A Christian Vision for Liberation1
Father Manuel Musallam
A STORM OF METEORS rained upon Palestine by the British Mandate has burned everything sacred in our Holy Land. Church and mosques, these holiest of spaces, were burned. The olive trees, the holiest of trees, were burned. White phosphorus struck our towns, villages and refugee camps. Humans, the holiest of creatures, were burned. Children, the holiest of humans, were burned. The very dignity of the Palestinian Arabs—estranged from their land and their people—was burned. Truth and justice, too, were burned when the land was supposedly “promised” to those from the far ends of the globe, but not to its own inhabitants. In fact, our very humanity was burned, when the Israeli army and armed Jewish settlers preyed on us like wolves.
I was only nine years old when Zionist gangs invaded our Palestine.2 The Haganah, Irgun, Stern Gang and Palmach took over our land by force, massacring our people, and burning our fields, orchards and homes. They demolished, killed and expelled as many as they could of our people. Instead of punishing the perpetrators, the United Nations offered the invaders, who then owned only 7% of the land, 56% of Palestine, leaving us with the meager remainder. We refused. We had to refuse. Zionist leaders clashed; David Ben-Gurion accepted the offer while Menachem Begin declared the partition invalid, claiming that all of Palestine, including Transjordan, belonged to the Jewish people forever.3
Eventually, Israel was founded upon the ruins of our destroyed homeland.4 Our properties were declared to be “absentee” property, illegally appropriated by the new state. The Palestinian refugees who were expelled and forced to flee their homes were and to this day are denied their right of return, although this right is enshrined in international law. Most of our villages were fully or partially destroyed. The season’s harvest was left unharvested as hundreds of thousands of Palestinian peasants were never allowed to even salvage their crops. New Jewish settlements and towns quickly sprang up in place of our cities and villages.
The Nakba was upon us, a catastrophic event in our history, like no other. Our struggle with Israel had begun and continues to this day. For us Palestinians, it is a struggle for life or death, for survival or annihilation. It is not even a struggle for peace, but for the very preservation of our civilization and our existence; it is a struggle for our people’s sanctity, their humanity and their inalienable right to justice.
I was born amidst that Zionist-wrought chaos. I was surrounded by extreme poverty, real hunger and deprivation of all kinds. However, I was born into a family that also gave generously to the struggle and to those in need. Our olive trees, vineyards and fig trees were also generous, and helped my family uphold its dignity when so many families could not. At a young age, I was breast-fed with courage, patience, persistence, hard work, generosity and defiance. My mother and father raised me with the tools to confront the humiliation that awaited our people at every turn. Yes, I was born into hardship, but that very hardship taught me to be stubborn in my resistance.
I remember being only five years old when, in 1943, I saw a movie in Jerusalem about war. In the movie, I saw soldiers leaping from military vehicles and hiding in the trenches. I heard the sound of cannons exploding. It was my first experience with this kind of violence. I was afraid. I closed my eyes and eventually fell asleep in my uncle Yakub’s arms. That was not a real war, but a depiction of events that were transpiring in Europe around that time. The movie, however still planted the first seed of war in my heart and mind. The 1948 war, though, was different.
The Zionist war against Palestine was all too real. Not even children could shut their eyes to avoid the horrors we experienced during those days. Refugees poured into my town of Birzeit, bringing with them awful stories of horrific massacres, of Deir Yassin, Qibya, and Kafr Qasim. When news arrived of the martyrdom of top Palestinian commander, Abd-al-Qadir al-Husayni, the entire town was devasted.5
Al-Husayni’s death left a mark on me, though I was only ten years old. However, that was not the end of the terrible news. It was only the beginning of numerous tragedies that have never ceased.
When, in 1967, all of Jerusalem fell to the invaders, I remember banging my head against the wall. This feeling of despair has defined much of my life. The tragedy of the homeland awakened numerous feelings in me. It shook me, and it continues to shake me to my very core. Yet, I did not allow despair to define me. I had to take a stance. Numerous images of violence followed me, as they followed most Palestinians in, and sometimes out of, the Palestinian homeland. I remember watching Israeli bombs fall near the fedayeen and army base in Ajloun, Jordan, in 1967. As I ran towards the nuns in my parish to offer some help, I found them kneeling down, weeping in terror. Missiles began to fall all around us. Just meters away, trees were lighted on fire. A nearby orchard was completely obliterated. On that day, we, too, almost perished.
Similar experiences, though with different victims, accompanied me throughout the first uprising, the Intifada of 1987 and again, in the Second Intifada of 2000. During both popular revolts, I proudly played my part as a Christian Palestinian leader in the defense of my people.
Like millions of Palestinians in Gaza, I suffered the horrors of the 2008–09 war and massacre, but I never relented in speaking out against injustice. I turned the shrapnel of Israeli army missiles into a Cross. My struggle, my pain and my resistance have grounded me in my identity like nothing else:
I am a Palestinian Arab Christian. I know that the world has falsely robbed me of my land. I will struggle with the rest of the Palestinian resisters for the liberation of my holy home. I will resist from a religious standpoint, stemming from the theology of my church, and my strong conviction in this theology. I also fully comprehend the political reality that the Zionist entity represents a hybrid form of colonial conquest, with built-in political and economic interests, falsely dressed in religious garments. Therefore, as a Palestinian Arab, I will also resist from a patriotic standpoint. My patriotism is reinforced by my people’s poverty, pain and humiliation, and their diaspora. This is my story, the story of my family, the story of my people.
As a Christian, especially as a Palestinian Christian, I refuse to subscribe to the notion that Palestine was promised to the Jews at the expense of my people. From 1951 to 1963, I studied philosophy, theology and the sacred Testaments at the Latin Patriarchate Seminary in Beit Jala, Palestine. In deciphering these holy texts, I began to understand how the Zionist Movement manipulated biblical verses to lay a religious claim over my homeland. One of the most interpreted—or misinterpreted—verses is Deuteronomy 14:2,6 which states, “For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. Out of all the peoples on the face of the earth, the Lord has chosen you to be his treasured possession.” From these few words, the notion arose that the Jewish people are the “chosen,” “holy” and “eternal” people of the promised land. For them, this meant that the fate of my people, marginalized and dispossessed, was sealed forever.
This notion persists despite the fact that, with the advent of Christianity, Apostle Paul had made it clear in Galatians 3:167 that God’s promise was directed to Abraham and his seed, drawing attention to the singular: “Scripture does not say ‘and to seeds,’ meaning many people, but ‘and to your seed,’ meaning one person, who is Christ.” Paul elaborated in Romans 9:6–9,8 “It is not as though God’s word had failed. For not all who are descended from Israel are Israel. Nor because they are his descendants are they all Abraham’s children. On the contrary, it is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.”
As if this was not clear enough, Augustine further explained in Saint Augustine (Letter 196),9 that “the Church is heir to the promises God made to Israel. Thus, it is the new Israel which eagerly seeks to reach the heavenly Jerusalem.” Historical Christian doctrines have thus made it clear that the Promised Land is not for the Jews alone, but the children of God’s Promise; that is, those who believe in the faith of Abraham.
Starting sometime in the Middle Ages, various churches became concerned with Millennialism: the belief, stemming from the Book of Revelation that, in the Apocalypse, Christ will return to Earth and remain there for a thousand years, until the Day of Judgement. These prophecies were centered largely around Revelation 20:1–3,10 “And I saw an angel coming down out of heaven, having the key to the Abyss and holding in his hand a great chain; [he threw Satan] into the Abyss, and locked and sealed it over him, to keep him from deceiving the nations anymore until the thousand years were ended.”
In the seventh century, these prophecies took on a political nature, one which morphed, many centuries later, into something else entirely. This is the genesis of today’s notion of a Jewish return to Palestine, which has for long been championed by Christian fundamentalists and, eventually, Zionist Christians. For them, the Jews had to return as a prerequisite to the return of Jesus himself. The prophecy led to an even more sinister interpretation. According to Christian fundamentalist thought, the returning Jesus will lead a war against the forces of evil, one in which two-thirds of all Jews will perish and the remaining third converts to Christianity. Only then, can Christ rule the world as king for a thousand years.
Politicians seized on this Messianic notion. As early as 1655, English General Oliver Cromwell drew a link between Christian fundamentalism and Britain’s strategic interests.11 This connection would endure and would eventually lead to the Balfour Declaration in November 1917, which asserted that “His Majesty’s government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object…”12
Despite the fact that politics and Millennialism were finding a common ground, the Catholic Church refused to accommodate what it perceived as a dangerous precedent regarding the status of the Holy Land. Though unofficially, the Catholic Church announced its position on Christian Zionism as early as May 1897—coincidentally, the year that the leader of the Zionist Movement, Theodore Herzl, convened the First Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland. This position was articulated in an article published by its official newspaper, La Civiltà Cattolica,13 which asserted that “the rebuilding of Jerusalem as the center of a reconfigured Israeli state contradicts the prophecies of Christ himself, who told us that Jerusalem [‘shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.’]”
The Catholic position became more pronounced in response to the Balfour Declaration. Then, Pope Benedict XV declared, “No to the supremacy of Jews over the Holy Land.”14 Furthermore, in 1944, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith announced its explicit rejection of Millennialism—declaring that there would not be a 1000-year period between the age of the Church and the end of the world.15
But as Palestinians, Christians and Muslims, we are not bound by the politicized manipulation of God’s words. For us, this is an issue of a stolen land and a dispossessed people. Palestine is our mother, robbed of her children, and we are deprived of her tenderness. We, the people of Palestine, are one. We belong to one civilization and are united by one destiny. For me, Al-Aqsa is Christian and the Resurrection belongs equally to my Muslim brothers and sisters. Every martyred Muslim is a martyred Christian and every martyred Christian is a Muslim. Our youth are killed by the same Israeli occupier. Our homes are demolished by the same Israeli military bulldozer. Our land is stolen, holy shrines defiled, families separated, people ethnically cleansed by the same Israeli perpetrator.
Zionists often claim that Palestinian Arabs were never a cohesive people. Such fraudulent claims were designed to deceive the world into thinking that Palestine was an empty land. But the 500 destroyed towns and villages during the Nakba in 1947–48 were a testament to the fact that the land was inhabited.16 Despite the dispossession of our people, the endurance of our language, identity and culture all refute the claim that we are anything other than a Palestinian people, grounded in history and spirituality. The earth and its people are one, just as the rose and its perfume are one.
However, in order for the earth and the people to unify once again, for the rose to acquire its perfume once more, we Palestinians, Christians and Muslims, must continue to resist. As a Christian, resistance for me is as much of a duty as it is for the Muslims. True, God has told me to “love your enemy”17, but He has also told my enemy, “Do not kill.”18 God has taught me that “whoever asks for your garment, give him your garment,” but He has also commanded my enemy, “You shall not steal” and “You shall not covet” the possessions of another.19
As a student of history and the Bible, I believe that justice is taken, not given. Justice for my people—the reclaiming of our stolen land, the Right of Return for our refugees, the freedom of all Palestinians—must supersede the unconditional existence and safety of Israel. This is true because Israel’s position is not that of self-defense. It is merely defending its military Occupation of Palestine. Those who accuse us of terrorism must be reminded that we fight back, not to occupy cities, but to liberate them from the occupiers. We are the historical caretakers of this land; we are the holders of justice, history, and the civilization and heritage of Palestine. Israel is guided by an insatiable colonial appetite while we are guided by love, truth and freedom.
As a Palestinian Christian Arab, I feel the injustice hanging over me, over my people, but I will not let injustice reduce me into a state of despair, but rather strengthen my resolve in fighting for my people’s rights so that, someday, they may return from exile. We want our children to be set free from Israeli prisons. We want to build their future and, ultimately, develop a strong economy.
I do not resist for my own sake but for my earth, for my people, for my nation, for my holy city and my faith. Justice can never be truly attained without the soil of Jerusalem, the beating heart of Palestine, the true representation of its collective identity and the reservoir of its memory. We Palestinians, Christians and Muslims, are not against Jews or Judaism. Rather, we are the avowed enemies of Zionism, colonialism, Christian fundamentalism, and injustice in all its forms. Israel has subjected our people to mass murder, unrelenting theft and displacement. They have burned our mosques, our churches, our homes and even our children. This is why we resist Israel. If we do not resist, we sell our birthright, our civilization, our heritage, our Holy City of Jerusalem, the pain that our people have endured—in fact, our very sanctity.
Israel has snatched joy from our hearts. Joy is peace. Peace is stability, order and justice. If all these values are absent, law is also absent. Without law, we enter into an age of monsters. We, Palestinians, are fighting these monsters every day. One day, we hope to liberate our land, so that joy, peace, order, stability and justice can be restored. For as long as we are denied our rights, we intend to deny our occupiers their peace as well.
The world may have abandoned us. International law may have failed us. But divine law will not. O Palestinian brethren: live in a tent; dwell under a fig tree; reside under bare shelter; even live in a chicken coop, a cave or by an abandoned well. But do not ever give up. Roll up your sleeves. Build. Plant. Exist. Do not migrate. Do not cast your heart away from the ruins of your home. Do not divert your eyes from the roots of the vine your father planted by the door. Do not accept that your nose smells anything but the scent of your grandparents and your children in the stones and dust of your home. Do not accept the tickle of any breeze, but one infused with the fragrance of the olive, pine and lemon trees that sang to you as a child. This earth is yours. The soil and the stones are yours. And the wind and rain pouring over these ruins are also yours.
O Palestinians, plant your feet firmly in your land. Even when you die, let your graves feed and preserve your history, because even the dead and buried have a homeland. And remember these words in Matthew, 5:4,20 “Blessed are those who mourn; for they will be comforted.”
Also, be comforted by the fact that your homeland has defeated all the invaders that tried to conquer Palestine with swords and fire. Your ancestral tenacity crushed them all: Pharaohs, Assyrians, Babylonians, Greeks and Romans. Your civilization has defeated their barbarism. The Zionists will not fare much better. They, too, will be defeated. So, take heart and do not be afraid. Strive to always protect your homeland. Do not allow the Balfour Declaration, the Oslo Accords, the Arab normalization and spineless initiatives to define you. Do not lose sight of your resistance, do not let grief weaken you or shake your collective confidence.
To the Christians of the world, I would like to remind them of the saying by South African Bishop Desmond Tutu, “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”21 If you show compassion towards Zionist criminality, then you betray the purity and innocence of Palestinians. In the Holy Land of Palestine, we are in desperate need of true justice and co-existence that is based on equality and togetherness, not racism, apartheid and ethnic cleansing. Those who strive for a just peace in Palestine are our true brothers and sisters in Christianity. They are the righteous ones, and the righteous ones shall always be rewarded.
“The fruit of that righteousness will be peace; its effect will be quietness and confidence forever.”22
1 This essay was originally written in Arabic and was translated by Nahed Elrayes.
2 Saleh Abdel Jawad, “Colonial Anthropology: The Haganah Village Intelligence Archives,” Palestine Studies, Issue no. 68, 2016, https://www.palestine-studies.org/sites/default/files/jq-articles/Pages_from_JQ_68_-_Saleh_Abdel_Jawad_0.pdf.
3 Jorgen Jensehaugen, “Terra Morata: The West Bank in Menachem Begin’s Worldview,” Contemporary Levant, 5:1 (2020), 54–63, DOI: 10.1080/20581831.2020.1710675.
4 Ilan Pappé, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (Oxford: Oneworld, 2006).
5 “Fayṣal ibn ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Ḥusaynī,” Encyclopedia Britannica. Accessed May 27, 2021 at https://www.britannica.com/biography/Faysal-ibn-Abd-al-Qadir-al-Husayni.
6 Deuteronomy, 14:2, NIV.
7 Galatians, 3:16, NIV.
8 Romans, 9:6–9, NIV.
9 Saint Augustine of Hippo (354–430), The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century (Brooklyn, NY: New City Press, 1990, 2019).
10 Revelation, 20:1–3, NIV.
11 Jeffrey R. Collins, “The Church Settlement of Oliver Cromwell,” History 87, No. 285 (2002): 18–40. Accessed June 13, 2021 at http://www.jstor.org/stable/24425701
12 Leonard Stein, The Balfour Declaration (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, Hebrew University, 1983).
13 La Civiltà cattolica. La dispersione d’Israello pel mondo moderno, reviewed in Rivista Internazionale Di Scienze Sociali E Discipline Ausiliarie 14, no. 54 (1897): 221–22. Accessed June 13, 2021 at http://www.jstor.org/stable/41570188
14 Silvio Ferrari, “The Vatican, the Palestine Question and the Internationalization of Jerusalem (1918–1948),” Rivista Di Studi Politici Internazionali 60, no. 4 (240) (1993): 550–68. Accessed June 13, 2021 at http://www.jstor.org/stable/42737184
15 Cf Sant’Offizio, Decretum de millenarismo (19 luglio 1944): DS 3839.
16 Ilan Pappé, 2006.
17 Matthew, 5:44, NIV.
18 Exodus, 20:13, NIV.
19 Romans, 13:9, N.
20 Matthew, 5:4, NIV.
21 Quoted in Susan Ratcliffe, Ed., Oxford Essential Quotations (5th ed.) (Oxford University Press, 2017), accessed 12/1/2021 at https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780191843730.001.0001/q-oroed5-00016497.
22 Isaiah, 32:17, NIV.