Being Christian After the Desolation of Gaza  ## Document Notes ## Highlights - We are not history’s permanent virtuous victims. We are not hardwired to forever endure evil but never commit it. That false innocence, which pervades contemporary Jewish life, camouflages domination as self-defense. It exempts Jews from external judgment. It offers infinite license to fallible human beings.6 ([Location 229](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0FMBQ7JBK&location=229)) - The war will not end with a ceasefire, the return of all the hostages, or even a full military withdrawal from Gaza. The war will end only when Israeli society realizes that it is not only immoral but also impossible to secure our existence through the oppression and subjugation of another people—and that the people we imprison, bomb, starve, and rob of their freedom and land are entitled to the exact same rights as we are, down to the last note.7 ([Location 235](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0FMBQ7JBK&location=235)) - That story must begin with pledges of political allegiance not to the State of Israel but to God’s just and peaceable kingdom; it must be willing to echo Jesus’s “inflammatory critique of those in power,”11 and it must be marked by a collective lament for Christian complicity in a massacre. ([Location 249](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0FMBQ7JBK&location=249)) - Some of us have made the crisis in Gaza a plot point in our End Times bestsellers or an applause line in our Sunday sermons.12 We have provided biblical justification, political support, and financial backing for discrimination, displacement and, now, genocide. We have ignored the cries of some 40,000 children left without one or both parents.13 We have abandoned hapless hostages subjected to unlawful detention and abuse in Israeli prisons.14 We have demonized non-Jews the way our ancestors demonized Jews. ([Location 253](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0FMBQ7JBK&location=253)) - Would Jesus say “that his Church should have shouted protest, have spoken moral truth to evil, instead of being virtually silent,” as Gazans were bombed, arrested, “tortured, and exterminated? Would Jesus himself, in the face of such evil, have publicly condemned the evildoers?”20 ([Location 280](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0FMBQ7JBK&location=280)) - The logic, albeit unacknowledged, seems to be that “any violence committed by Palestinians justifies all violence by Israel, and no violence committed by Israel justifies any by Palestinians.”35 To think otherwise would be for Christians to succumb once again to the sin of antisemitism. ([Location 326](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0FMBQ7JBK&location=326)) - The fetid refuse, the mass graves, the toxic rubble are something else: forensic evidence of the collective moral failure and silent complicity of millions of American Christians. ([Location 332](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0FMBQ7JBK&location=332)) - Where evangelicals do need help is in cherishing the full humanity of Palestinians alongside that of their Jewish neighbors; in acknowledging what should now be obvious: that Israel aims to empty Gaza (and large parts of the West Bank) of Palestinians; in decrying the injustice of dispossession; and in recognizing our own complicity in Gaza’s incineration. ([Location 344](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0FMBQ7JBK&location=344)) - Jews and Palestinians both have ancient and authentic ties to the Land we call Holy. A lasting resolution must recognize these twin realities. ([Location 364](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0FMBQ7JBK&location=364)) - “How have Zionism and the Christian Zionist lobby turned biblical stories into a blueprint for genocide and made God its mastermind?” ([Location 433](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0FMBQ7JBK&location=433)) - God’s love, not religiosity, is what empowers us to pursue justice and engage in political action for the common good. ([Location 442](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0FMBQ7JBK&location=442)) - Christian Zionism portrays God as a racist, tribal deity, and uses biblical terms like chosen people and promised land to legitimize settler-colonialism, a term that applies when “colonizers immigrate to a territory not to live among and integrate with the local population, but to replace them.” ([Location 445](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0FMBQ7JBK&location=445)) - This is a kairos moment, Wagner contends—a moment of truth—in which we must heed the call to deep and lasting repentance, “a radical reorientation of mind that will bring our lives into alignment with the truth of the gospel.” ([Location 489](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0FMBQ7JBK&location=489)) - Palestinian support for violence, Peter Beinart observes, “‘responds to threat perception, to the level of pain and suffering imposed by the policies and actions of Israel.’ . . . [It] goes up when Palestinian hopes of freedom go down.”44 ([Location 770](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0FMBQ7JBK&location=770)) - It’s a simple fable of good and evil, in which Israel is unblemished in its innocence, deserving unquestioning support, while its enemies are all monsters, deserving of violence unbounded by laws or borders, whether in Gaza, Jenin, Beirut, Damascus or Tehran. It’s a story in which Israel’s very identity as a nation is forever fused with the terror it suffered on 7 October, an event that, in Netanyahu’s telling, will be seamlessly merged both with the Nazi Holocaust and a battle for the soul of western civilization.87 ([Location 997](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0FMBQ7JBK&location=997)) - on the ground in Gaza, approximately 97% of the water in the strip is considered unsafe for drinking; over half of the population lives under the poverty line; 80% of the strip’s population relies on foreign aid; and the future for most youth is uncertain, with 64% of them unemployed and their dreams and aspirations stifled by the limitations of the blockade.89 All of this is (essential, but incomplete) context for understanding—not excusing, not cheering, not defending—the resentment and rage that led Hamas to justify the atrocities they committed that dark day in October. ([Location 1011](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0FMBQ7JBK&location=1011)) - Rather than clarity, we promote confusion and all but guarantee that the cycle of tragedy will continue. ([Location 1559](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0FMBQ7JBK&location=1559)) - apocalyptic Christian Zionism, according to which the return of Jews to the Land after centuries of exile signals the beginning of the End. Now that Israel controls all of Jerusalem, a third Temple will surely rise where the first and second Temples once stood. Apocalyptic Zionists are pessimistic; the arc of history bends toward bedlam. To pressure Israel to trade land for peace or to restrict the growth of Jewish settlements is simply to appease Israel’s enemies at a time when turmoil and violence are certain to escalate. I call the second type transactional Christian Zionism. Essential here is God’s promise to Abraham in Gen 12:3: “I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” One thus blesses Israel in order to be blessed by God. In this context, “blessing” means tangible support in the form of fund-raising, lobbying, solidarity tourism, and enthusiasm for Jewish settlement expansion. The idea that divine favor can be predictable and assured in this way is popular among neo-Pentecostals. Today it is surging in the Global South where entire countries, deploying pro-Israel diplomacy, trade, and tourism, are expecting to see their fortunes rise.209 ([Location 1960](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0FMBQ7JBK&location=1960)) - Covenantal Christian Zionism stresses the continuing validity of biblical covenants and promises, including the promise of land, and it maintains an abiding distinction between Jews and gentiles in God’s plan. When God redeems various peoples, God preserves their particularity, or at least the distinction between Jews and non-Jews. ([Location 1973](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0FMBQ7JBK&location=1973)) - The obliteration of Gaza is a hinge of history. A milestone of inhumanity. A grievous moral injury, inflicted by the violence itself and by what Pankaj Mishra has called the “applause or indifference of the powerful,” among whom many of us must surely be counted. ([Location 2002](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0FMBQ7JBK&location=2002)) - What is it about Christian Zionism that prevents criticism of Israel’s behavior, no matter how horrendous? Why do Christian Zionists only act as Israel’s cheerleaders? I see no logical or theological rationale for this wall of Christian Zionist silence. ([Location 3141](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0FMBQ7JBK&location=3141)) - American Christians often express little concern for world affairs and fail to see that faithful discipleship must be radically counter-cultural. ([Location 3148](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0FMBQ7JBK&location=3148)) - Christian discipleship requires us to overcome whatever obstacles are keeping us silent. If that silence is due to the moral anesthesia of Christian Zionism, we must wake up and speak out in defense of those under attack. ([Location 3226](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0FMBQ7JBK&location=3226)) - If the church is truly committed to the work of justice and peace, we need to be telling truthful stories about each other. Instead of adopting ideologies of supremacy, violence, and dehumanization, we must follow Christ on the path of love and mercy. For so long, Christians have failed to be Christlike when it matters—whether historically toward Native people, Blacks, and Jews, or toward Palestinians ([Location 3790](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0FMBQ7JBK&location=3790)) - However, lament, whether personal or corporate, is incomplete if it only decries evil, injustice, and suffering. Biblical laments end with a declaration of hope and trust in the face of anguish, uncertainty, and darkness where, to all appearances, God is absent or, worse, uncaring. Lament, without hope, offers no answers. ([Location 5132](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0FMBQ7JBK&location=5132)) - Of the three things that remain—faith, hope, and love (1 Cor 13:13)—hope is often neglected. ([Location 5184](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0FMBQ7JBK&location=5184)) - Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection demonstrate that hope will endure despite the circumstances. ([Location 5195](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0FMBQ7JBK&location=5195)) - Hope looks beyond the present and sees a future that is glorious and secure (Jer 29:11). ([Location 5200](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0FMBQ7JBK&location=5200)) - Thus, the story of Rwanda cannot be understood apart from European colonialism and the role Christianity played in it. The story that shaped Zionism and its quest to find in Palestine an answer to Europe’s “Jewish Question” is informed by Western colonialism and Orientalism. Zionism is inherently an extension and manifestation of European colonialism with its long history of domination, subjugation, and extermination of indigenous peoples. ([Location 5345](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0FMBQ7JBK&location=5345)) - the US story and Israel’s story are fundamentally one and the same: that of settler colonialism.435 ([Location 5352](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0FMBQ7JBK&location=5352)) - the settler-colonial project of Zionism aimed at the elimination of the native Palestinian people, in whole or in part, in order to replace them with Zionist settlers. ([Location 5377](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0FMBQ7JBK&location=5377)) - According to Raheb, Christian Zionism “should be defined as a Christian lobby that supports the Jewish settler colonialism of Palestinian land by using biblical/theological constructs within a metanarrative while taking glocal considerations into account.”442 ([Location 5390](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0FMBQ7JBK&location=5390)) - Christian Zionist theologians, church leaders, scholars, and politicians have rationalized the Zionist genocide by appealing to ancient biblical stories. ([Location 5399](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0FMBQ7JBK&location=5399)) - Their “Manifest Destiny” is interlocked with the Zionist settler-colonial project. They have transformed the very biblical stories they celebrate as an inspiration for their liberation into instruments for the colonization and oppression of others. ([Location 5415](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0FMBQ7JBK&location=5415)) - European colonizers of Rwanda used the Hamitic myth to turn Hutu and Tutsi against one another, describing the Tutsis as Semitic and thus superior to the majority, supposedly Hamitic, Hutus.455 ([Location 5446](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0FMBQ7JBK&location=5446)) - genocide cannot be justified theologically. ([Location 5453](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0FMBQ7JBK&location=5453)) - genocide cannot be rationalized by an appeal to biblical stories. ([Location 5467](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0FMBQ7JBK&location=5467)) - it is imperative to speak and to act prophetically in the face of injustice and genocide. ([Location 5484](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0FMBQ7JBK&location=5484)) - truth. Christians cannot remain silent or claim neutrality while people are being killed in the name of God. ([Location 5484](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0FMBQ7JBK&location=5484)) - genocide and the ideologies of settler-colonialism must be actively resisted. ([Location 5503](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0FMBQ7JBK&location=5503)) - The church in the West, with its history of settler colonialism and weaponization of the Bible, is in urgent need of rediscovering a moment of truth—a kairos moment that could lead to confession, repentance, and a journey of healing and reconciliation. ([Location 5519](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0FMBQ7JBK&location=5519)) - Religiosity was a useful mask: numbing, distracting, distorting, and shielding people from reality. ([Location 5722](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0FMBQ7JBK&location=5722)) - There is no room for elevating the claims of nation or ethnicity over the claims of God’s reign of justice for all. ([Location 5789](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0FMBQ7JBK&location=5789)) - There is no room for silence when fellow human beings are being robbed of home, land, livelihood, and life itself. ([Location 5809](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0FMBQ7JBK&location=5809)) - We must name our masks, lament, and resist with all means at our disposal. What is the mission of God’s people in the context of oppression? To do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with our God. May God have mercy as we tear off our masks. May God’s Spirit breathe truth and strength into us so that we may live out God’s good purposes in God’s world, sowing seeds of justice until the Lord returns and justice finally prevails. ([Location 5812](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0FMBQ7JBK&location=5812)) ## New highlights added January 25, 2026 at 8:13 PM - First, he staged his entry into Jerusalem in a way that heralded God’s coming kingdom, which would rule not through military might but through humble service. ([Location 7556](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0FMBQ7JBK&location=7556)) - The ancient city had become an object of devotion in its own right. Worshiping Jesus had morphed into the adoration of an idealized Jerusalem. ([Location 7725](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0FMBQ7JBK&location=7725)) - Martin Luther King Jr. said, “It is appalling that the most segregated hour of Christian America is 11 o’clock on Sunday morning.” ([Location 7754](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0FMBQ7JBK&location=7754)) - Christians have often been asleep and have needed awakening to begin to correct the abuses of their forebears. We live in such a time with regard to Christian Zionism and its blindness to the suffering at their gates. ([Location 7808](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0FMBQ7JBK&location=7808)) - people. The scene reminded me of Albert Memmi’s description in The Colonizer and the Colonized of the colonizer’s psychological state: Accepting the reality of being a colonizer means agreeing to be a nonlegitimate privileged person, that is, a usurper . . . . To possess victory completely he needs to absolve himself of it and the conditions under which it was attained . . . . He attempts to falsify history, he rewrites laws, he would extinguish memories—anything to succeed in transforming his usurpation into legitimacy.625 ([Location 7839](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0FMBQ7JBK&location=7839)) - Such unconditional devotion to the State of Israel, Beinart charges, amounts to a form of “idolatry” that “suffuses contemporary Jewish life.”643 Worshipping a country that elevates Jews over Palestinians replaces Judaism’s universal God—who makes special demands on Jews but cherishes all people—with a tribal deity that considers Jewish life precious and Palestinian life cheap.644 ([Location 8250](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0FMBQ7JBK&location=8250)) - Through the outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost, the discord of Babel is finally harmonized. ([Location 8409](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0FMBQ7JBK&location=8409)) - The Spirit empowers us to be a people who, like Jesus, bless when cursed; a people who refuse to take revenge into our own hands; a people who work steadfastly and courageously to overcome evil with good, confident that God will judge the world with justice and impartiality (12:14–21).697 Sharing our possessions, opening our homes, our one law is the law of love. Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. The commandments . . . are summed up in this word, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” (Rom 13:8–10) ([Location 8557](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0FMBQ7JBK&location=8557))