Christian community: Christians who support Israel, repent!

Shortly after the Zionist regime Israel began bombing Gaza and killing innocent children, an open letter from Palestinian Christians to Western church leaders and Christian religious scholars was published; This letter, together with a detailed analysis of false attitudes among Western Christian leaders, revealed the path of truth for Christians. Here we will review the main parts of this important letter.

“Learn to do it right; seek justice; Defend the oppressed” (Isaiah 17:1).

We, the Palestinian Christian people's organizations and movements who are the signatories of this letter, look with sadness and regret at the new cycle of violence in our land. As we write this letter, some of us lost friends and family members in the brutal Israeli bombing on October 19, 2023. Among the bombings were Christians who took shelter in the historical St. Porphyrios Greek Orthodox Church in Gaza. We cannot express in words the shock and horror we feel at the ongoing war on our land.

We are also deeply concerned about the use of the Lord's name to promote violence and national religious ideologies.

 We are horrified to witness the unquestioning support of many Western Christians for Israel's war against the Palestinian people.

We wrote this letter to challenge Western theologians and church leaders who uncritically support Israel and call on them to repent and change.

Unfortunately, the actions and double standards of some Christian leaders have caused great harm to Christianity.

We are saddened by the silence of many church leaders and theologians regarding the killing of Palestinian civilians. We are also surprised that some Western Christians refuse to condemn the ongoing occupation of Palestine by Israel and, in some cases, legitimize and support this occupation. We are also appalled by the legitimization of Israel's indiscriminate attacks on Gaza by some Christians.

The Israeli army has used white phosphorus, cut off water, fuel and electricity, bombed schools, hospitals and places of worship, the horrific massacre at Al Ahli Anglican-Baptist Hospital and the St. Paul massacre that destroyed Palestinian Christian families. Porphyrios used tactics targeting civilians, including the bombing of the Greek Orthodox Church.

We also strongly reject the narrow-minded and distorted reactions of Christians who ignore the foundations and origins of this war: the systematic oppression of Palestinians by Israel since its founding, the ongoing ethnic cleansing in Palestine, and the brutal and racist military occupation that constitutes the crime of apartheid.

This is the terrible oppression that many Western Christian theologians and leaders consistently ignore, and sometimes justify using a wide range of Zionist theologies and interpretations.

Israel's brutal blockade of Gaza for the past 17 years has turned the 365 square kilometer strip into an open-air prison for more than two million Palestinians.

The brutal and desperate living conditions in Gaza, under intense pressure from Israel, have pushed some Palestinian groups to turn to militancy in response to oppression and frustration.

Unfortunately, the non-violent resistance of the Palestinians to whom we are still committed is being rejected, so much so that some Western Christian leaders have even banned discussions of Israel's apartheid regime, as reported and confirmed by human rights watchdog Amnesty International.

We are repeatedly reminded that Western attitudes towards Palestine and Israel suffer from a blatant double standard, creating Israeli Jews who dehumanize Palestinians and insist on ignoring their suffering.

This double standard appears to reflect colonial discourse that uses the Bible to justify ethnic cleansing of indigenous people in the Americas, Oceania, and elsewhere, the enslavement of Africans, the Atlantic Ocean slave trade, and decades of apartheid in South Africa.

Moreover, Israel's open support against the Palestinians, which justified the dropping of atomic bombs on innocent civilians in Japan during World War II, the destruction of Iraq, and the extermination of the Christian population in the last American war in Iraq, is also in the name of moral superiority and "self-defense". We are also aware of the legacy of Western Christianity, which uses just war theory.

Some Christians have adopted Zionist traditions, and some of them have contributed to the increase in hatred towards Palestinians that we see today in many western countries and in the media.

We strongly encourage Western Christians to join us on this journey. We also remind ourselves and our Christian brothers and sisters that the Lord is the Lord of the oppressed, and Jesus rebuked the powerful and lifted up the oppressed.

For this reason, some Western Christian leaders and clergy believe that the words first expressed by Moses and the prophets (Torah 10:18; 16:18-20; 4:32) and embodied in Christ (Isaiah 1:17; 8:61; (Micah 2:1-3, 6:8; Amos 5:10-24) We are deeply concerned about their failure to heed the biblical tradition of justice and mercy./