Jesus Against Genocide: Christians for a Free Palestine

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Luke 4:18-19

I arrive at this issue the same way I arrive at all issues of oppression and injustice: as a middle class, American born, white, cisgendered man with an Ivy League education. In other words, as a person overflowing with privilege who has never, and likely will never, experience the same kind of systemic violence others across the globe experience on the daily. However, with privilege comes responsibility: the responsibility to be a good steward of one’s privilege, to leverage whatever platform one has to speak out against injustice and demand change. While a responsibility of all who live in the absence of social and political upheaval, those of us who consider ourselves adherents of the Christian faith should be acutely attentive to this obligation.

My own denominational tradition — United Methodism — has long been invested in this idea. We believe deeply in the necessity of not only personal holiness, but “social holiness.” Our mission statement is indicative of this: “to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.” The latter is a necessary derivative of the former; making disciples of Jesus is a hollow task if it doesn’t lead to a more beautiful, loving, and just world. As such, when we accept Christ’s call to discipleship, to take up our crosses and deny ourselves, we accept the dream, vision, and possibility of a better world. This acceptance, though, requires not only an intellectual or emotional assent to the dream of a better world, but also a concrete solidarity with those living on the underside of today’s world.

When thinking about those living on the underside of today’s world, our minds can go any number of directions: people of color subject to systemic racism on a daily basis; LGBTQ+ people being told they effectively don’t exist; women’s bodies being legislated, by-and-large, by old white men who have no business weighing in on female bodily autonomy; those living in poverty and the microaggressions they’re regularly exposed to. These are all people with whom we must be providing support and demanding justice, and I have no doubt these will all be the subject of future writings. However, in this historical moment, one of the most acute events demanding our attention is the mass murder and oppression of the Palestinian people.

While many peoples’ attention might have only been recently drawn to the violence in Palestine , it’s only the most recent conflagration of a nearly 80 year conflict. Originating in the 1948 mass displacement of Palestinians known as the “Nakba,” or “catastrophe” in Arabic, Israel was established as a Jewish state in the aftermath of the Holocaust. However, this thrust the region into a deep strife as the demand for a Jewish state on traditionally Palestinian land required the forced departure of whole communities from homelands on which their families dwelt for generations.

Now, one need not look far in the Old Testament to determine that a core principle of the ancient Israelite people was a connection to the land: YHWH’s promise to Abram of a land for his descendants (Gen. 15:18), the liberation of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt and the promise of a “land flowing with milk and honey” (Ex. 3:8), even a requirement that the land be granted a sabbath rest from planting every seven years (Lev. 25:4). However, those commandments don’t stand alone as the only guiding principles of people who affirm the Jewish faith. There are also demands that food be provided for the poor (Ex. 23:11; Lev. 19:10, 23:22), that aliens and strangers are provided for (Ex. 22:21, 23:9; Lev. 19:33-34; Deut. 10:19, 23:16, 24:17), that orphans and widows be cared for (Ex. 22:22; Deut. 27:19), and many others. In short, the origins of the Jewish faith aren’t inherently or exclusively imperialistic. There is a requirement for the vulnerable to be cared for which undergirds everything else; a demand for followers of YHWH to “do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8).

While this space isn’t devoted to expositing a theologically Jewish response to the current events in Palestine, it’s necessary to at least acknowledge if for no other reason than that it was the cultural and religious milieu into which Jesus was born. As was a constant refrain of many Christians who spoke out against the mass elimination of the Jewish people during World War II: Jesus was a Jew. Jesus’s faith, though, wasn’t confined to the land; it went beyond the land. He saw beyond the logistics and the legality of ancient Israelite commandments to the core of their foundation: love.

Jesus even says this very thing. When asked what the greatest commandment is, he replies, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets” (Mt. 22:37-40). As Christians who affirm Jesus as the long-awaited messiah — in which all the hopes and desires of the ancient Israelites have been fulfilled; in which the law was fulfilled — our litmus test has fundamentally changed. Instead of holding ourselves to the 613 laws or traditional customs of ancient Judaism, we hold ourselves accountable to new standards: love of God and love of neighbor. In Jesus, though, these standards have become eternally and inextricably connected. Love of God requires, demands, and calls for love of neighbor. Just as Jesus is both fully God and fully man without confusion, change, division, or separation, so are our two greatest commandments. And this love must extend beyond sentimentality and become real; concrete; actionable.

As of this writing, it’s conservatively estimated that over 30,000 Palestinians have been slaughtered at the hands of the Israeli Defense Forces since 7 October 2023, with roughly a third of them being children. A U.N. expert has recently claimed that Israel has been intentionally blocking the entry of food into Palestine — a war crime — and on one of the rare occasions when food was available and starving Palestinians were rushing into get flour to make bread, Israeli forces open-fired on them, killing over 100 people, and wounding hundreds more. This event has come to be known as the “Flour Massacre.” At the end of January 2024, the International Court of Justice, situated in The Hague, claimed that it’s “plausible” that a genocide is currently being carried out by Israel against Palestinians.

These are global circumstances we can’t merely ignore. We cannot tolerate the theological dismissiveness of “Christian Zionism” or value American foreign policy over the poor, oppressed, and downtrodden people being crushed under the boots of empire (especially when that empire is being supported and armed by the one we’re citizens of). While it may have fallen out of vogue in recent decades, the question churches often encouraged their parishioners to ask was, “What would Jesus do?” Well, regardless of the theological conflation of the oppressed themselves and the person of Jesus according to texts like Mt. 25:45, we need not speculate about how the historical Jesus would respond to the events of Palestine in recent months (or for the last 80 years, for that matter). At the beginning of Jesus’s ministry in the Gospel of Luke, he give us the framework for his earthly task: to bring good news to the poor, release to the captives, and freedom to the oppressed.

Jesus would stand against genocide.

Jesus would stand for a free Palestine.

So should we.