The Gaza Martyrs

The conflict in Gaza and the West Bank is often portrayed as a feud between Jews and Muslims, and it is within this simple framework where we see modern American politics fall so neatly. American Evangelicals, brainwashed by decades of false teaching that Jews are God’s “chosen” people and they have an undisputed claim to the Holy Land, rabidly worship the nation-state of Israel. Meanwhile, anti-White leftists, who observe brown people fighting Jews (who look White), cheer on the Muslims due to their kneejerk anti-White animus. White Nationalists in the United States, who consider Jews as the source of all the world’s ills, support the Muslims. Additionally, an increasing number of nationalists in Europe, thanks to their own struggles with Islamic immigration, are supporting the Israelis. In short, the enemy of my enemy is my friend and all that.

But that framework, as useful as it is in predicting how someone will respond to the conflict, is also overly superficial. For there is a third group – Palestine’s forgotten people – the Palestinian Christians that are often ignored, and it is with them that any serious Christian-based nationalist movement must sympathize with. The Palestinian Christians have suffered greatly not only during this recent conflict, but also throughout the historical Palestine-Israeli conflict. Let me first say that I do not trust the Muslims to protect Christians in a hypothetical Palestinian state, no matter what kind of fig leaf they offer now, and vowing to unite both Muslim and Christian Palestinians against the Israeli threat. I have spent much of the past year studying the history of the Islamic civilization, and one conclusion I have come to is that Christians are protected under Islam as long as it’s convenient. When Islam first invaded the Levant, Christians were protected, but Muslims were also a tiny minority and there was simply no way for them to slaughter Christians on a wide scale without facing serious resistance. As time wore on and Muslims became a majority in the region, Christians were still largely protected, as they needed to pay the jizyah – the tax on non-Muslims – to keep government funds running. However, as soon as the percentage of Christians drops low enough that the jizyah is no longer a viable revenue source, then Christian persecution tends to become much more severe with the most radical Islamists considering Christians to be pagans (because of the Trinity). This is not a defense of Islam.

But what we do know is how badly Israel treats Christians, despite the “greatest ally” rhetoric coming from the normie Right. American Evangelicals may get the red-carpet treatment when they go to Israel as a means of putting the wool over their eyes, but Palestinian Christians know a far different reality: one of being ruled by a people who hate them, spit at them, and mock Our Lord. On Saturday, December 16th, as Christians prepared to celebrate the coming of Christ, and despite the hardships of war, an Israeli snipper killed two women, a mother and daughter. In the words of the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Pierbattista Pizzaballa, it was “in cold blood.” Per the Patriarch, Christian civilians have been using the Holy Family Church in Gaza to shelter from the conflict when they were attacked by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). No warning was given, no militants were in sight, and it was even inside the parish. To top it all off, while details are murky as of this writing, one of the two civilians (the mother and daughter) were killed while taking the other to safety. The full statement can be found here. What the IDF did clearly violates just conduct during a war, and in such an extreme manner that it almost boggles the mind.

As bad as all of this is, and it is a war crime, what makes all this the worst will be the response from the Christian mainstream in the United States. These women were unarmed, sheltering in a parish, and still they were brutally murdered. And remember, this was the result of sniper fire, not a rocket that Israel could perhaps plausibly blame on Hamas, or barring that, claim a misfire. This was a sniper – snipers are trained to hit the right target. Rember, too, that this is the very land the Prince of Peace walked, and it is very likely these women came from a family that were among the earliest converts. Christian sympathy should be with them, but it is almost a sure bet that men like John Hagee will say nothing. Ted Cruz will not eulogize them on the Senate floor, as he would almost surely do if a Hamas fighter killed two Israeli civilians in this manner. The death of two innocent women, a mother and her daughter, will be considered inconvenient at best. Does anyone doubt that, if pressed, radical Christian Zionists would claim the mother and daughter deserved it for squatting on land that belongs to the Jews?  

This is the end result of decades of bad theology, one that asserts that the Jews held the land unconditionally despite the Old Testament making it clear that the Jews would lose their land as punishment for disobedience. In AD 70, as a result of the ultimate act of disobedience, the rejection of Christ, they lost their land for good; and until they accept Christ, they cannot rightfully reclaim their land back. The modern nation-state calling itself Israel is not the true Israel. If the Jews want to become part of the true Israel, they need to convert, just as everyone else must. Their DNA does not create for them a separate, Christless path to salvation. Bad theology has obscured this vital point, and now we are witnessing yet another example of the rotten fruit of this wicked tree – Christians in the United States turning a blind eye to the killing of Palestinian Christians. In a world where doctrine was taught better, this would almost certainly cause mass outrage, with Christians all over the world remembering what the IDF did to their fellow Christians, and right before Christmas no less.

But in this world, we only get silence.

Harmonica