The ongoing October 2023 conflict, which is more accurately, the effort for the Israeli state to annex Palestine has been ongoing even before the declaration of the Israeli state in 1948. Despite this systematic and violent apartheid and settler colonialism against Palestine, Christian churches and institutions have supported the Israeli side either on misguided grounds or with dubious intentions. In the spirit of letting justice and righteousness roll down like waters (Amos 5:24), we feel the need to urge fellow Christians to stand with Palestine and condemn the Israeli Zionist settler colonialism. Here are the following reasons:
1. Biblical Israel is different from the state of Palestine
The British Empire back then, with the goal of weakening the Ottoman Empire, had promised independence for both Arabs and Zionists, Jews from Europe whose goal was to establish a Jewish state in Palestine, if they resisted the Ottomans. The British facilitated the settling down of Zionists in Palestine without consulting Palestinians. Moreover, the British carved up the Ottoman Empire in order to protect its interest in Gulf oil and the route to its then-colony India.
In the meantime, European leaders were not also interested in ending antisemitism in their own countries. British politicians like Prime Minister David Lloyd George even believed that gathering Jews in Palestine would trigger the events in the Revelation, a belief that would be inherited by conservative and influential Christian pastors like John Hagee who justified holocaust as an urge for the Jews to settle in Palestine.
Thus, modern Israel is a state born out of unjust, selfish, and even antisemitic geopolitical interests. In Exodus, God chose the Hebrew people, later called Israel, because they were crying out because of their slavery. Today’s Israel simply cannot inherit the Biblical title because Israel is committing settler colonialism and apartheid to Palestinians, a far cry from the Biblical mandate to establish a community of justice.
2. Israeli economic and political support also comes from literal, genocidal way of reading the Bible
Many conservative Christians, especially those coming from the United States who believe that Israeli settler colonialism is literal fulfillment of the Biblical prophecy for the end times, have had considerable influence especially on Republicans, but also on Democrats, and is something that Israeli leaders like Netanyahu himself have thanked for.
American non-government organizations (NGOs) and charities have also gathered money, resources, and support for Israeli soldiers and for Israeli settler activities like illegal Israeli settlements.
3. Israel is a settler colony
Zionists are not simply doing migration to Palestine – it is settler colonialism. Israeli authorities have incurred a strategic and systematic fragmentation of Palestinian territory reflected in the policies and actual actions of Israeli authorities.
These include building walls and guard towers that limit and constrict the Palestinian population, various genocidal actions and other human rights violations against Palestinians, demolitions of farms and homes of Palestinians, real estate colonization of lands “assigned” to Palestinians.
4. Israel has committed unmeasurable human rights violations (HRVs)
There have been 5,590 Palestinian deaths from 2008 to 2020. An estimated a million Palestinians have been incarcerated since 1967. Gaza, which is heavily and fully blockaded, is considered as the world’s largest open-air prison. Israel has been called out continuously by the United Nations and other human rights groups for massively violating international law, including its said recent use of white phosphorus. Palestinians are considered as second-class citizens even within their territory. Many Palestinian communities have been deliberately cut off from utilities.
These verifiable conditions only tell a fraction of the sinful and deadly society Zionists have imposed against Palestinians.
5. Israel has even persecuted Christians
The ongoing conflict is not a Jews against Muslims because Israeli forces have also attacked Christians and Jews who are Palestinians. Israel authorities have also attacked and harassed Jews who side with the Palestinian cause.
Israeli forces shot journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, a Palestinian Arab Christian on May 11, 2022. Even her funeral was even attacked by Israeli police. Additionally, Israeli militants have also desecrated Christian and Islamic holy sites.
6. Israel and the US have systematically poured fake news against Palestinians
Fake news such as Palestinians beheading babies and raping women have not had corroboration, but are spread quickly by mainstream media, compared to, for example, videos of Israeli military attacking civilian targets. Israeli propaganda is also built on a million-dollar troll army.
The US spreads deceitful and Islamophobic messages of Israel as a beacon of democracy in the west where in reality, it is the greed of US and multinational companies that have been the root cause of wars in the Middle East and beyond.
7. Support for Israel is a screen for maintaining US imperialist hegemony in the Middle East
Initially as a way for US presidentiable Harry Truman to gain support from Jewish voters, US support for Israel has evolved into suppressing Soviet Union influence and in maintaining hegemony in the Middle East for oil and other petroleum resources, succeeding previous British interest in the area for oil.
Israel is the biggest recipient of US military aid around the world, about $3.8 billion a year, and this continuous military training and equipment is being used to commit HRVs against Palestinians.
8. Support for Palestine is solidarity for those experiencing dispossession, like those in the Philippines
Indigenous peoples in the Philippines like the Lumad and Igorot suffer dispossession for foreign plunder where natural resources like minerals are being extracted among ancestral lands. IPs are being displaced by the Army and the Philippine National Police who are being trained and sold weapons to by the US. If Israel is the number one recipient of US weapons in the world, the Philippines is number one in Asia-Pacific. And like how Israel is a base of maintaining US hegemony in the Middle East, the Philippines serves the same role in the Asia-Pacific.
With reasons stated above, Christians around the world are called to be on the side of truth and history.
If Jesus were alive today, He would be persecuted, and even killed, by the settler-colonialist Israeli puppet state, just like how He was killed by the puppet territory of the Roman Empire back then.
If Jesus were alive today, He would make efforts to tear down the walls, He would preach to “build bridges,” He would condemn the powers responsible for the systemic injustices in Palestine, He would call for the liberation of Palestine and of all oppressed victims around the world. Christians are urged to do the same.