newborn king of the Jews?” 

Herod is “greatly troubled” by this question, which directly challenged his own legitimacy as a proxy ruler of an occupied people. The chief priests and scribes offer an answer rooted in the history of their people: the king will come from Bethlehem.

The verses they cite are from the book of the prophet Micah, which was produced in the wake of the invasion, mass killings, and forced exile perpetrated by the Babylonian Empire against the kingdom of Judah in the sixth century BCE. It envisions a time of redemption for this exiled people, in which the line of King David would be restored, but this time, with a king who will rule with wisdom that will radiate out to the entire world. All nations, it says, will look to Jerusalem for the word of God (Micah 4:2), and there will be no more war (Micah 4:3). 

The book of Micah describes Bethlehem as the place from which this future will emerge because it was David’s hometown. Reading today’s gospel fills my mind with images of modern-day Bethlehem, which like the rest of the West Bank has been under Israeli military occupation since 1967.

West Bank Palestinians face the arbitrary judgment of military administration, restrictions on freedom of movement, and vulnerability to settler violence. All Palestinians live with the legacy of the Nakba, the displacement of close to 800,000 Palestinians during the 1948 war. This war broke out following the UN announcement of its plan for the partition of British Mandate Palestine into two states (one Jewish, one Arab) in 1947. In Occupied with Nonviolence: A Palestinian Woman Speaks, the Quaker Palestinian educator and activist Jean Zaru writes: “Half of our Palestinian people have been uprooted and forcibly thrown out of their homes, some more than once, and the other half subjected to the rule of others in our own land.”

Zaru takes inspiration from the prophets of the Hebrew Bible. She draws upon their vision of reconciliation as bound to justice and makes a connection to traditional forms of restorative justice within Palestinian society, in which forgiveness is achieved through a mediated conversation where repair is made for past wrongs. She sees in this process a model for a just peace predicated upon a truthful acknowledgement of history and reparation of past harm. Zaru writes that while it is incredibly important to note the asymmetric power relationships between Israelis and Palestinians, “the well-being of our two peoples is inextricably interrelated,” and she highlights the work of Palestinian and Israeli anti-occupation activists.

Herod’s “troubled” response to the coming of a new Jewish king is rooted in fear. To a certain extent, this was justified by the history of his kingdom, which had been subject to invasion after invasion, exile after exile. We should be cautious about the ways in which this fear can occlude the prophetic vision for the safety of all people, not only one’s own safety.

It is crucial to acknowledge how fear has animated the perpetuation of injustice in Israel/Palestine. The emergent state of Israel that was formed on the land from which most Palestinians were displaced was itself largely composed of refugees, both from Europe (first those who fled pogroms in the Russian Empire and then those who fled annihilation during the Holocaust) and from the Middle East/North Africa  (in the decades following the formation of the state of Israel, around 900,000 Jews were forced to flee from North Africa, Southwest Asia, and Central Asia, and most ended up in Israel). Zaru describes how the state of Israel often justifies its oppression of Palestinians by asserting the need to ensure its security — based on a fear deeply rooted in the violence faced by Jewish communities throughout history. “But surely,” Zaru writes, “security needs are mutual.” The prophetic vision of a future in which safety, wisdom, and healing for all nations will radiate from Jerusalem must be embodied in a commitment to multiethnic and multireligious solidarity and restorative justice in Israel/Palestine.

Jean Zaru’s dedication to nonviolent direct action in resistance to the Israeli occupation is shared by a number of very committed organizations on the ground in Israel/Palestine. Among the most prominent is Ta’ayush, a joint Palestinian/Israeli organization that disrupts settler and soldier violence against Palestinians through “concrete non-violent actions of solidarity and resistance.” Settler violence (and government/military support of it) has skyrocketed since the current far-right government of Israel took power at the end of December 2022. 

In the wake of the October 7th massacres in southern Israel, and as global attention remains focused on Israel’s massive retaliatory aerial bombardment and invasion of Gaza and the unprecedented civilian death toll, settler and soldier attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank have taken on a systematic character. Solidarity activists who travel to threatened areas in the West Bank to provide a protective presence and/or document the attacks face violence and harassment themselves. The solidarity activism of organizations such as Ta’ayush, while all too marginalized within the current political status quo of Israel/Palestine, offers a glimpse of the prophetic future envisioned by today’s readings.

Mahmoud Darwish is widely regarded as the Palestinian national poet. While he was among the 150,000 Palestinians that remained within the territory of Israel after the Nakba and had Israeli citizenship, his poetry speaks powerfully to the pain of exile and displacement shared by all Palestinians. As a young man, he was actively involved in the joint Arab-Jewish Israeli Communist Party. After his poem “Identity Card” (with its powerful refrain, “I am an Arab”) became a rallying point for Palestinian resistance and empowerment, he was placed under house arrest and imprisoned several times. It was during the period of his imprisonment that he wrote the poem “My Mother,” about his own mother after she visited him. While the poem has often been understood allegorically to be about his longing for Palestine as an exiled mother, Darwish himself insisted it was purely a reflection on his experience of realizing that his mother, with whom he had a difficult relationship, did love him when she visited him in his time of need. 

Darwish’s devotion to the Palestinian struggle as well as his close (if complicated) connections during the early period of his life with Israeli activists working for a shared Arab/Jewish future — explored in the 2014 documentary Write Down, I Am an Arab — are embodiments of the vision of the prophet Micah and Jean Zaru described in the reflection on the gospel today.