As the war in Gaza rages, around the world we struggle to make sense of it. We seeks to comprehend the horror in personal terms so that the killing is not alien or distant, but immediate and visceral. As a Jew, I view the horrors within the Jewish tradition and try to denounce it in terms related to my own religious traditions. I am sure Muslims are doing the same.
There are also thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of graphic images online which interpret the war. They convey emotions visually, with an impact often more powerful than mere words. An example is the graphic image I’ve displayed here. More on this follows.
Tonight I wanted to talk about Christians and Gaza. Both because they are among the largest religion in the world and because Israel has, in the past week, singled out two churches, St. Porphyrious and Holy Family, for merciless attack. An IDF sniper killed two women within the latter church’s compound. He first shot one of the two women. When the second woman came to her aid, he killed her as well.
There are only 700 Christians left in Gaza. But precisely because of that, their suffering as a religious minority deserves special consideration.
Palestine was, of course, the birthplace of Christianity. Bethlehem (along with Jerusalem) are particularly significant places in the Christian tradition. There are 50,000 Palestinian Christians. Despite differences in their respective religious traditions (Muslim and Christian) there is no difference in the extent of their suffering.
However, they each understand that suffering from within their respective theologies. Canon Naim Ateek, one of Palestine’s leading theologians and the founder of Palestinian liberation theology, evokes the suffering of Christ as his model. He writes:
…The suffering of Jesus Christ at the hands of evil political and religious powers two thousand years ago is lived out again in Palestine…
Here in Palestine Jesus is again walking the via Dolorosa. Jesus is the powerless Palestinian humiliated at a checkpoint, the woman trying to get through to the hospital for treatment, the young man whose dignity is trampled, the young student who cannot get to the university to study, the unemployed father who needs to find bread to feed his family; the list is tragically getting longer, and Jesus is there in their midst suffering with them. He is with them when their homes are shelled by tanks and helicopter gunships. He is with them in their towns and villages, in their pains and sorrows.
In this season of Lent, it seems to many of us that Jesus is on the cross again with thousands of crucified Palestinians around him. It only takes people of insight to see the hundreds of thousands of crosses throughout the land, Palestinian men, women, and children being crucified. Palestine has become one huge golgotha. The Israeli government crucifixion system is operating daily. Palestine has become the place of the skull.
That’s anti-Semitic. There is no other way to look at it: truly shameful. https://t.co/IUXoNaHh62
— Khalil Sayegh (@KhalilJeries) December 26, 2023
The original tweet (archived above) was mass reported by outraged pro-Israel Twitter users. As a result, Twitter forced him/her to remove it. This is yet another example of social media censorship of pro-Palestine speech concerning Gaza.
A further parallel between the Israeli Occupation and Jesus’ era is that ancient Judea was conquered by Rome and fought two bloody, prolonged wars against it. 60 years separated both conflicts. Jesus–as did all Jews there–literally suffered under occupation as well.
The Arabic in the tweet says:
Nothing has changed.. The struggle between the good [people] and the Zionists continues, for thousands of years.. There is no nativity [birth of Jesus] without Palestine.❗️
In the embedded tweet above, a Khalil Sayegh labels the image “anti-Semitic.” Another Jewish professor whose expertise is in “racism and anti-Semitism” claims it represents “deicide.” Both are wrong. The artist’s visual iconography sits squarely within the Palestinian Christian understanding of the suffering of not just Christians, but all Palestinians. The passage from Canon Ateek affirms this.
He took umbrage at my disputing his claim, even comparing me to Joseph Haddad. He is an Israeli Palestinian who does social media hasbara for the foreign ministry. Most Palestinians despise him and view him a a traitor. I myself have denounced him in multiple tweets. As far as I can tell from this lunatic smear, Sayegh is declaring me to be a traitor…to what? Israel? Jews? Certainly, not a traitor to Israel because I am American. And certainly not to Judaism because it is a religion, while Israel is a state. Further, I will not permit anyone, Jew, Palestinian or otherwise to define me as a Jew. I define myself. Not to mention that he is again conflating Israel and Judaism which is truly, as opposed to the graphic art, anti-Semitic.
The anti-Semitism claim relates to the phrase “for thousands of years.” Taken literally, as has the individual who claims it is anti-Semitic, it is an error. But he makes a leap in claiming that the Arabic conflates Judaism and Zionism which if it did, might make it anti-Semitic.
Political Zionism has only existed for 150 years. However, the concept of “return to Zion” appears often in Jewish liturgy and signifies an eternal longing of the Jewish people for Zion. Some prayers even call for the rebuilding of the Temple. An enterprise central to Kahanist Judaism.
Thus, modern Zionism appropriates ancient Jewish history and theology to legitimize itself. It sees every battle from the Maccabees to the Romans as a precursor to Zionism. That’s the reason the IDF holds its induction ceremony at Masada and offers the slogan: “Masada will not fall again,” referring to the wars against the Roman conqueror. Revisionist Zionism as well conceives of Israel’s territorial sovereignty in terms of the borders of the Biblical Davidic kingdom, which would include major pieces of what is now Lebanon and Syria. Whether or not the tweet is historically in error, one cannot fault the tweep for characterizing Zionism precisely as it does.
As for the claim of “deicide,” it too is misplaced. Israeli apologists like CAMERA have made such an accusations against Ateek. But Jesus’ crucifixion as an expression of Christian theology is an apt metaphor for Palestinian suffering. Palestinians have been murdered by Israeli Jews for a century. In fact, nearly half of all Palestinians killed in the past 100 years have been slaughtered in the past 10 weeks in Gaza. We don’t use crosses anymore to kill a Judean Jesus, Today, we use bullets and missiles.
What troubles the tweep who claimed the image embodies the “Christ-killer” trope, is that it hearkens back, in her view, to ancient Christian anti-Semitism. But it doesn’t, there is nothing Jewish about it at all. Christ is clearly arrested by Israeli soldiers wearing an Israeli flag on their uniforms. There is no Jewish iconography whatsoever. Certainly, if there was explicit Jewish symbols such a claim might be plausible. But there aren’t. In fact, the conflation of Jews and Israelis in these two claims is itself anti-Semitic.
Further, Jesus in the image has been arrested. There is no visual reference to crucifixion. The viewer may infer what follows from the image. But that is an inference made by some (but certainly not all) viewers. While the graphic portrays Jesus under arrest, 21,000 Gazans who have actually been murdered by the IDF. That more than justifies the Palestinian conception of genocide in Gaza.
Can we solely hold Israel and Israelis as responsible for the genocide or should we consider holding the United States as holding the larger responsibility? After all, were it not for the endless loads of weapons, political and moral support Israel would not be permitted to commit these horrors for a single day.
This is a partnership between the Murderer and the enabler.
We have become a nation that thinks nothing of committing massive slaughter or making massive slaughter possible in the interest of “strategy” or “helping our friends”.
The values of this nation are so self-centered that at a macro level, the US is the ONLY consideration worthy of thought or action and at the micro level, the rich. Even God is not allowed to help the less able, the poor and the sickly.
I often wonder, what is it really, that has any moral value in the running of this nation?
@ Jeff: Yes, you are right as usual, my friend. We are at the very least accessories to genocide. But we’ve put the weapons in the hands of the murderers. So perhaps we’re as guilty as they are.
Flaws in all three “great” religions
Christians Are Goyim Too In Ben Gvir’s Israel
• ‘Israelis spitting on Christians is an old Jewish tradition’
• A Shanda fur die Goyim
Is there a future for any religion In Jerusalem?
For Israeli political expediency, the Gaza War is fought. The US and Europe stay silent as Islamophobia has dehumanized Muslims. FEAR Inc.
It is absurd with the amount hypocrisy Israelis are ready to show in their propaganda. In Northern Israel was a church (St. Mary Greek Melkite church in Iqrit) targeted with missile and nine Israeli soldiers got wounded while evacuating one wounded Palestinian (Israeli story). IDF writes: This attack is not only a clear violation of @UN Security Council Resolution 1701, but also a violation of the freedom of worship.
The only pictures in Google of the church after this “war crime” show the church is okay, but a light small building in front of the church partly destroyed. Compare it to the pictures of the completely destroyed mosques and churches in Gaza. Those attacks are not against 1701 and no violations of the freedom of worship, because of secret weapon storages and command centres or that a Hamas member could have been there. Hizbollah also should at once inform, that there in the church was a zionist commander and behind the altar was a hidden howitzer. This Israeli tale of the wounded Palestinian and help is a bit “strange”. It is a rather absurd to send >9 soldiers to help one wounded Palestinian Christian considering, what they do normally in Gaza and West Bank (let them bleed to death). Why did they not send only an ambulance. Or if there was no wounded Palestinian, what did >9 IDF soldiers do in front of the church? Showing their normal respect to the priest?
The hypocracy of the Israeli army’s statement concerning the church in Iqrith is beyond what my mind can comprehend.
The Palestinian inhabitants of Iqrith were kicked out of their village in 1948, officially for a couple of weeks, most ended up as refugees in Lebanon, others as internally displaced elsewhere in the Galilea. The inhabitants who became Israeli citizens turned to the Supreme Court to return to their village. In spite of the court giving them the right to return, the Israeli army blew up the whole village except the church on Christmas Day 1951 when all the inhabitants were approaching the village to celebrate Christmas in the Church. Until this day they celebrate Easter in the church, bury their dead in the village but have never been allowed to return and rebuild the village. Many times young people have tried to resettle in the village, they bring tents etc and every time they’re kicked out again by the army.
@ Deir: I visited the village when I studied in Israel several decades ago. I knew something about its fate then. But not nearly as much as I know now.