Christ Amidst the Rubble

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Dear family and friends,

The events that transpired on October 7, 2023, continue to be seared into the consciousness and the lives of both Israelis and Palestinians alike. 

The pain is too deep, the emotion too raw, the trauma too recent to be able to speak articulately and with any clarity about that day. There remain too many questions, which cannot yet be answered, which scar the consciousness of those who are left behind to try and make sense of it all.

[ngg src="galleries" ids="1220" display="pro_horizontal_filmstrip" show_captions="1"]I was standing in front of my bathroom mirror and had just prepared to shave when I heard the first thud. I am not even sure I could call it a thud now – I do not actually recall the initial two sounds. I do remember well that the third sound was that of a large explosion. I would later learn that it was Israel’s iron dome system, which had taken down a Hamas rocket, bound for the direction of Jerusalem.

I would learn in the coming hours that Hamas operatives and others had breached the “security barrier” surrounding Gaza, and had crossed into Israel, unleashing a murderous rampage against the south of Israel, and had carried individuals back into Gaza as hostages. 1,200 Israelis were killed on that day, and over 340 Israelis and other nationalities were taken hostage.

Why were the warnings from Israel’s female spotters ignored? Who thought an open-air music festival on the edge of the largest open-air prison in the world was a safe and sane idea? Why was Hamas continually funded and propped up by Israel, while the Palestinian Authority ignored and debased? 

In just three short days, on October 10,  I was scheduled to be in Gaza and had just received the last of three permissions necessary to be allowed into Gaza.

The chasm between two peoples, already living in an uneasy co-existence, ruptured further that day. Though October 7 appears to be, for all intents and purposes, the day when things changed for so many people, it can hardly be assumed that the situation before that date was anything but ok. Already, the Palestinian death toll in the West Bank was on course to exceed that of any year in the past 20 years. Under the guise of fighting “terrorists,” Israel was simply annihilating Palestinian lives, and exacting immediate justice by assassinating people in the streets and in the cities that were supposed to be “autonomous.”

The silence and complicity of the world, including the church, has been deafening. In his sermon at the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem on December 23, the Reverend Dr. Munther Isaac chastised this very complicity and silence. You can listen to his entire sermon here: “Christ in the Rubble”: Palestinian Pastor Delivers Powerful Christmas Sermon from Bethlehem (youtube.com).

A tableau put together by the church congregation featured the Christ Child amidst the rubble, not unlike the children of Gaza who have been pulled – dead or alive - from the rubble of bombed and destroyed buildings. Sadly, many still lie beneath the rubble, and it will be months before their bodies will be retrieved. Those that have been pulled alive from beneath the rubble were dug out by hand, by those who were capable of doing so. Lacking any heavy equipment and machinery to remove the tons of twisted rebar, metal and concrete, Gazans report the stench of death in the air.

Let’s be clear. The Biden Administration has funded, equipped and largely orchestrated this war against the Palestinian people. The U.S. simply threw open its warehouses of huge military stockpiles of weaponry and arms lodged in Israel and gave Israel a green light to make war on Gaza, all with no cost and no consequences. The U.S. administration says it is pressing Israel to reduce its killing of civilians and allow in more humanitarian aid to Gaza, neither of which has yet happened.

The likes of Mike Pence, Israel’s President, Isaac Herzog, and school children from Israel have been seen signing their names on bombs intended for both Gaza and South Lebanon. If Hamas’ attack on Israel was a massacre, Israel’s ensuing assault on the Gaza Strip amounts to a slaughter of epic proportion.

On Friday, January 26, the International Court of Justice in the Hague ordered that Israel must take action to prevent genocidal violence by its armed forces, prevent and punish the incitement to genocide, and ensure that humanitarian aid to Gaza is increased. The court further ruled that Israel must preserve evidence related to any allegations of genocide there (in Gaza).

On February 2,800 government officials in the United States and Europe released a letter, criticizing their countries’ leaders for providing unconditional military and diplomatic support to Israel, as it inflicts disaster on Gaza’s population. The letter states that “there is plausible risk that our governments’ policies are contributing to grave violation of international humanitarian law, war crimes, and even ethnic cleansing.”

To date, over 27,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s relentless bombing and wanton destruction of Gaza, 70% of whom are women and children. Over 6,000 persons are “missing”. Entire Palestinian families have been wiped off the population registry. The Christian remnant in Gaza – both Catholic as well as Orthodox – and which consists of fewer than 1,000 people, continue to shelter in Gaza’s two, remaining churches.

God, in your mercy, hear our prayers.

Doug