“It Is Long Overdue for the Church to Condemn the Genocide and Call for an End to U.S. Complicity”

On this All Souls Day, I can think of nothing more befitting the occasion than to recall the powerful sermon entitled “Christ in the Rubble, a Liturgy of Lament, delivered on Christmas Eve, 2023, by Palestinian Pastor, Reverend Doctor Munther Isaac in his Bethlehem church. In this sermon, which soon went viral, he said:

“We look and see [Jesus] in every [Palestinian] child killed and pulled from under the rubble [in Gaza.] While the world continues to reject the children of Gaza, Jesus says: “just as you did it to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it to me”…We look at the holy family and see them in every family displaced and wandering, now homeless in despair.”

Rev. Isaac opened the sermon saying:

“We are angry…We are broken…We are fearful. 20,000 killed. Thousands under the rubble still. Close to 9,000 children killed in the most brutal ways. Day after day after day. 1.9 million displaced! Hundreds of thousands of homes were destroyed. Gaza as we know it no longer exists. This is an annihilation. A genocide.”

Rev. Isaac bitterly criticized leaders of the so-called “free world” for not only standing with Israel, but being deeply complicit in the genocide. While he praised some Christian activists for their solidarity, he included the Church establishment in his charge of complicity:

“In this war, the many Christians in the Western world made sure the Empire has the theology needed…In the shadow of the Empire, they turned the colonizer into the victim, and the colonized into the aggressor…We are outraged by the complicity of the church. Let it be clear: Silence is complicity, and empty calls for peace without a ceasefire and end to occupation, and the shallow words of empathy without direct action — are all under the banner of complicity.”

This was only 77 days after October 7, 2023. Back then, we, Palestinian Christians, never imagined that most Christian leaders would stay silent for such a long time. Today, reality has far exceeded our worst nightmares – the genocide has reached nearly 700 days – nine times as many days as the period to which Rev. Isaac referred, and its intensity has multiplied by the same factor, and most church leaders continue to be – at best, silent. Have their eyes been blinded to the destruction of places of worship; schools and universities; hospitals and clinics; transportation, energy, hygiene, and public health infrastructure; and over 90 percent of buildings, including homes? How long will their hard hearts ignore the orphaned child amputees fleeing, with terror in their eyes, Israel’s U.S.-made bombs?…the starving mothers holding the skin-and-bones bodies of their babies, while Israel continues to prevent medicine and even baby formula from entering the Gaza Strip?

What would Jesus say to those who have stood with the mighty against the poor and the oppressed? And it is not only self-proclaimed Christian Zionists that have been complicit. In December, 2024, a few days after Amnesty International asserted that Israel was committing genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza, the U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops adopted the American Jewish Committee’s Translate Hate document, which was allegedly intended to combat antisemitism, but was a very thinly-veiled attack on international solidarity with Palestinians. To our disbelief, the USCCB republished this document with the subtitle, The Catholic Edition! It denies the fact that Israel trains police forces in the U.S. in tactics developed to brutally suppress Palestinian protesters against the military occupation of their land; it denies the charge that Israel is committing genocide by asserting its “right of self-defense;” and, amazingly, it denies the fact that Palestinians were forcefully expelled from their land in 1948 – a central historic fact of the Palestinian experience, and one that even leading Israeli historians no longer contest. To date, the USCCB has essentially ignored impassioned protests from Palestinian Christians about this outrage in the middle of the worst suffering that their nation has experienced in modern time. This is also at a time when leading Holocaust experts, including at least two Israelis, have asserted that Israel is, indeed, committing the crime of genocide.

One easy way for everyone to help is to lobby your church or any community to which you belong to sign onto the American Friends Service Committee’s “Apartheid-Free Communities” campaign. Another way is to visit Palestinians when you go for pilgrimages in the Holy Land. Palestinian Christians – the Living Stones – the descendants of the original Christians, are experiencing great economic hardships because of Israel’s strangulating occupation. The Israeli tourism establishment routinely steers Christian pilgrims away from Palestinian establishments; and the very existence of indigenous Christians in the Holy Land is threatened due to high emigration. Please visit Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and look for the Christian communities all over the Holy Land. Visit our churches and experience the hospitality of our steadfast people. And –  importantly – demand of your denominational leaders to name things as they are: genocide, ethnic cleaning, and apartheid that is contrary to the teachings of the Prince of Peace and all faith traditions.

Palestinian Christian Alliance for Peace is a group of Palestinian American Christians seeking to come together to provide a voice for Palestinian Christians in faith-based communities. It is based around the Kairos Palestine Document. This is paraphrased from the group’s mission statement. Visit our website Take a Stand for the Holy Land! — Palestinian Christian Alliance for Peace