Israel-Palestine bloodshed: Whose side is God on?

Nov 24, 2023

Anil Netto
This Christmas in the Holy Land will be a sobering experience. It will be especially poignant in Bethlehem, in Palestinian territory.

In the land where the Prince of Peace was born, thousands of ordinary people, many of them innocent children, have been killed in spiralling violence, which began decades ago.

Jesus was no stranger to violence and death. The holy family themselves had to flee to Egypt soon after He was born. When King Herod the Great died in around 4 BC, the land erupted in violence and rebellion.

Throughout Jesus’ life, His homeland seethed with violent uprisings and rebellions against Roman rule, followed by bloody massacres when the Roman legions retaliated.

This spiralling violence of uprisings and reprisals would climax in the Jewish-Roman wars, a series of major revolts between 66 AD and 135 AD by Jewish rebels against Roman occupation.

Hundreds of thousands of people lost their lives and many others were taken prisoners.

It is not as if the locals at the time did not try peaceful protests. Some did, just as Jesus Himself advocated non-violence. But the zealots had popular support, and even Jesus' way of non-violence could not prevent the bloody wars a generation later.

Today, the asymmetrical violence in Israel-Palestine has divided many around the world, including Christians. Usually, people’s allegiances are influenced by their religious faith.

Many Christians have taken the side of Zionist-minded Israelis. A major factor behind this allegiance is that they regard Jews as the “chosen people”, based on what is contained in the Old Testament, and that Israel today is the “Promised Land”. Many in the Zionist movement also believe in creating a ‘Greater Israel’, and so, bit by bit, Palestinian territories have been occupied by more and more illegal settlements, separated by a ‘security wall’ and carved into ghettos by checkpoints.

Many Christians today expect God to take the side of “the chosen people” in the ongoing massacres, destruction, land grabs and displacement.

But then, when Jesus addressed the Samaritan woman at the well, He spoke of a time when people everywhere will worship “in spirit and in truth”.

The Jews and the Samaritans in Jesus’ time had a long history of antagonism, because of differences in their history and the way they practised their religion. But these differences would not matter when the Spirit was poured out for everyone. Everyone would be invited to the new Jerusalem and the kingdom of God.

What about the chosen people? Well, if anyone believes they are chosen, then surely, they would be expected to live by higher standards, to live according to the precepts of God’s Will, to uphold the values of the kingdom.

And what are those standards, those precepts?

Look no further than the beatitudes. Who are the “blessed”, according to Jesus in Luke? It is the poor, the hungry, the weeping, the persecuted.

On the flip side, alas to the rich, to those who have plenty to eat, to those who are laughing…
Yes, Jesus took sides, but not in the way many expected.

This ruling and upper class in Jesus’ time presided through the auspices of the Roman Empire, which provided a superficial peace. But peel off that veneer, and beneath that ‘normalcy of civilisation’ would lie exposed the oppression, slavery, exploitation, heavy taxation, even excruciating torture that undergirded that false peace.

In contrast, Jesus’ kingdom is founded on love, justice, genuine peace, compassion, distributive justice ? values diametrically opposed to the values of empire, imperialism, domination and colonialism.

Many among the religious elite of Jesus’ time betrayed their own people. They collaborated with the imperial powers who were oppressing the people in the “Promised Land”.

The ordinary people found themselves burdened by heavy taxation. Many of them were forced into debt. Farmers lost their land when harvests were poor and they couldn't repay their debt. Aristocrats and wealthy landlords then grabbed this land, the collateral for the farmers' debt. (Think of the farmers and families in today’s Israel-Palestine who have lost their land and livelihoods through land grabs and ‘security walls’.)

Meanwhile, the estates of the rich landlords in Jesus’ time grew larger and larger as they reaped enormous profits. The rich man in Jesus' parable even fantasised about building ever larger barns to store the enormous harvest from his vast estate. But while fantasising about his (ill-gotten?) assets, he lost his life — and his soul.

Today, the problem is again about occupation and land grabs, leaving people impoverished.
An entire people — over a million people — are being displaced from northern Gaza with fuel, food, water and electricity supply cut off.

What happened on October 7, when 1,200 people were killed and over 200 people taken hostage, was horrific.

But it was not the start of the atrocities, which have a long history dating back to the occupation and the Nakba (the Catastrophe) in 1948 when 700,000 people lost their homes.

It’s not as if the ordinary people of this land cannot live side by side. But when so many have lost their homes and homeland, then genuine peace is hard to achieve.

What would Jesus do if He walked the land today? My guess is He would weep for the fallen, the widows and orphans and those who have lost entire families – just as He had told the women of Jerusalem to weep. He would nurse the sick and feed the hungry.

The Prince of Peace would ride in, not as a political liberator atop a tank, but on a humble donkey.
In the Gospels, John the Baptist thought God would intervene in human history to clean up the mess that humankind had created and mete out justice to the wicked and the unrepentant.

Jesus takes a different approach. He seeks ordinary people to work for His kingdom and change the world. He seeks peacemakers who will build bridges on a foundation of distributive justice, not warmongers who mete out death and destruction.

He seeks a world where people will “hammer their swords into ploughshares and their spears into sickles”. A world where “nation will not lift sword against nation, no longer will they learn how to make war” (Isaiah 2:4).

This would be a world filled with compassion, empathy and care for the orphans, the widows, the sick and the homeless – the victims of war and violence.

So, whose side is God on? He comforts those who are suffering and blesses those who long for peace and righteousness and justice. He mourns and weeps for those who have lost family members, homes, everything.

He calls for the release of prisoners and captives (and hostages) on both sides.

And oh, the children, the innocents who are especially dear to Jesus — these He draws close to Him in a protective embrace while condemning those who inflict harm on them.

Security cannot be found through war and violence. As Patriarch Emeritus Michel Sabbah wrote last month, “When Israel makes peace with the Palestinian people, then, and only then, will it find its security; wars will not be repeated, and there will be a true, stable and comprehensive peace for all the peoples of the region.”

(Anil Netto is a freelance writer and activist based in Penang. He believes we are all called to build the kingdom of God in this world.)