On October 19, 2023, the Israeli army bombed Saint Porphyry Greek Orthodox Church in Gaza City, the oldest church in Gaza, built in the 12th century. Five hundred Palestinians, of all faiths, had taken refuge in the church; at least 18 people were killed attack. Two weeks later, Israel bombed and destroyed the Orthodox Cultural Centeralso in Gaza City.
In December 2023, the Israeli army besieged the Holy Family Catholic Church in Gaza City, where approximately six hundred and fifty Palestinians were seeking refuge; Israeli snipers shot dead a mother and her daughter who were sheltering in the church. Israeli forces also bombed and damaged the Gaza Baptist Church, the Near East Council of Churches, the Missionaries of Charity Convent, and the Anglican-run Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza – next to five hundred Palestinians were killed.
In four months of bombing, three percent of the roughly 1,000 Palestinian Christians living in Gaza have been killed, and many more injured and displaced, leading community leaders to express concerns that the entire community could be wiped out. of the Palestinian Christian community in Gaza as they pleaded. for the support of the global Christian community.
The current Israeli war on Gaza is part of a long history of attacks and elimination of the Palestinian Christian community in Gaza, Jerusalem and the West Bank. Since 2007, Gaza’s small but ancient Christian community has grown from three thousand to around a thousand people living in the Gaza Strip today; In the West Bank and Jerusalem, the largest Palestinian Christian community of around 50,000 people has faced a similar decline in the past. a few decades.
This demographic decline was largely due to the pressures of Israeli occupation, apartheid and the siege in Palestine and facilitated by many Western countries’ greater welcoming of Christians over Christians. to Palestinian Muslim immigrants.
However, as Ramzy Baroud says points outthe elimination of the Palestinian Christian community is also favorable to Israel, because it “is keen to present the ‘conflict’ in Palestine as a religious conflict so that it can… present itself as a besieged Jewish state in the midst of a massive Muslim population in the country. Middle East.”
“The continued existence of Palestinian Christians,” Baroud notes, “does not really factor into the Israeli agenda.”
Israeli leaders regularly confuse Palestinian and Muslim identities, placing Palestinian Christians under rhetorical as well as literal erasure. In December 2023, for example, Israeli President Isaac Herzog claimed that Israel’s war on Gaza “aims…to save Western civilization,” while Israel was “attacked by a jihadist network” and that “without us, Europe would be next, and the United States follows.” Also in December, Jerusalem Deputy Mayor Fleur Hassan-Nahoum responded to reports of Israeli sniper attacks on the Holy Family Church in Gaza. pretending there were “no Christians” and “no churches” in Gaza.
Despite their calls for support, the plight of Palestinian Christians has largely been met with notable silence in the West. “Why is the Christian West ignoring the plight of Palestinian Christians? asks Daoud Kuttab, who Remarks that US President Joe Biden, “a devout Catholic, has said or done nothing to protect his fellow Catholics in Gaza.”
Palestinian pastor Munther Isaac, a Lutheran pastor in Bethlehem, condemned Christian silence in the West over Israel’s war on Gaza, saying: “To our European friends, I never want to hear you lecture us again about human rights or international law. »
In October 2023, a group of twelve Palestinian Christian organizations sent a collective letter to Western Church leaders, stating that “we watch with horror as many Western Christians offer unwavering support for Israel’s war against the people of Palestine” and that “we hold Western Church leaders and theologians who side with Israel’s wars are responsible for their theological attitude.” and political complicity in Israeli crimes against Palestinians.
Western silence on the plight of Palestine’s Christians stands in stark contrast to the outrage expressed a few years earlier over attacks on minority Christian communities in Iraq and Syria. Between 2014 and 2015, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) launched a campaign of harassment, bombing, displacement and killing against Christian communities in the region: this included the kidnapping and killing of Christian monks, the bombing of churches and monasteries and the seizure of Christian homes and properties.
ISIS attacks on Christians were widely covered at the time by mainstream Western media, and reports condemning the attacks were released by groups from Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, the Cato Institute and the Knights of Columbus. Pope Francis publicly condemned ISIS attacks as genocide against Christians in 2015, and in 2016 the European Union, the United States House of Representatives and British Parliament followed suit, all condemning the genocide committed by ISIS against Christians in the Middle East.
How can we understand this striking double standard? Regarding Mahmood Mamdani’s 2004 book, Good Muslim, bad Muslim, can be useful. In this book, Mamdani notes the distinction widely established in the West between good Muslims, “modern, secular and Westernized”, and bad Muslims, “doctrinal, anti-modern and virulent”. In part, by conflating Palestinians with Muslim identity – and Palestinian Muslims with Hamas – Palestinian Christians are erased from view and are treated as part of the overall terrorist threat to Western civilization that bad Muslims pose. The Palestinian Christian is effectively rewritten as a bad Muslim (terrorist): there are “no Christians” in Gaza.
But Mamdani argues that the key distinction between good and bad Muslims lies not in internal cultural or religious characteristics, but rather in their position in relation to America and the West. “Judgments about ‘good’ and ‘bad’ refer to… political identities,” writes Mamdani, “and not to cultural or religious identities.
“In simple terms,” as Mamdani bluntly puts it another article on the subject, “a good Muslim (is) a pro-American Muslim and a bad Muslim (is) an anti-American Muslim”.
To extend Mamdani’s argument to all faiths, Christians in Iraq and Syria are good Christians who must be defended, not because of any inherent Christian identity or culture, but because they are being attacked by ISIS (bad Muslims), America’s enemy. But the Christians of Palestine must not be defended because they have the misfortune of being attacked by Israel, which happens to be a faithful ally of America. The Palestinian Christian is indeed considered a bad (unspeakable) Christian, the Christian who refuses to act as a minority.
To be a good Muslim or a good Christian in the Middle East, the continuity of one’s existence must be aligned with American, Western and Israeli geostrategic interests.
“If there are good and bad Muslims,” Mamdani writes, then we must take note of “the simple but radical suggestion that…there must also be good and bad Westerners.”
In December 2023, the Rev. Munther Isaac, delivering his Christmas sermon at the Bethlehem Evangelical Lutheran Church, made a “simple but radical suggestion” as he sought to overturn the dominant narrative of good and bad Christians that has governed Western responses to the war in 2023. Gaza until now.
“The war confirmed to us that the world does not consider us equal,” Isaac observed. “Even our kinship in Christ has not protected us…. We are not humans in their eyes.
“The South African Church taught us the concept of ‘state theology’,” Isaac said, “defined as the ‘theological justification of the status quo with its racism, capitalism and totalitarianism’.”
In the United States today, Isaac pointed out, American Christians are “sending bombs at us while celebrating Christmas at home,” meaning that many Christians in the West have “ensured that the Empire has the necessary theology.”
In response, Isaac invoked a different and better version of Christianity.
“If Jesus were to be born today,” Isaac said, “he would be born under the rubble of Gaza.”
“If we as Christians are not outraged by this genocide,” he said, “using the Bible as a weapon to justify it, there is something wrong with our Christian witness.” and which compromises the credibility of the Gospel! »
