Being Christian After the Desolation of Gaza

by Bruce N. Fisk, J. Ross Wagner (Editor)

What explains the fervent support among America’s Christians for Israel’s murderous assault on Gaza’s Palestinians? Dying children cry beneath the rubble; doctors testify to atrocities; journalists and medics face sniper fire; experts cry genocide; Jewish Americans decry Israel’s ethnic cleansing; protesting college students jeopardize their careers. Yet millions of Americans who profess allegiance to Jesus continue defending the desolation of Gaza, or refuse to speak against it. In these essays you will read stories and hear cries from Christians—American, Latin American, Jewish, Palestinian—who have spent years listening, laboring, and praying for a durable, equitable peace between Palestinians and their Jewish neighbors. Their perspectives have formed over years in the land, through lingering encounters, hard conversations, and troubling personal experiences. Disagree with them if you must, but first hear them out, and consider why so many of Israel’s Christian partisans have confused a love for the Jewish people with a defense of the apocalypse Israel has unleashed since October 7, 2023. It may be too late to save Gaza’s millions from starvation, amputation, displacement, and death. Is it too late to repent of our complicity? Too late to save our own souls? How should we be Christian after the desolation of Gaza?





Chapter Mercy Aiken, Yousef Kamal AlKhouri, Daniel Bannoura, Donald D. Binder, Gary M. Burge, David M. Crump, Rob Dalrymple, Anton Deik, Bruce N. Fisk, Suzanne Watts Henderson, Lisa Loden, Lamma Mansour, Amy Yoder McGloughlin, Benjamin Norquist, Ruth Padilla DeBorst, and J. Ross Wagner.

528 pages, Kindle Edition

Published August 12, 2025

Reviews

[Phil · Rating 5 out of 5]

Buy this book. Read it. Keep it. Refer to it. Please. Especially if, in any sense, you’re a Christian.

Sixteen contributors refute Christian Zionism, which has inundated theology, preaching, and politics in the West, especially since the establishment of Israel as a modern nation-state. As expressed in the Introduction:

We are united in our desire to see Christians in the West tell a new story. That story must begin with pledges of political allegiance not to the State of Israel but to God’s peaceable kingdom . . . and it must be marked by a collective lament for Christian complicity in a massacre. (p. 19)

The writers represent a variety of cultural backgrounds, experiences, and professions. Most have doctorates in biblical and theological studies. A few are Palestinians. Most have spent months if not years in Israel and/or Palestine. Their denominational backgrounds are mostly evangelical. I was proud to see that one of the women is an ordained Disciples of Christ minister.

The impetus for this volume came from the book, Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza, by Peter Beinart, an observant Jew, who calls upon Jewish people to embrace “equality rather than supremacy.” Another voice sparking these Christian writers is that of Orly Noy, an Iranian-Israeli human rights activist, whom the editors quote:

The war will not end with a ceasefire, the return of all the hostages, or even a full military withdrawal from Gaza. The war will end only when Israeli society realizes that it is not only immoral but also impossible to secure our existence through the oppression and subjugation of another people—and that the people we imprison, bomb, starve, and rob of their freedom and land are entitled to the exact same rights as we are, down to the last note. (article in +972 Magazine, January 24, 2025)

Being Christian, of course, is directed not toward Jewish people or Israelis, but toward those who intend to follow Jesus. As Ruth Padilla DeBorst says, Christians who embrace Zionism are also endorsing the unjust treatment of Palestinians. She refers Christians to the prophet Micah, whose famous words proclaim the Lord’s requirement “to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.” (p. 314, citing Micah 6:8, NRSV)

The writers clarify the issue of land. Judaism has long maintained a connection to the land encompassed by Israel/Palestine, but not an exclusive claim to it. Anton Deik, who attended the Lutheran school in Bethlehem, says, “…when colonizers immigrate to a territory not to live among and integrate with the local population, but to replace them,” with mass killings and ethnic cleansing, following the pattern of European settlers in North America, they depict “God as a real estate agent, who instead of legally buying and selling land, uses violence and ethnic cleansing to seize land inhabited by Palestinians and give it to his ‘chosen people.’” (pp. 322f., 327)

October 7, 2023, while by no means the beginning of Israel’s campaign to eradicate the presence of Palestinians in Israel and the Occupied Territories (Gaza and the West Bank), is pivotal. As Bruce N. Fisk explains:

Israel is exploiting the opportunity afforded by Hamas’ attack to wage an offensive battle, not just to dislodge Hamas but to cleanse Gaza of Palestinians, precisely what Donald Trump began advocating in early February 2025. (p. 94)

Writing about his experience in and around Nazareth, Lamma Mansour submits that a long history of violence and harassment against Palestinian citizens of Israel “laid the groundwork for the state’s aggressive attitude toward Palestinian citizens after October 7, 2023.” (p. 223)

Daniel Bannoura’s chapter, “Hamas and Violence” (pp. 179ff.), emphasizes that Palestinian Christians have continuously advocated nonviolence. However, the experience over a period of seventy-seven years of being forced against their will to give up their homeland to colonial settlers makes it understandable that many others among the oppressed resort to violence. The stated purpose of Hamas is a struggle, not against Judaism or Jews, but against settler-colonialism. Thus, it is not antisemitic, per se. No one among these writers condones the violence of October 7, but neither do they see that day as justification for erasing tens of thousands of people from their homeland.

For the past ten years, I have looked to Mercy Aiken for informative insights into the struggles of Palestinians, especially the Christians who have been there since the days of Jesus. Mercy lived In Bethlehem for a few years and continues to travel back and forth from her home in Flagstaff, Arizona. I was glad to read her chapter in this book.

Another woman, Suzanne Watts Henderson, wrote the chapter which moved me most deeply. (I was hooked as soon as she said she had lived in Greensboro and mentioned people I know here in North Carolina.) Her chapter recounts two visits to the Holy Land. The first, in 1997, was curated by Israeli Jews, and she absorbed a Zionist perspective from it. Then, in 2005, she and her family returned for a more independent tour where they could meet with Palestinians. Time and again, her views changed as she met people face-to-face and had unpremeditated experiences. She felt the frustration of checkpoints, denied access, and ruined infrastructure. She says:

Perhaps the most glaring and unsettling takeaway from our second trip was evidence at every turn of the Israeli government’s intent to separate, subjugate, and ultimately eradicate the Palestinian people and their culture. (p. 413)

Despite this book’s overwhelming indictment of Christian complicity in the genocide of Gaza, Being Christian After the Desolation of Gaza offers hope for a new story by which to shape our future. For example, Mennonite Action, as described by Amy Yoder McGloughlin, is a movement of Anabaptists to “use creative nonviolent actions to demand a ceasefire, end the US and western funded occupation of Palestine, and build for a lasting peace.” (p. 443) She describes using rituals, songs, and fun to sustain the energy required for confronting power with advocacy for peace.

As I said at the top, buy this book. Study it. Keep it. Refer to it even when it someday becomes history.

[Carianna Gibb · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a must read for Christians. It's titled after Peter Beinart's book: Being Jewish After The Destruction of Gaza (also an amazing and worthwhile read). Each chapter is by a different Christian writer, thinker, or scholar. As I looked at each of the chapter titles, there wasn't a single one that didn't intrigue me. These writers bring forth important questions, points, pleas, and information that must be reckoned with. As Christians we can't continue to stick our heads in the sand or shrug our shoulders at what Israel is doing in Gaza (and the West Bank). This book will help you think through the various aspects of what has been happening in Gaza. Highly recommend.

[James-Michael Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

A MUST-READ for all Christians

When future generations look back at the genocidal destruction of Gaza in response to the horror of Oct.7th attacks by Hamas, the question, "Where were Christians while all this was happening??" will rightly be asked.

This collection of essays--all by committed followers of Jesus--will serve as a permanent a testimony to the fact that not all within the church were silent or apathetic about it. These contributors, along with many others, are adding their voices to the worldwide lament over what has become the worst human rights abuse of the 21st century.

As an evangelical Christian, I cannot urge my fellow evangelicals strongly enough to READ THIS BOOK. To wrestle with it. To be challenged in our apathy--or worse, our defending or excusing Israel's woefully disproportionate carnage against the people of Gaza.

These essays are crucial for anyone seeking to truly discern the situation and what a Christian response might look like.

READ THIS BOOK.

[James-Michael Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

This along with Peter Beinart's book "Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza" should be required reading for EVERY Christian. When there is a reckoning someday for the Gaza genocide and the Church's complicity in it, this book will render it impossible to say "We didn't know."