Human Trustees

The Rev. Thomas J. Reese became a Jesuit priest in 1964 after earning a PhD political science at UC Berkeley, but he has mostly served as a journalist and academic. I find his pieces in Religious News Service consistently informing and thought provoking—including this one from a couple of months ago, “Amos, a prophet for social justice, is a prophet for today.” I quote,

“Anyone who thinks the Scriptures are not political has never read the Prophet Amos hurling invectives at the rich and powerful of his time.

Amos was not a professional prophet, but an uneducated shepherd who preached social justice and denounced exploitation of the poor by the rich. He was especially harsh on the rulers, priests and upper classes. His words sound like a political activist ranting on MSNBC.”

Amos blasted the rich who used their power to grind the poor into the ground, while stealing from them to enrich themselves even more. “They trample the heads of the destitute into the dust of the earth, and force the lowly out of the way,” he declared. Judgment will come because they live in luxury while turning away from the suffering of the destitute and oppressed in the land.

Religion won’t save them. Only repentance and a commitment to practicing justice will:

“‘Take away from me your noisy songs,’ Amos had God saying. ‘The melodies of your harps, I will not listen to them.’

‘Rather let justice surge like waters, and righteousness like an unfailing stream,’ he said.”

Rached Ghannouchi’s post-exilic political trajectory

Tunisian cleric, writer and politician Rached Ghannouchi would agree with Amos. Religion properly understood—Islam in this case—cares about good governance, which is about distributing power justly so as to alleviate poverty and finding ways for all to thrive.

I mentioned him in my last post, while exploring some of the common theological resources in Judaism, Islam and Christianity for making this world a more peaceful and just one. I cited Ghannouchi, whose classic book, Public Freedoms in the Islamic State, I was privileged to translate. Since then, I ran across an article by one of his daughters, Soumaya Ghannoushi, an accomplished British journalist. This piece was published a couple of weeks ago in Middle East Eye with the title, “My father’s ideas will outlive this shameful era in Tunisia.” But first, a bit of background will help.

Ghannouchi, whose only crime was to have co-founded a religious party that did so well at the polls that it posed a threat to Tunisia’s autocratic ruler, spent most of the 1980s in prison. He was fortunate to escape his death sentence but was exiled for twenty years in the UK. From there he was invited to speak to Muslim audiences around the world advocating democratic governance based on human rights and the dignity of the human person as taught by the Qur’an and modeled by the Prophet Muhammad’s rule in Medina (622-632). In essence, Ghannouchi is an Islamic religious leader (he is referred to by many as “Shaykh Ghannouchi”) who has specialized in political theology. But he was more than an academic.

As the “Arab Spring” swept through Tunisia in December of 2010 and the daily mass protests literally ousting dictator Ben Ali the next month, Ghannouchi returned to his country to a hero’s welcome, and his party, Ennahda (“The Renaissance”), became the ruling party in the parliamentary elections that fall. At a time when neighboring Libya was falling into chaos and civil war, some of that violence spread to Tunisa and his party was blamed for two high-profile assassinations.

That is when Tunisia’s three largest trade unions and its League for Human Rights came together (the so-called "Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet”) to call the political elites to the drawing board in order to draft a new constitution that would enshrine the recent democratic gains and point the way forward in that time of crisis. Ghannouchi, the leader of the ruling party, led the way by leaving the government and joining the process of rewriting the constitution. When that new constitution emerged, Ennahda agreed to ratify it, despite its little mention of Islam and the absence of the word “shari’a” (a key word relative to Islamic law).

The following year (2015), the Nobel Peace prize was awarded to the “Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet.” Here was my commentary shortly after it was announced:

“That said, the Quartet’s work could not have succeeded had their advocacy with Ennahda, the ruling party, not borne fruit. Ennahda did what rarely any party has done anywhere else, by stepping down from power before their mandate had come to an end. True, the country had been shaken by the assassinations of two secular opposition politicians that year. Still, the fact that Ghannouchi’s Ennahda willingly gave up power to join the other political forces in the country in drawing up a new constitution and reconvene a new set of parliamentary elections in the next year is nothing short of phenomenal.

Ennahda, among all other political currents, was justified in taking some credit for this honor [the Nobel Peace prize]. Thanks to all the political factions, the so-called Arab Spring would continue to live on – with all its ups and downs – in the land where it was born.”

Then, in his opening speech at Ennahda’s Tenth Congress in 2016, Ghannouchi declared that Tunisia no longer needed “political Islam.” Democratic institutions, if well-crafted and guarded, will always ensure that the people will elect those who embody their values. The Tunisian nation is overwhelmingly Muslim and if the majority prefers a more secular interpretation of what that means politically, then Ennahda will cooperate with secular parties to forward the common good for all Tunisians. It thereby was relinquishing any promotion of its own interpretation of Islam in the public sphere and was announcing it would function just like any other political party vying for support for its public policies.

At that stage, Ghannouchi himself decided to run for election. He easily won a seat in the Tunisian parliament and in 2019 was elected by his peers as speaker of parliament. But then the specter of dictatorship reared its ugly head once again. As his daughter puts it in her article, “Tunisia’s misfortune is that into the space opened by that democratic experiment stepped a populist fanatic who understood democracy only as a ladder. [President Kais] Saied climbed it to reach power - then kicked it away.”

A political outsider, Kais Saied was elected president in 2019 but then suspended the Ennahda-led parliament in 2021 and ruled strictly by decree from then on. He imprisoned several opposition leaders, but as his rule was facing fiercer resistance in February 2023, Saied launched a harsher campaign of repression, arresting two dozen opposition leaders, activists, journalists and judges. Finally, he arrested 82-year-old Ghannouchi himself in April. And two years later, Ghannouchi still sits in a small cell behind an iron door, one of the oldest political prisoners in the world.

Ghannouchi’s current hunger strike

Soumaya, his daughter writes,

“Last week, my 84-year-old father, Rached Ghannouchi, embarked on a hunger strike.

His body is frail, his health fragile; yet from his narrow cell, he chose hunger - not as escape, but as solidarity. He did it for Jawhar Ben Mbarek, a left-leaning professor of constitutional law, one of the leaders of the National Salvation Front and a central figure in the opposition to Tunisian President Kais Saied’s coup.

Ben Mbarek had already been on a wildcat hunger strike for a week, hovering between life and death, when my father joined him. Since then, the strike has spread across Tunisia’s prisons, gathering a growing number of political detainees who refuse to bow to the cruelty of the regime.

It is the last language left to those whom tyranny has silenced: the language of the body, the eloquence of refusal.”

This costly act of solidarity for the sake of his country is Ghannouchi’s clarion call for unity in opposition to the man who chose to monopolize political power in his own person. Will Ben Mbarek—or will he himself—survive this ordeal? They may not, but as his daughter notes, “Even now, the cracks are visible.” She adds, “The regime is hollow, exhausted, without a future. There is a growing conviction that change is inevitable; that the darkness is already thinning at its edges.” This “shameful interlude in Tunisia’s long story” will soon end, and no matter what happens in the weeks and months to come, “My father’s ideas will outlive it, as they have outlived every prison, every slander, every tyrant.”

Upon receiving his death sentence in 1987, Ghannouchi said, “As for my execution - if my blood is shed, I pray to God that it will be the last blood spilled in this country. And I pray that my blood may turn into a rose from which freedom blossoms.” This remains his prayer, 38 years later, once again in prison and now engaging in a hunger strike.

Good governance, from Amos to Ghannouchi

Political theology, simply put, is to think about what makes good governance using the resources of our sacred texts, whether we be Jews, Christians and Muslims. Amos, as we saw, castigated Israel’s rulers, religious leaders and the rich for trampling on the rights of the poor. In the book I just wrote (see this), political theology is one of three main themes. I will simply quote here from the only psalm attributed to Solomon, which is very much about political theology. Solomon is plainly expressing the views of his father, King David:

“Give your love of justice to the king, O God, and righteousness to the king’s son.

Help him judge your people in the right way; let the poor always be treated fairly . . .

He will rescue the poor when they cry to him; he will help the oppressed, who have no one to defend them.

He feels pity for the weak and the needy, and he will rescue them.

He will redeem them from oppression and violence, for their lives are precious to him” (Psalm 72: 1-2, 12-14, NLT).

Importantly, political theology is also applying the principles of just rulership to one’s specific historical context. Solomon, like his father, was a king with nearly absolute power. This psalm is actually a prayer, asking God to grant the king his own love for justice and compassion for the poor and oppressed. To what end? To ensure that all might prosper as much as possible—in the name of equity and equality. But without this commitment to ruling according to God’s commands, kingship tends toward despotism. And in fact, the Israelite monarchy did devolve into despotism politically, and, despite a few good kings along the way, Israel’s kings became more and more corrupt, rebelling against the law of Moses and thus leading the people into the idolatry of the nations around them. And so, God’s warning to the prophets came to pass: Jerusalem was destroyed by the Babylonians and the people were taken into exile.

Ghannouchi’s political theology, by contrast, starts with God’s love of justice as taught in the Qur’an and modeled by Muhammad, the prophet and ruler of Medina, but then takes stock of the world as it is today. The principles of democratic rule, along with the development of international law based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, are the result of the world’s nations coming together after two cataclysmic world wars and declaring that peace is only possible on the basis of strong institutions. Only a stable democratic polity can guarantee freedom and justice for one and all, and thereby ensure a peaceful society. This is why Ghannouchi fought despotism all his life in his beloved Tunisia, convinced that this was the teaching of Islam.

I’ve been to several “No Kings!” rallies this year in Washington, DC, Wilmington, Delaware, and locally as well. The dramatic rise in authoritarian rule and intentional erosion of democratic institutions in the United States is certainly concerning. But we still have the freedom to publicly air our views and protest! That is not an option in Tunisia and many other nations. Let us take inspiration from Shaykh Ghannouchi’s lifelong integrity and courage, and ask God to preserve his life, cause this despotic regime to fall, thus freeing all political prisoners and embarking Tunisia once again on the path of freedom and democracy.

And may his life also inspire us to keep freedom and justice for all burning bright in our own nation!

I end this series of eight posts on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the prospects of ending it by framing the issue theologically. I am a Christian theologian, after all, and I spent my second career researching and writing about Muslim-Christian dialogue. And since the first and greater part of the Bible is the Old Testament, or the Hebrew Bible, and since Jesus himself was Jewish and considered his message to be in line with the Hebrew prophets, we Christians recognize (or should, at least) that we do theology starting with the Hebrew scriptures. My conclusion, therefore, draws strands from all three traditions and argues that there is plenty of common ground to inspire, guide and sustain our collective efforts as aspiring peacemakers.

Prominent Jews who prioritize a more peaceful and just world

Arguably one of the most influential Jews in the world, Professor Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University, economist and public policy analyst, directs Columbia’s Center for Sustainable Development and has been a special advisor to the last four secretary-generals of the United Nations—first, on the eight Millennial Development Goals (MDGs, 2000-2015) and then on the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (2015-2030). Having devoted most of his life to find ways of eradicating extreme poverty, he has expanded that goal with scientists and policy makers from all over the world based on the conviction that only through global cooperation can we solve humanity’s most pressing problems.

Besides the specter of climate change, the pollution of our air and seas, the challenges to agriculture and the health of our great cities, the festering of wars in Ukraine, Sudan, and Israel-Palestine also loom large on the global horizon. Despite the shaky ceasefire underway in Gaza, for instance, the prospects for a just resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are still dim, to say the least. Israeli settlers in the West Bank continue to kill Palestinians as the IDF looks the other way; more homes are demolished and more families are internally displaced. I read this morning that Israel is poised to approve 2,000 new settlements in the West Bank! Meanwhile, at least 150 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza during the ceasefire and the IDF shows signs of digging into their positions for good.

Jeffrey Sachs has also been speaking out on the Gaza conflict. Watch him being interviewed on Breaking Points at the end of August 2025. What he says still applies: “In this most dangerous moment since WWII,” he recommends that the UN General Assembly suspend Israel’s membership in the UN, “because I believe this is a completely lawless, murderous, genocidal regime. I don’t think there’s any other country in the world remotely doing what Israel is doing in terms of the violence, the mass murder and the mass starvation.”

Just a week ago, 460 “former Israeli officials, artists, and intellectuals” called on heads of state to respond to “the underlying conditions of occupation, apartheid, and the denial of Palestinian rights” that are left unaddressed by the current ceasefire. Notice that as they appeal to the UN secretary general and all world leaders, they’re urging them “to uphold international law, halt arm sales and impose sanctions, as well as insuring the flow of humanitarian aid to Gaza.” This demonstrates a “universalist” vision of Jewish identity rather than a nationalist one.

A Jewish American theology opposing Jewish nationalism

While many American rabbis during WWII actively called for Jews to fight for the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine still under British Mandate, many Jewish Reform leaders in 1942 founded the American Council for Judaism. Under the “Who We Are” tab on their website, we read that the ACJ aimed “to uphold Reform Judaism as a tradition dedicated to universal ethics and justice at a time when many Jewish institutions began centering Jewish nationalism through Zionism.”

Its current executive director, Rabbi Andrue Kahn, wrote a piece for Religious News Service on the occasion of the Jewish New Year this fall, “Rosh Hashana helps us envision a Judaism beyond nationalism.” This is a theological move. What do I mean by that? First, Rosh Hashana reminds Jews that they are part and parcel of the world God created, writes Kahn:

“On this holiday, Jews do not celebrate the birth of a single people, but the creation of the world. The image is expansive: Every creature passes before the Creator, every being is judged, every life matters.

That vision undercuts the narrowness of a falsely homogenizing peoplehood. It reminds us that the Jewish story is bound up with the story of all humanity — as Jews have dwelled among all humanity. Torah is a wisdom tradition carried in Jewish form and meant to be tested, adapted, shared and lived out in relationship with the rest of the world.”

I would add that this universalist vision dovetails with many passages in the Hebrew Bible. The Psalms, for example, proclaim God’s care for all nations (and all of his creatures):

“Worship the Lord in all of his holy splendor. Let all the nations tremble before him.

Tell all the nations, ‘The Lord reigns!’

The world stands firm and cannot be shaken. He will judge all peoples fairly” (96:8-9, NLT).

The Hebrew prophets often give messages that concern other nations, and at times, all of creation. In this passage in Isaiah, one of the messianic “Servant of the Lord” ones, we read:

“Look at my servant, whom I strengthen. He is my chosen one, who pleases me.

I have put my Spirit upon him. He will bring justice to the nations . . .

He will not falter or lose heart until justice prevails throughout the earth.

Even distant lands beyond the sea will wait for his instructions” (Is. 42:1, 4 NLT).

Jesus picks up this universal strand and John translates it through a vision he receives at the very end of the Bible:

“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth . . . And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven like a bride beautifully dressed for her husband . . . I saw no temple in the city, for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. And the city has no need of sun or moon, for the glory of God illuminates the city, and the Lamb is its light. The nations will walk in its light, and the kings of the world will enter the city in all their glory” (Revelation 21:1-2, 22-24 NLT).

Rabbi Kahn then makes a second related point, not directly theological, but as a historical application of that first point’s theology:

“For most of Jewish existence, there was no unified ‘Jewish People.’ Jews have lived and thrived heterogeneously in places as widespread as Aleppo, Mtskheta, Addis Ababa, Baghdad, Sanaa and Cochin, each with distinct practices, customs and self-understandings. They often disagreed sharply with one another, and rarely imagined themselves a single, homogeneous nation.

Instead of nationalism, Jewish collectivity was mythopoetic: a spiritual understanding of covenant via Torah, which expressed itself in many differing, and often mutually exclusive, forms throughout the world.”

The “Jewish story,” he remarks, “is bound up with the story of all of humanity. Thus, the towering twelfth-century Jewish philosopher and Torah scholar Maimonides who lived in Spain, Morocco and later in Egypt, once said to a convert that “Abraham’s lineage is spiritual, not genetic.” Rosh Hashana teaches Jews that “Jewish distinctiveness is real, insofar as it complements the distinctiveness of each facet of the whole of humanity.” The linking of Judaism and Jewish identity with a modern nation-state is just that—a modern invention, says Kahn.

The universalist message of the Quran

This will be brief, as I have written extensively on this topic elsewhere, and in two books, in particular. Though the Islamic tradition is just as diverse as the Jewish and Christian ones, all Muslims will agree that God created humankind and delights in its many hues and cultures:

“People, We created you all from a single man and a single woman, and made you into races and tribes so that you should recognize one another. In God’s eyes, the most honoured of you are the ones most mindful of Him: God is all knowing, all aware” (Q. 49:13, Abdel Haleem).

The only difference God makes among human beings is the degree to which they choose to obey him. Another central theme of the Quran is that of justice. About fifty verses teach how important justice in human relations is to God, and many more proclaim how detestable injustice is to him, and especially social injustice. Here is perhaps the most famous verse:

“You who believe, uphold justice and bear witness to God, even if it is against yourselves, your parents, or your close relatives. Whether the person is rich or poor, God can best take care of both. Refrain from following your own desire, so that you can act justly – if you distort or neglect justice, God is fully aware of what you do” (Q. 4:135, Abel Haleem).

I wrote a series of blog posts on justice in 2013, mostly summarizing a series of lectures I had given at a Muslim-Christian conference in Singapore just before (Justice and Liberal Democracies; Jesus and Justice; Justice in Islamic Law and Ethics; and Justice, Shari’a and Hermeneutics). I concluded “that ‘justice’ as the convergence of such ideals as fairness, dignity for all human beings, human rights and equality before the law, and especially vindication, redress and affirmative action for the downtrodden – justice is a basic aspiration that all people share.”

Justice, then, is not only an ethical ideal we strive for in our relationships with others as we navigate family relationships, or in our dealings with neighbors, or with bosses and colleagues at work. It is also not just about courts of justice where crimes are prosecuted, disputes are arbitrated and victims compensated. Justice, crucially, concerns governance—whether on a municipal, city, regional, national or global scale.

I was commissioned to translate a book written by Tunisian activist Rached Ghannouchi who had co-founded a political party to contest the autocratic rule of the dictator in power since Tunisia’s independence from France, Habib Bourguiba (1956-1987). Happily for Ghannouchi, their political party, steeped in the discourse of political Islam (or Islamism) that was growing in popularity in North Africa and the Middle East since the 1970s, was growing rapidly. Sadly for him, that success cost him his freedom, and while in a state prison most of the 1980s, he wrote a well-researched book, Public Freedoms in the Islamic State, arguing that if rightly understood, the Islamic tradition teaches the importance of democracy (people hold ultimate sovereignty in any state), human rights, and the rule of law, including international law.

While working on this ambitious project (the English version has 570 pages), I wrote a trilogy of blog posts on Ghannouchi, the first, to trace the rise of Islamism in North Africa since the 19^th century; the second, to sketch Ghannouchi’s biography; and the third, to explain the trajectory of his influential thought, from a young aspiring politician to the leader of the main political party now in power after the popular uprising (the very first in the so-called “Arab Spring” of December 2010) that forced Tunisia’s second dictator to flee the country.

Then in 2016, at the Tenth Congress of the Ennahda (Renaissance) Party, Ghannouchi declared in the opening speech that “political Islam is no longer needed in Tunisia.” As I explained in a later post, “Ennahda was no longer a religious party but a democratic party among others, whose members nevertheless found inspiration in the ethical values of their Islamic faith.” The book’s original title could have been revised. He no longer wanted an “Islamic state,” but rather a democratic one in which the large majority of citizens are Muslim and are free to express their own preferences for how it should be governed. Ghannouchi also declared in that speech that members of the party would have to desist from leadership positions in their mosque, and that religious leaders could no longer be involved in the party. In other words, no more overlapping of religion and state. And no Islamic nationalism***.

I will just quote a passage near the end of the book, some of which was revised, as you can imagine before its publication in English in 2022 to give you a feeling of the universalism of Ghannouchi’s thought—and indeed of many leading Muslim leaders, scholars and politicians today:

“God has also made the loftiest declaration to humanity, that they are all His creation, and that they all come from one origin and are equally honored and urged them to be as He intended—that is, one family that competes in doing good and repelling evil, in discovering the treasures of this universe and using them to fulfill their material and spiritual needs through many sorts of clues He has graciously dispersed through His creation. Some of these are useful for bettering their lives and others are simply signs of beauty that point to His majesty. Equally, He has forbidden them to arrogantly put anyone down and discriminate against one another on the basis of race, skin color, gender or class, or a claim to piety. For all are brothers and sisters, and thus must get to know and help one another without injustice, and He has granted their minds absolute freedom of conscience and a full responsibility to choose their own destiny” (p. 428).

Wrapping up this series on Israel-Palestine

I began this series by explaining why there had been a 14-month hiatus in my blog writing—after several years of reading, interviewing, and taking notes, I devoted nine months to actually writing the book that became, The City Where All May Flourish: The Holy Spirit in Mission and Global Governance. I mention this again because I wrote this series very much in the spirit of that work. The Apostle John’s vision recounted at the end of the Bible in which the nations of the world stream into the city where heaven and earth have finally become one and where God now literally lives among his people—that city, where human beings from all ages, nations, races and cultures flourish together in God’s presence amidst a creation now completely renewed, serves as inspiration and even blueprint for the kind of world he calls us to work for now.

I argued that it was God’s Holy Spirit who engineered the founding of the United Nations and the drafting of Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the ashes of World War II, both of which inaugurated a long period of relative peace and the drawing up a body of international law. I also urged Christians, often tempted as Jews and Muslims are to resort to religious nationalism, which inevitably tramples on the rights of minorities, and in the case of the United States, builds on the myth of American exceptionalism and intentionally tears down the institutions and treaties that have upheld global cooperation now for decades. Finally, in the case of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it takes the side of Israel and rubber stamps its extreme religious nationalism which has recently veered from generic apartheid to ethnic cleansing and genocide.

Yet peace is eminently possible, if only the State of Israel complies with numerous Security Council resolutions since 1967 by dismantling its military occupation of Gaza and the West Bank and negotiates in earnest with its Palestinian counterparts a just and sustainable two-state solution. In the meantime, just as the international community did to bring down the apartheid regime in South Africa, we must all work together to apply maximum pressure on Israel through boycotts, divestment, and sanctions (BDS). With God’s help, we can get this done together and achieve a lasting peace.

*** Rached Ghannouchi was elected speaker of Tunisia’s parliament in 2019, but as a result of a coup engineered by President Kais Saied in 2021, he was jailed along with other opposition figures and in 2025 sentenced to 14 plus 6 years on several trumped-up charges. Join me in praying for his release. He is now 84.

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA), an international news agency going back to 1917 with stellar journalistic credentials, ran an article in mid-August 2025 with the title, “Jew vs Jew rhetoric breaks hearts in a bitter internal debate about the Gaza war.” In it, Andrew Silow-Carroll argues that almost two years into this Gaza war, “the Jewish conversation has shifted”: “Jews who have taken to social media to condemn Hamas, anti-Israel protesters and the colleges and politicians they say have enabled antisemitism are now turning on fellow Jews — and not just anti-Zionist Jews, who if anything united the mainstream in a common disdain.”

And who are these two groups of Zionist Jews that are battling it out? On one side you have the “fierce defenders of Israel” and on the other, the “troubled” defenders (“troubled” about the sheer number of people killed and the use of starvation as a weapon of war). And the vitriol has spread like a cancer on social media. We read in one recent JTA opinion piece, “I find myself calling out: Don’t you get that we are at war with ourselves? And we have to find a way to put the pieces back, perhaps to create something new, or we will not survive.”

In this installment in my series on Israel-Palestine, I’ll look at three particular divides in the Jewish community; and I will close with a discussion particularly arising in Orthodox circles—a discussion I find encouraging.

The Israeli-US Jewish divide

In May 2025 a poll in Israel found that 82 percent of Israeli citizens wanted to expel Gazans and 47 percent supported killing them all. The Israeli survey done in partnership with Penn State University was published in the major Israeli newspaper Haaretz. And the more religious people are, it found, the more they favor ethnic cleansing and genocide. The Israelis in the survey are divided into secular, traditional religious, Orthodox, and Haredi (often called Ultra-Orthodox). The secular Israelis are the most reticent to move in these directions and the Haredi go the farthest. Finally, “the younger the Israeli is, the more likely they are to be far-right extremist,” the survey showed.

My immediate reaction in reading “82 percent” was: what about the 21 percent of Israeli citizens who call themselves “Palestinian Israelis”? The article by Ben Norton, founder and editor of the Geopolitical Economy Report where this article is posted, confirmed my own hunch: these Israeli citizens “are not considered to be fully Israeli. They are third-class citizens, and are denied equal treatment by the Israeli regime.” Netanyahu managed to pass the “basic nationality law” in 2019, and on that occasion, he declared publicly “with pride”: “Israel is not a state of all its citizens.” Hence, the “82 percent” are all Israeli Jewish citizens.

Norton mentions an interview in May 2024 in Haaretz with former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert (2006-2009) from Netanyahu’s own party (Likud), who admitted that up to 2024, he denied that the Israeli regime was committing war crimes, but he now believes otherwise. Israel is deliberately using hunger as a weapon and committing “a war of extermination”:

“There are too many cases of brutal shooting of civilians, of destruction of property and homes. Looting of property, thefts from homes, which in many cases IDF soldiers have also taken pride in and published in personal posts. We are committing war crimes.”

He later added that the Israeli army is acting “recklessly, carelessly, and excessively aggressively.” What is more, Israelis “massacre Palestinian civilians in the West bank as well, and commit heinous crimes every day in the West Bank.”

All that said, you know from another post in this series, that the Israeli peace movement is stirring again and at least two Israeli human rights organizations are publicly condemning “our genocide.” Stunningly as well, over “600 retired Israeli security officials, including some former heads of intelligence agencies,” sent President Trump a letter in early August 2015 calling on him to increase pressure on Israel to stop its war in Gaza and secure the release of all hostages, because in their judgment “Hamas no longer poses a strategic threat to Israel.” This doesn't mean they are pressing for a two-state solution to the longstanding conflict. But at the very least, they want this war to stop immediately.

The situation is very different in the United States, where “a majority of American voters now oppose sending additional economic and military aid to Israel, a stunning reversal in public opinion since the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks.”

In a Times/Siena poll just out this week, we learn that . . .

• • • 6 out of 10 voters want Israel to end immediately its war in Gaza, even without the release of the remaining hostages
    • 40 percent said Israel was “intentionally killing civilians in Gaza, nearly the double of voters who agreed with that statement in the 2023 poll
    • regardless of party, 7 out of 10 voters under 30 “said they opposed additional economic or military aid
    • more surprisingly, whereas Democratic voters over 45 said they sympathized more with Israel in 2023 (2 to 1), now it’s the opposite: 42 percent of them sympathize more with Palestinians, while only 17 percent sympathize more with Israelis

In light of this, it’s no surprise that the American Jewish population also reflects this trend. Another factor that pushes them in this direction is their strong distaste for President Trump and his weaponizing of antisemitism to assert his control over universities. In a poll that came out in May 2025 by GBAO Strategies (“a longtime pollster of Jewish public opinion”), we learn that “three-quarters of Jewish voters (74%) disapprove of Trump’s job performance (70% ‘strongly disapprove’). Most American Jews think Trump is ‘dangerous’ (72%), ‘racist’ (69%) and ‘fascist’ (69%).” In particular, . . .

• • • “61% percent of American Jews said that arresting and deporting Palestinian protestors who are legal residents of the United States only increases antisemitism.” University of Pennsylvania political scientist Ian Lustick explained that “Jews are attached to the idea of law. It’s in our DNA to believe in the rule of law, and that’s very scary to see that flagrantly abused.”
    • 92 percent of respondents agreed with the statement that one can be “pro-Israel” and still disagree with Israeli government policies.
    • Flagship American Jewish organizations (like the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee) continue to defend Israel’s policies and demonize “Jews who criticize Israel as antisemitic.” As a result, they are no longer in step with the majority of American Jews on these issues.

The US generational Jewish divide

In contrast to Israel where being under 30 tends to correlate with stronger right-wing views, young American Jews tend to be less attached to Israel and more critical of it. The same GBAO Strategies poll mentioned above informs us that . . .

“. . . among younger American Jews, fewer are concerned about antisemitism. While 95% of Jews over 65 said they were concerned about antisemitism, 77% of Jews aged 18-34 were. Asked their concerns about antisemitism on college campuses, 65% of younger Jews expressed concern (39% were ‘very concerned’).”

“Seven in 10 Jews aged 18-34 (71%) believe deporting campus protesters increases antisemitism. Attachment to Israel is also lower among this age group, with 55% saying they are emotionally attached to Israel (24% say they are ‘very attached’).”

Peter Beinart, an American Jewish journalist in his 40s known for his uncompromising critiques of Israeli policies, was interviewed recently on the occasion of his new book’s release, Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning. Without minimizing the brutality of the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks, Beinart, a Modern Orthodox (see below) Jew originally from South Africa, believes that Israel’s response to it (“a horror,” he argues) makes it ethically impossible for her to continue using “the virtuous victim trope.” He explains, “By seeing a Jewish state as forever abused, never the abuser, we deny its capacity for evil.” What has been “very difficult and painful” for him, however, is that there has been “no reckoning with what it means for us that an entire society is being destroyed—that most of the buildings, hospitals, the schools, the agriculture, the entire basis of life for a population of 2 million people.”

The interviewer then asks whether the story of eternal Jewish victimhood will ever change. Beinart answers by expressing hope in the younger generation of Jews today. He expects them to show “a tremendous amount of creativity” in examining “the resources of our own tradition” in order to confront these things and to think about our ethical responsibilities in a situation in which (Israeli) Jews are not legally subjugated as they were in Europe and other places, but indeed do have legal supremacy.” Much in the Jewish tradition, he notes, provide Jews with the opportunity to see themselves “in a range of different capacities, not simply in the role of a victim whose obligation is merely to survive.”

The Jewish denominational divide

Whereas the Orthodox dominate the religious landscape of Israel, the three largest Jewish denominations or movements in the United States are Reform (35 percent), Conservative (18 percent), and Orthodox (10 percent). Whereas the Reform and Conservative branches of American Judaism have more centralized leadership and movement-affiliated institutions, the Orthodox are divided into Modern Orthodox, Haredi (or Ultra-Orthodox), Hasidic, and Open Orthodox. Orthodox Jews in general tend to overwhelmingly support Netanyahu and his prosecuting of the present war in Gaza.

In April 2025, 550 American rabbis signed a letter “objecting to President Trump’s crackdown on universities for what the administration calls tolerance of antisemitism, calling Trump’s executive orders and detentions of students who criticized Israel ‘cynical attacks on higher education.’” The letter, entitled “A Call to Moral Clarity: Rejecting Antisemitism as a Political Wedge,” was signed largely by Reform and Conservative rabbis, and only by “a handful” of Orthodox rabbis.

Four months later, when the UN was declaring a famine in Gaza, a number of rabbinic organizations issued statements expressing their distress at the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and calling on the Israeli government to allow food aid and medicines to come in. That said, as this article makes clear, these statements exemplified a spectrum of views. A group of Orthodox rabbis wrote, “We affirm that Hamas’s sins and crimes do not relieve the government of Israel of its obligations to make whatever efforts are necessary to prevent mass starvation.” The U.S. Conservative rabbinate (The Rabbinical Assembly) went a bit further. Though also calling for the release of humanitarian aid, it directly critiqued Netanyahu for allowing members of his cabinet to publicly call for Israel “to decimate the Gaza Strip.”

A statement by more than a thousand “liberal rabbis” around the world said it understands the IDF’s concern to protect the life of its soldiers, “[but] we cannot condone the mass killing of civilians, including a great many women, children and elderly, or the use of starvation as a weapon of war.” The American signatories were likely mostly from the Reform and Conservative traditions. But a shift seems to be happening, at least in some Orthodox circles, as I show in the next section.

Jewish and Christian convergence on the Hebrew prophets

Jeffrey Salkin, a Jewish contributor to Religious News Service, and himself a Reform rabbi, took a closer look at the statement by 80 Orthodox rabbis mentioned above. It was entitled, “A Call for Moral Clarity, Responsibility, and a Jewish Orthodox Response in the Face of the Gaza Humanitarian Crisis.” He begins by noting that “[when] Reform and Conservative rabbis issue a statement that raises concerns about how Israel is waging war in Gaza, many Jews expect that.” Then he adds, “When Orthodox rabbis issue a similar statement, that is something different.” Salkin reveals that “some of the Orthodox rabbis who signed are my friends, teachers and mentors,” and he cites three of them.

Many of these signatories were students (or spiritual students) of Rabbi Soloweitchik, who in a 1959 lecture issued this warning:

“Now, with the state of Israel, we are facing the test. Will we behave like any state, ethically? … Will we act like masters — or will we understand that Judaism does not know the concept of master and slave, victor and vanquished?”

One of Salkin’s friends who signed this statement once said: “The goal of Israel is not only to survive, but to thrive in Torah and flourish morally and spiritually.” One of the demands of the Jewish tradition is to “sense the pain of a people with whom we are at war.” As Rabbi Yitz Greenberg once stated, “The heart of Torah is justice, not revenge.” Hence, “moral scrutiny” is not a luxury but a basic requirement of Torah and the heart of the message of Israel’s prophets. As Salkin reminds his Jewish readers,

“Go to any synagogue on a Shabbat morning and listen to the haftarah (the prophetic reading). You want moral scrutiny and critique of people, priests and princes? Isaiah, Amos, Jeremiah – it’s all there. To be a Jew is to believe love and critique are not antagonists. They walk hand in hand.”

Likewise, the Hebrew prophets’ message of social justice was central to the sermons of the Black churches that gave birth to the Civil Rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s. Among the verses the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. often quoted, is this one: “But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!” (Amos 5:24). Jesus was building on this tradition as well when he chose to read from the prophet Isaiah in his hometown synagogue as a roadmap for his ministry which had just started:

“The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me,

because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners

and recovery of sight for the blind,

to set the oppressed free,

to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:18-19).

I will end this series with some thoughts about this common theological ground between Jews, Christians and Muslims. I believe this is the kind of spiritual sustenance that can fuel a stronger movement for peace based on justice and compassion in order to end this conflict in the foreseeable future.

On September 9, my good friend Jack Wald (from 1970s seminary days) and I took a train to Washington, DC to deliver letters protesting US policy vis à vis Israel to our elected representatives. In particular, we were urging them to vote against sending any more weapons to Israel, as they have been using them in their brutal war in Gaza. As things stand now, we are entirely complicit in this genocide.

We had chosen this date because since last December, we have made common cause with a national network of Mennonites who since the Oct. 7, 2023 Gaza War organized various protests and “disruptive nonviolent actions” under the name Mennonite Action. Though in the end we were not able to connect with others in our group, we still had excellent exchanges with the young aides in these offices, even in Senator John Fetterman’s office (who as a Democrat remains a staunch supporter of Israel), and especially with our two respective representatives, Chrissy Houlahan and Mary Gay Scanlon. They assured us that personal visits by constituents carry a lot of weight for senators and representatives.

Meanwhile, the bulk of the Mennonite Action members from neighboring Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania engaged in a peaceful sit-in, singing hymns and chanting in front of Virginia Senator Mark Warner’s office (see photo above). They called for him to come out and talk with them. He declined, but they were able to sing and chant for ten to fifteen minutes before being arrested.

Mennonites, Amish, Church of the Brethren, Quakers, and others all come from the Anabaptist tradition that broke off from the Protestant Reformation in the 16^th century. Besides their disagreement about baptism (they don’t practice it), these Christians suffered intense persecution from the Reformed churches because they remained staunchly pacifist—refusing to bear arms. So it is not surprising that they energetically protested after the start of this war.

Many other people of faith have sprung into action to stop this war and the unconscionable killing, maiming and starving of Gaza’s two million people. I have so much material on this that I can only offer some highlights.

I’ll start with Muslims—you would expect a loud chorus of condemnation from them on this issue. After all, Jerusalem is Islam’s third holiest site after Mecca and Medina, and over 99 percent of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories are Muslim. Then for Christians, if you are only familiar with the United States, you might be forgiven for assuming that all evangelicals are Zionists (they are not), but among mainline Protestants, Presbyterians stand out for their longstanding support for BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) as a tool to bring down the Israeli occupation. Among Catholics, Pope Leo is following in his predecessor’s footsteps. I will devote the next and last installment in this series to American Jews. Contrary to what might hear in the media, most of them are pushing for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and a two-state solution to the conflict.

Muslims speak out

Yemen’s Arab Houthis are the only ones to actually fight for the Palestinians, whether you agree with their methods or not. In the Substack newsletter “Palestine Will Be Free,” we read about a speech by Hamas spokesman Abu Obeida in July 2025, in which he “issued a scathing indictment of Islamic and Arab leadership.” At one point he moans,

“You are the adversaries of every orphaned child, every grieving mother, every displaced, homeless, wounded, devastated, and starving person. Your necks are burdened with the blood of tens of thousands of innocents who were betrayed by your silence.”

Then the speaker shifts gears, declaring that “it is one thing to be a silent observer in the face of injustice, especially against one’s own,” but Saudi Arabia, home of Islam’s two holiest sites, “has been caught red-handed acting as a conduit for the weapons that are annihilating the Palestinians in Gaza.” This month, however, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), with 57 members (including 48 Muslim-majority nations) called for an urgent meeting on the war in Gaza. “The Joint Statement on Developments in the Gaza Strip” (September 8) demands that Israel immediately cease its assault on Gaza and calls for “an end to the ongoing violations committed by the occupation forces against civilians and infrastructure in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem.” And of course, it appeals for unconditional access to food and medicines for the Gaza’s starving people.

Words are cheap, naturally, but Muslim peoples have often been in the streets protesting this war. In the United States, the first Ramadan after the beginning of the war (April 2024), turned into mighty collective and even sacrificial action in support of the Gazan population. Muslim Americans made their displeasure known to their elected officials, they scaled back many of the traditional festivities that accompany Ramadan, and they organized numerous fundraisers on behalf of Palestine. And all this, even though the Oct. 7 Hamas attack and ensuing war doubled the number of bias incidents against Muslim Americans, as reported by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). 7.5 percent of those incidents were alleged hate crimes.

Catholics speak out

The Vatican has consistently called for a two-state solution in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, whereby two states function independently side by side in peace—ever since the 1970s, in fact. Pope Leo XIV spoke with Israel’s president Isaac Herzog when the latter attended his inauguration in Rome; and then he invited again on Sept. 4, 2025, specifically to discuss “how to secure a future for the Palestinian people,” according to Vatican sources. Pope Leo’s advocacy for the Palestinians is seen as a continuation of his predecessor’s deep commitment to reactivating serious peace negotiations between Israelis and Hamas, and with Palestinians in the Occupied Territories as a whole. Throughout this war, Pope Francis would call the Holy Family Parish, the only Catholic church in Gaza, once a week. His successor is just as committed to the cause of peace.

Pope Leo has issued several calls for an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza War and in July he made this appeal: “I appeal to the international community to observe humanitarian law and respect the obligation to protect civilians as well as the prohibition of collective punishment, the indiscriminate use of force, and the forced displacement of populations.” The pope is the only Christian leader with the kind of moral and political authority to issue this kind of statement on the global stage.

The Jesuit journal, America, published this last April an interview with Jesuit priest and longtime resident of Jerusalem David Newhaus, S.J., who was one of the signatories of a document by Christian scholars and activists in Israel-Palestine just made public (“Out of the depths I cry out to you”). These Roman Catholics, Greek Orthodox, Lutherans, and evangelicals recently formed an ecumenical (meaning, inclusive of most Christian traditions) think tank that stands in solidarity with suffering Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank—a voice that picks up the voices of those who are voiceless and amplifies them in order to challenge those worldwide “who see our wounds but do not speak out.” The newly formed think tank is called A Jerusalem Voice for Justice.

Protestants speak out

Besides the largest international body uniting evangelical churches, the World Evangelical Alliance (membership of 600 million), which has a robust Global Advocacy arm focused on peace, justice and human rights, the global missionary organization, the Lausanne Movement, includes a similar arm. It teamed up with the Network of Evangelicals for the Middle East for an online Day of Prayer for Peace in the Holy Land on Sept. 10, 2025. This 90-minute session was “an online prayer vigil” with guest speakers leading participants in “petition and lament, together for an end to all war and conflict in the Middle East. You will remember from my first post in this series that a large majority of evangelicals in the US are Christian Zionists (much less so globally). Such events as these, besides the obvious goal of united prayer and lament, serve to share information and perspectives that challenge the Zionist position which often dehumanizes Palestinians.

In this spirit, a wide coalition of scholars, clergy and activists gathered in Glen Ellyn, IL (September 11-13, 2025) to recognize “that the church stands at a defining moment—Jesus is urgently calling us back to the narrow way of the cross.” Hence, the title of this conference: Church at the Crossroads:

“As violence escalates in Israel and Palestine, and some in the Church use Scripture to justify war, occupation, or silence, we must ask: Have we traded the gospel of peace for the false promises of security and comfort?

At this crossroads, the Church must choose. Will we follow the political idols of our day—or Jesus, who disarmed the powers and made peace through His blood?

Rooted in Scripture and led by Palestinian Christian leaders—alongside pastors and peacemakers from across North America—this conference invites American Christians to engage in honest reckoning, prophetic reflection, and faithful action. Through worship, prayer, teaching, and fellowship, we are called to repentance, renewal, and courageous discipleship. This is a space to confront harmful theologies, rediscover the gospel of the Kingdom, and stand with all who seek justice in the land.”

Among the American “pastors and peacemakers” mentioned above you might recognize the names of Jemar Tisby, Shane Claiborne, May Elise Cannon (executive director of Churches for Middle East Peace), Lisa Sharon Harper and Brian Zahnd. But seven others are all authors in the edited book that just came out (including one of its editors, Bruce N. Fisk), Being Christian After the Desolation of Gaza. The last phrase of the book’s description leaves us with the heart-wrenching question, “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?”

Veteran evangelical social justice advocate, Jim Wallis, published an OpEd in Religion News Service in August, “As Gaza starves, churches must lead on Palestinian Recognition.” Now the Archbishop Desmond Tutu chair and director of the Georgetown University’s Center for Faith and Justice, has the ear of many mainline Protestant churches (think Presbyterian, Methodist, Lutheran and Episcopal) and members of Congress.

In my last post in this series, I stated that there could be no peace without BDS. The university student protests in 2023 and 2024 were all focused on this. Among churches, it’s the mainline Protestant churches showing the way—and in particular, the Presbyterian Church (USA), whose 2024 General Assembly voted “to divest from Israel bonds and begin the process of encouraging two companies it believes are contributing to human rights abuses against Palestinians in the occupied territories to quit their practices.” The first of those companies is General Electric which sells fighter jet engines to Israel’s air force, and the second is Palantir Technologies which sells Israel its Artificial Intelligence technology which enables it to surveil every detail of Palestinian lives.

For US citizens to move back the needle of unconditional US support for Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza and its planned ethnic cleansing of the West Bank, the BDS strategy—as it was for Apartheid South Africa—is essential. In this installment, I added two more legs to this 3-legged stool: pressure on our elected officials and advocacy among American Christians, especially evangelical Christian Zionists.

I close with the “peace churches” I mentioned in the beginning. Read here about the Friends (or Quaker) Committee on National Legislation. The director of this small lobby in Washinton that pushes Congressional representatives to call for a ceasefire in the current war, says, “We’re clearly being outspent, but I think the saving grace is that our ideas are just more popular.” Clearly, the tide is turning, but the battle is still very much uphill.

I ended my last post by referring to the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem’s 2021 press release declaring that their nation was committing the crime of apartheid against the Palestinian population in the Occupied Territories. This was the subtitle, “A regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: this is apartheid.”

In fact, they were referring to a United Nations convention from November 1973 (Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid) which was drafted, debated, and signed by many nations—all with reference to the South African white supremacist regime which turned the majority black population into second-class citizens and routinely trampled on their civil rights, causing them great suffering. The word “apartheid” is an Afrikaans word—a language developed by the original Dutch settlers—meaning “apartness,” or “segregation.”

If you click on my link to the B’Tselem organization, immediately you’re confronted by a gigantic title filling your page: “OUR GENOCIDE.” Go to that specific page, read it, but especially watch the just-under-8-minutes video. To describe it as “powerful” is an understatement. Coming from people who were raised in the shadow of the Holocaust—the greatest of last century’s genocides—this documentary is simply bone-chilling. And it ends with this call, “People and governments must use every means available under international law to make the Israeli government stop the genocide in Gaza now.”

The key role of international law

This is why my second post referenced the United Nations and the gradual coming together of international law. “Genocide”—a word from Greek roots meaning “the killing of a race, tribe or people,” was first recognized by the UN’s General Assembly in 1946, and later was ratified in 1948 as the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Though only 153 nations to date have ratified the Genocide Convention, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has repeatedly emphasized that all nations are “bound as a matter of law by the principle that genocide is a crime prohibited by international law” (from the UN page on genocide).

The legal definition of genocide contains two elements:

1. 1. 1. A mental element: the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such; and
      2. A physical element—any one of the following:
         1. Killing members of the group;
         2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
         3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
         4. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
         5. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

The most difficult element to prove in a court of law is the “intent” component. But in this case, it is rather obvious. Ask the Gazan people who in the last two years have been herded like rats marked for extermination—bombed, starved, mostly cut off from clean water, electricity and fuel, and then killed by Israeli snipers when on their way to or at food distribution sites.

Also, make sure to ask Italian lawyer and academic Francesca Albanese, who was mandated by the 47-member UN Human Rights Council in May 2022 to research the actual conditions of the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories (Gaza and West Bank). The first woman in this job, she was given a three-year term as Special Rapporteur on the Palestinian territories, and then given another three-year term in April 2025.

Watch her introductory remarks as she delivered her extensive report to the council (“Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967”) on July 3, 2025. The subtitle is a short excerpt from her talk: “Israel is responsible for one of the cruelest genocides in modern history.”

For all her hard work, Albanese must have felt gratified by the approval and gratitude of the council; but she also paid a heavy price for it. Just after her talk, she was personally sanctioned by the Trump Administration (see her remarks as she was interviewed by the Associated Press about this). She will not be able to visit her daughter in the US, and can have no financial interactions with American banks.

An article in The Hill documents Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s calling on the UN Human Rights Council to fire her and quotes from a message on X in which he announces, “Today I am imposing sanctions on . . . Francesca Albanese . . . [her] campaign of political and economic warfare against the United States and Israel will no longer be tolerated.”

So what did she say in her report (read it here as a pdf, but the UN page I cited above has a good summary)? Her central thesis is that Israel’s settler colonial plan began with the 1901 founding of the Jewish National Fund (a land-purchasing corporate entity), which “helped plan and carry out the gradual removal of Arab Palestinians, which intensified with the Nakba [1948 Palestinian “catastrophe”], and has continued ever since.” But this process of colonizing Palestinian land—dispossessing Palestinians of their land and replacing them with Israeli colonies—accelerated rapidly after 1967, and it was aided and abetted by global corporate interests. In her words,

“The role of corporate entities in sustaining Israel’s illegal occupation and ongoing genocidal campaign in Gaza is the subject of this investigation, which focuses on how corporate interests underpin Israeli settler-colonial [projects]—the twofold logic of displacement and replacement aimed at dispossessing and erasing Palestinians from their lands. It discusses corporate entities in various sectors: arms manufacturers, tech firms, building and construction companies, extractive and service industries, banks, pension funds, insurers, universities and charities. These entities enable the denial of self-determination and other structural violations in the occupied Palestinian territory, including occupation, annexation and crimes of apartheid and genocide, as well as a long list of ancillary crimes and human rights violations, from discrimination, wanton destruction, forced displacement and pillage, to extrajudicial killing and starvation.”

In other words, this longstanding project of settler colonialism has kicked into high gear under the most far-right government in Israeli history. It plans to expel Gaza’s two million people and do the same, as far as possible, to the West Bank. And as I write this, the stakes couldn’t be higher: Israel has begun its assault on the last remaining urban structure (Gaza City) and famine has officially been declared in the Gaza Strip.

No peace without boycotts, sanctions, and divestment (BDS)

What has been largely missing so far is a global consensus to act on established international laws—and applying in particular the UN Apartheid and Genocide Conventions in this case. The United States is already feeling the heat for its unconditional support of Israel’s genocidal war. The International Criminal court (ICC) issued last year arrest warrants against Netanyahu and his former defense minister Yoav Gallant “for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity” over its war in Gaza. The chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, had also issued arrest warrants against two Hamas officials, both of whom have now been assassinated by Israel.

In response, the US State Department sanctioned Karim Khan and four other ICC judges in March 2025. Ignoring the UN human rights chief who had ordered the US to withdraw its sanctions, the Trump Administration doubled down on its position in August, and it sanctioned two more judges and two more prosecutors, including a French judge, Nicolas Guillou, the one who had authorized Netanyahu’s arrest warrant. France, in turn, expressed “dismay” and joined the ICC in its condemnation of the sanctions, stating that imposing such sanctions was “in contradiction to the principle of an independent judiciary.” The ICC itself complained that they constituted “an affront against . . . the rules-based international order and, above all, millions of innocent victims across the world.”

What is the main takeaway from Albanese’s report? What are her recommendations for ending this genocidal war? Let me just cite the first three, which are addressed to member states:

1. 1. 1. To impose sanctions and a full arms embargo on Israel, including all existing agreements and dual-use items such as technology [Israel has used Microsoft, Alphabet, and Amazon for cloud backup, AI tools, face recognition, and surveillance analysis] and civilian heavy machinery [Caterpillar, HD Hyundai, and Volvo excavators], which has been used to demolish Palestinian homes and recently to raze whole sections of Gaza, even burying thousands of Palestinians, including, allegedly, many only injured.
      2. To suspend/prevent all trade agreements and investment relations, and impose sanctions, including asset freezes, on entities and individuals involved in activities that may endanger Palestinians.
      3. To enforce accountability, ensuring that corporate entities [a list in the hundreds] face legal penalties for their involvement in serious violations of international law.

Here is the last one, addressed to all of us: “The Special Rapporteur urges trade unions, lawyers, civil society and ordinary citizens to press for boycotts, divestments, sanctions, justice for Palestine and accountability at international and domestic levels; together we can end these unspeakable crimes.”

I posted a piece in 2019 urging readers to join in some way the international movement of Boycott, Divestment, and Sanction (BDS). The first official international conference to promote BDS as a means to achieve a just peace in Israel-Palestine was convened in Ramallah, West Bank, in 2007. We’ve come a long way since then. The international protests against Israeli atrocities in Gaza over the last couple of years attest to that.

Just last week, Mondoweiss, a Jewish American website (“News & Opinion about Palestine, Israel & the United States”) published a piece entitled, “International Court of Justice Finds That BDS Is Not Just Legal, But Obligatory.” Israel’s frantic efforts in the last couple of decades to shield itself from the potential onslaught of the growing BDS movement seem to have paid off: “countless laws and policies are now on the books across the U.S. and the broader West, trampling on core constitutional principles and internationally guaranteed human rights.” But the International Court of Justice issued an advisory opinion last month that turns the tables on the Israeli/American rhetoric:

“In its historic ruling, the ICJ found that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza is entirely unlawful, that Israel practices apartheid and racial segregation, and that all states are under a duty to help bring this to an end, including by cutting off all economic, trade and investment relations with Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. In other words, as a matter of international law, all countries are obliged to participate in an economic boycott of Israel’s activities in the occupied Palestinian territory and to divest from any existing economic relations there.”

The current Israeli government is not denying its plan is genocide, though of course, it doesn't use that term. Have a listen to the leader of Israel's National Religious Party who has also been Netanyahu's Minister of Finance since 2022. The two clips are on Judge Napolitano's Judging Freedom's podcast and his interviewee is University of Chicago Professor John Mearsheimer (starting at minute 14:14).

Let’s hold on to hope

In January 2025, six nations from the Global South convened in The Hague, Netherlands, to form a new block “in defense of international law and solidarity with the Palestinian people” (Columbia, South Africa, Malaysia, Namibia, Senegal, Bolivia, Cuba and Honduras). The Hague Group, as it is called, express their mission in these words,

“The choice is stark: Either we act together to enforce international law or we risk its collapse. We choose to act, not only for the people of Gaza but for the future of a world where justice prevails over impunity. Let this moment mark the beginning of a renewed commitment to internationalism and the principles that bind us as a global community.”

Francesca Albanese was invited to Bogota, Columbia, for a two-day emergency meeting of the Hague Group (July 19-20, 2025). In her address, she urged these leaders to “hold tight” to hope, as she does. She senses “a historical turning point” is underway. “Palestine’s immense suffering has cracked open the possibility of transformation.” First, “the narrative is shifting”—away from Israel’s right to self-defense “toward the long-denied Palestinian right to self-determination—systematically invisibilised, suppressed and delegitimised for decades.” And second, “we are seeing the rise of a new multilateralism: principled, courageous, increasingly led by the Global Majority.”

Even in the United States, the narrative is beginning to shift. USA Today published an OpEd by B’Tselem’s spokesperson Yair Dvir, “I’m Israeli. The world must stop our government’s genocide in Gaza while we still can.”

In the next post in this series, I will say more about what people of faith are doing in this country to stop the genocide in the Palestinian territories. And among these, American Jews are the most active and effective.

Postscript: As soon as this was written, the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS), the largest global organization of genocide scholars, passed a resolution stating that Israel is indeed committing genocide in Gaza. And this, according to the criteria set forth in the UN convention on genocide. Notably, with over 50,000 children either killed or injured, with “the widespread attacks on both the personnel and facilities needed for survival, including in the healthcare, aid, and educational sectors”; and the dehumanizing statements by Israeli leaders characterizing all Palestinians as enemies and their intention to “flatten Gaza” and turn it into “hell.” Finally, there is a clear intention to ethnically cleanse the territory. Meanwhile, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) is still researching the case brought to its attention by South Africa in 2023 that Israel is committing genocide.

Postscript 2: On Sept. 9, 2025, the UN's Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Palestinian Occupied Territory, including East Jerusalem and Israel released its definitive (72-page) report after four years of fact-finding and research. It was led by a former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and a former International Court of Justice (ICJ) judge, Navi Pillay. This was the first time that an official UN commission concluded that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians of Gaza. In fact, Israel has "committed four genocidal acts": 1) by targetting Palestinians collectively; 2) by weaponizing the withholding of humanitarian aid; 3) by destroying Palestinian childhood; 4) by using sexualized torture. Furthermore, "the report accused Netanyahu, President Isaac Herzog and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant of inciting genocide.

Most would have predicted that the first American president to call himself “born again” (hence, evangelical Protestant) would be a staunch defender of the state of Israel. As you will remember from my first post in this series, a large majority of evangelicals are “Christian Zionists,” and therefore unsympathetic to any call for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This couldn’t be further from the truth in Jimmy Carter’s case.

Carter was ahead of his time. One of his campaign promises was to revive peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, so he studied the positions of his predecessors and United Nations decisions on the issue. In this 2006 book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, he lists some of the things he learned while still on the campaign trail:

“Our nation’s constant policy had been predicated on a few key United Nations Security Council resolutions, notably 242 of 1967 (Appendix 1) and 338 of 1973 (Appendix 2). Approved unanimously and still applicable, their basic premise is that Israel’s acquisition of territory by force is illegal and that Israel must withdraw from occupied territories; that Israel has the right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries; that the refugee problem must be settled; and that the international community should assist with negotiations to achieve a just and durable peace in the Middle East. More specifically, U.S. policy was that Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza were ‘illegal and obstacles to peace.’” (p. 39)

All this should ring a bell with you from my second blog post in this series on human rights and international law. The founding of the UN in 1945 and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights three year later became the foundation for the many conventions and treaties that have followed, which now comprise international law. The above quote shows that U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East in 1977 when Carter took office paid deference to international law and, in particular, to UN resolutions 242 and 338. And he had no intention of changing that. In fact, he was the only American president to declare repeatedly that his foreign policy would be based on human rights.

The road leading to the 1978 Camp David Accords

On the first page of his autobiography at 90 (A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety), Jimmy Carter quotes his vice-president Walter Mondale, “We told the truth, we obeyed the law, and we kept the peace.” Then Carter adds, “We championed human rights” (pp. 1-2). He certainly strove to do so. In the case of Israel and Palestine, and only a few weeks into his presidency, Carter made this very controversial statement, “There has to be a homeland for the Palestinian refugees who have suffered for many, many years” (Palestine: Peace not Apartheid, p. 39). Then, in this same passage, he comments, “This would be the first move toward supporting a Palestinian State” (p. 39).

You have to understand that, even today, mentioning any kind of settlement of the Palestinian refugee problem is to ring the death knell of any peace talks. The Oslo Accords of 1993 considered both the status of Jerusalem and the settlement of Palestinian refugees to be the two most contentious issues, and therefore to be left for the final stage of negotiations—which, we now know, never came. Yet Resolution 242 “affirms the necessity . . . for achieving a just settlement of the refugee problem.”

God must have heard Carter’s prayers. Just two weeks on the heel of that bombshell statement on Palestinian refugees, President Sadat of Egypt came to Washington. Carter recalls,

“Sadat told me plainly that the was willing to take bold steps toward peace, all of them based on the prevailing U.N. Security Council Resolutions. We discussed some of the specific elements of possible direct negotiations in the future: Israel’s permanent boundaries, the status of Jerusalem, Palestinian rights, and—almost inconceivable at the time—free trade and open borders between the two nations, plus full diplomatic recognition and the exchange of ambassadors” (pp. 39-40).

Meanwhile, Menachem Begin replaced Yitzhak Rabin as prime minister a month later. Carter immediately did some research on Begin (recall that he had masterminded the bombing of the King David Hotel in 1948). This was the first time since Israel’s independence that the Labor Party lost an election to the Likud Party, and it signaled a much more conservative and hawkish position toward any potential peace process: the starting premise now was that Gaza and the West Bank will never be ceded to the Arabs. After all, Begin won election on being a “fighting Jew.”

Carter was pleasantly surprised during Begin’s first visit to Washington that he seemed “quite willing to pursue some of the major goals” he had discussed with Sadat (p. 42). Then Sadat, that November, “made a dramatic peace initiative by going directly to Jerusalem.” His public speech was in Arabic (he was anxious above all to convince his fellow Arab leaders). Because of the symbolism of the visit, the speech thrilled the Israelis and impressed Western leaders. Moderate Arab leaders were more cautious in their appraisals, while Syrian, Iraqi, Libyan and Palestinian leaders called for his assassination (which came four years later).

Carter’s working relationship with Begin soon became strained, however, especially after Israel invaded Lebanon in March 1978 and “used American-made antipersonnel cluster bombs against Beirut and other urban centers, killing hundreds of civilians.” This was in response to the PLO killing 35 Israeli tourists, but Carter called this invasion a completely disproportionate reaction, and furthermore, an illegal use of U.S. weaponry (they had been given solely for defensive purposes). Carter initiated a UN Security Council Resolution condemning Israel’s invasion, which was passed unanimously, and Israeli forces withdrew from Lebanon.

But Carter struggled to move peace negotiations forward that spring and summer. Then, as he puts it, “[m]y next act of one of desperation”:

“I decided to invite both Begin and Sadat to Camp David so that we could be away from routine duties for a few days and, in relative isolation, I could act as mediator between the two national delegations. They accepted without delay, and on September 4 we began what evolved into a thirteen-day session, which involved teams of about 50 on each side. My aim was to have Israelis and Egyptians understand and accept the compatibility of many of their goals and the advantages to both nations in resolving their differences” (p. 45).

“Begin and Sadat were personally incompatible,” recalls Carter. He had to ferry back and forth, night and day, but his own dogged endurance paid off: “it avoided the harsh rhetoric and personal arguing between the two leaders” (p. 46). Several times, however, “either Begin or Sadat was ready to terminate the discussions and return home,” but Carter, who spent time with each one talking about their grandchildren, managed to get them back to the negotiating table.

There were unexpected breakthroughs, too. A meticulous semanticist, Begin surprised Carter in his insistence that the final text should read “full autonomy” for the Palestinians. Several key members of his team won him over on more than a few sticking points. On the Egyptian side, Sadat was the most eager to push through the most comprehensive possible peace treaty. Thankfully in the end, both sides fully honored Resolution 242 and most of Sadat’s early wishes for a wide-ranging Israeli-Egyptian peace deal came to fruition.

I mentioned that Carter was ahead of his time. Much of what transpired in the 1978 Camp David Accords served as the foundation for the 1993 Oslo Agreement between Israel and the PLO.

Carter called Israel’s military occupation “apartheid”

As the Israelis built the “security barrier” in the early 2000s—purportedly to keep suicide bombers from coming into Israel (it was partially successful on that score)—encircling the West Bank but also stealing about 9 percent of Palestinian land to protect some of the largest Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories. Carter’s chapter on this is entitled, “The Wall as a Prison.” In its second paragraph, he comments,

“Their presumption is that an encircling barrier will finally resolve the Palestinian problem. Utilizing their political and military dominance, they are imposing a system of partial withdrawal, encapsulation, and apartheid on the Muslim and Christian citizens of the occupied territories. The driving purpose for the forced separation of the two peoples is unlike that in South Africa—not racism, but the acquisition of land. There has been a determined and remarkably effective effort to isolate settlers from Palestinians, so that a Jewish family can commute from Jerusalem to their highly subsidized home deep in the West Bank on roads from which others are excluded, without ever coming in contact with any facet of Arab life” (p. 189-190).

Already in 2002, Archbishop Desmond Tutu published an article in the Guardian with the title, “Apartheid in the Holy Land.” He came away “distressed” from a recent visit there, because it reminded him so much of how his black people were treated in South Africa. He explains, “I have seen the humiliation of the Palestinians at checkpoints and roadblocks, suffering like us when young white police officers prevented us from moving about.”

As a Nobel Peace Laureate for his work on the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Archbishop Tutu joined Jimmy Carter and other older world statesmen working for peace and human rights. In this helpful 2024 article, “Desmond Tutu: ‘Israeli apartheid worse than South Africa,’” Tutu told the Washington Post in 2013, “I wish I could keep quiet about the plight of the Palestinians. I can’t! The God who was there and showed that we should become free is the God described in the Scriptures as the same yesterday, today and forever.”

Both Tutu and Carter were pioneers in applying the concept of apartheid to the Israeli subjugation of the Palestinians. In recent years, the term has become very common, and not just in United Nations circles. Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic candidate in the New York mayoral race, uses the term freely and stands a good chance of winning his election. In another installment, I’ll mention how a majority of American Jews want a two-state solution to the conflict. But I’ll end here with a statement by the oldest and most influential Israeli human rights organization, Bet’Tselem. In 2021, they wrote a press release entitled, “A regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: this is apartheid.”

“The key tool Israel uses to implement the principle of Jewish supremacy is engineering space geographically, demographically and politically. Jews go about their lives in a single, contiguous space where they enjoy full rights and self-determination. In contrast, Palestinians live in a space that is fragmented into several units, each with a different set of rights – given or denied by Israel, but always inferior to the rights accorded to Jews.”

In the end, for Archbishop Tutu, Jimmy Carter, activists all over the world and a great majority of Palestinians themselves, speaking truth about injustice is important, but only for the sake of working for peace and reconciliation. As you can read in the mission statement of Bet’Tselem, their goal is striving “for a future in which human rights, liberty and equality are guaranteed to all people.” I hope we all agree to this and do our utmost to make it happen.

In this third installment in my series on Israel/Palestine, I advance a bold hypothesis, one which cannot possibly be defended on scientific grounds. But I do so on the basis of my personal experience in Israel-Palestine from 1992-1996 and several visits since then, including a five-week research stay in 1999 (in Bethlehem and Hebron). I’ve also read a good deal about the issue.

I am proposing that one way to explain the violence and brutality of Zionist settlers since the 1920s and of Israeli leaders during and after the 1948 founding of the State of Israel is to see it in light of psychological research on children suffering abuse. This research shows a likelihood that these children will in turn abuse their own children if they do not get significant trauma therapy (see this 2021 article in Psychology Today commenting on a 3-decade-long study published that same year, “Intergenerational transmission of child maltreatement in South Australia, 1986-2017: a retrospective cohort study”). Here is the relevant paragraph in the Psychology Today article:

“After establishing a clear link between mothers who suffered abuse or neglect during their childhood and the likelihood of their kids experiencing the same fate, the researchers emphasize the importance of supporting survivors of childhood maltreatment early in life and into adulthood as a critical step towards breaking this vicious cycle and protecting the unborn children of future generations from maltreatment.”

That parallel is far-fetched, you might say. After all, these are mothers who suffered from traumatic mistreatment growing up and who are at least 30 percent more likely to reproduce that same behavior toward their own offspring. But then you jump to the macro level and apply something that concerns individuals to a whole people group (the early Jewish newcomers to Palestine in the 1900-1920s were from Europe—known as Ashkenazi Jews). Add to that the fact that the Holocaust didn’t happen till late 1930s-1945.

Still, I will argue, the Jews as a people endured grievous hardship, from the four centuries of slavery in Egypt  to the Babylonian exile; from the persecution under the Greek ruler Antiochus IV to the violent expulsion of the Jews from Palestine by the Romans in 70 CE (read this Jewish page, “The Four Exiles of the Jewish People”). Then from the times of the Crusades (1099 CE) to the 1930s, Jews suffered pogroms and all manner of abuse from Christians in Europe. Jews bear in their souls the pain and trauma of many terrors past.

Early Jewish terrorism in pre-WWII Palestine

The best historical work on this period was also Winner of the National Jewish Book Award—Bruce Hoffman’s 650-page Anonymous Soldiers: The Struggle for Israel, 1917-1947. Adam Kirsch’s review is entitled “Israel: The Original Terrorist State.” Hoffman’s research was based on the newly declassified documents of the British MI5. Here’s his opening summary of the book:

“From 1944 until 1947, Palestine witnessed a series of assassinations, abductions, and bombings, perpetrated by Jewish terrorists against the occupying British. During that period, some 140 British soldiers and policemen were killed, along with dozens of civilian bystanders. In the end, the terrorists got what they wanted, when Britain announced its intention to withdraw all its forces from Palestine and leave the fate of the country up to the fledgling United Nations.”

Naturally, this was not the only factor leading up to Israel’s independence in 1948. You should add the British Empire’s decline; the fallout of the Holocaust, with the United States putting immense pressure on the British “to admit Jewish refugees into Palestine”; finally, you must factor in the Jewish success in creating the infrastructure for a state, “complete with an illegal but tacitly tolerated army, the Haganah.”

“Still,” writes Kirsch, “it is possible that none of these factors would have succeeded in winning Israel’s independence, if the Jewish campaign of terror hadn’t raised the cost of the British occupation so high.” The story is “riveting”: how the waning superpower of the day is brought to its knees by “a few thousand determined militants”—the Jewish “anonymous soldiers.” The largest of the militant paramilitary organizations that broke away from the Haganah was the Irgun. Starting in the late 1930s, its foot soldiers assassinated dozens of British officials and law enforcement officers, though Arabs remained their main targets (the latter had attacked them first), mostly planting bombs in cafés and markets.

The Irgun’s “bloodiest attack” was masterminded by a new arrival from the Soviet prisons, Menachem Begin (who later became prime minister), the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, killing 91 people in July 1946.

The Daleth (or Dalet) Plan

Ilan Pappé, a prominent member of Israel’s so-called New Historians, is a professor at the University of Exeter (UK), where he also directs the European Centre for Palestine Studies. His 2006 book, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, documents the deliberate driving out of 750,000 Palestinian refugees from March 1948 to the armistice signed with the Arab nations the next year (see this helpful summary page by the Institute for Middle East Understanding—IMEU; see also this blog post by Ilan Pappé on the fiftieth anniversary of the State of Israel). These are the original Palestinian refugees, some of whom moved to Gaza, and others ended up in refugee camps in Lebanon and Jordan. Another 300,000 were forced out by the 1967 war when Israel occupied the West Bank, Gaza and the Golan Heights.

The official document laying out the plans for the campaign of terror that would drive out the maximum number of Palestinians from their towns and villages to make room for the coming Jewish state was called Plan Dalet. The IMEU page offers this translated excerpt from that document:

“Destruction of villages (setting fire to, blowing up, and planting mines in the debris), especially those population centers which are difficult to control continuously...

“Mounting search and control operations according to the following guidelines: encirclement of the village and conducting a search inside it. In the event of resistance, the armed force must be destroyed and the population must be expelled outside the borders of the state.”

Over 400 Palestinian villages were completely destroyed as a result and thousands of Palestinians left urban centers like Jaffa, Tel Aviv, and Jerusalem fleeing the violence. Bishara Awad, the founder and director of the Bethlehem Bible College where I taught for three years in the 1990s, tells the story of how his father was killed by a sniper bullet in what is now West Jerusalem (Jewish side) and how he fled with his mother and siblings to Bethlehem, leaving everything behind.

What about today?

A lot of water has gone under the bridge since then—something I will touch on in the next couple of posts. But what is sure is that the Hamas attacks on Israeli soil in October 2023, with the killing of over 1,200 Israelis living nearby (keep in mind, though, that 300 of those were Israeli soldiers and that dozens of Israeli citizens were killed by the IDF as they had orders to use all means possible to avoid the taking of hostages) and the kidnapping of over 250 hostages, touched a deep nerve in the Israeli psyche. My wife and I learned something important in our three years in the West Bank. Foreigners who had lived for a good while in Israel told us that Israelis had founded their nation in the shadow of the Holocaust, and that their founding motto was “Never again!” That understandable cri du coeur—a vow born of trauma—goes a long way to explain, I believe, Israel’s violent and oppressive treatment of the Palestinians in their midst.

In the 1990s and up to maybe 2007, a majority of Israelis were in favor of some version of a two-state solution. Israel had an active and committed peace movement in those days. Since Hamas took over Gaza in 2007 and, starting with the four “little wars” (2008, 2012, 2014, 2021) that killed 4-5000 Gazans, and then leading to the present war, that deep-seated trauma in the Israeli soul has been reactivated. The peace movement dwindled considerably since then.

The current Netanyahu far-right government represents the most radical elements of the Israeli political spectrum. The finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, in a speech to the Israeli Knesset in 2021, told the Palestinian members present, “You’re here by mistake, it’s a mistake that Ben-Gurion [founding father of Israel] didn’t finish the job and throw you out in 1948.”

Yet there is hope. On July 23^rd, thousands of Israelis, many of them carrying sacks of flour, marched through Tel Aviv “bearing placards with inscriptions like ‘Starvation is a War Crime.” That the peace movement is starting to stir again can only be a good sign. May it spread!

Especially as follower of Jesus, who believes in the redemptive power of his cross and resurrection, I can pray with faith for healing and peace, not just for individuals, but also for wounded nations and peoples. The cycle of violence and abuse can be broken. Let’s not give in to despair, but work together for peace—for both nations.

After two cataclysmic world wars, over fifty nations gathered in San Francisco in April 1945 to create a new international organization, known as “the United Nations.” After two months of hard work, the UN Charter was written, which specifically called for the formation of three main bodies: a General Assembly, a Security Council, and an Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). It was ECOSOC that mandated a committee to draft a document that would clearly define the notion of human rights, spell them out, and then serve as a basis for future work to establish a body of international law.

Three years later, the text of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was adopted by the General Assembly, with 48 members voting yes and none opposing it—though eight nations abstained. The very first paragraph of the UN Charter had been honored:

We the peoples of the United Nations determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, and to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom . . .

The concept of international law goes back to treaties between nations of the ancient Middle East, but as a legal system, the idea was first developed by the Romans. Still, the notion of a world system consisting of sovereign states working together on some common rules and norms didn’t appear until the European Renaissance. Yet these discussions were mostly limited to questions of war, non-belligerence, and peace. Today’s concept of international law, as seen from the above quote, begins with the idea of human rights, “the dignity and worth of the human person,” which extends to “nations large or small,” and covers questions of justice and mutual respect along with a global effort to expand human flourishing. This was the great push for international development when decolonization was happening in real time.

What is known as the International Bill of Human Rights comprises the 1948 UDHR and the two treaties or covenants adopted by the UN General Assembly in December 1966, the International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). Nations that have ratified these covenants are obliged to respect, protect, and fulfill these individual rights. Examples of negative rights would be that the State may not torture you or force a particular job on you; or stop people, businesses or political parties from using hate speech against you or your group. Examples of positive rights would be that the State holds private firms accountable to pay their employees a fair wage for their work and to pay men and women the same salary for the same work. Maybe one reason nations like the United States never ratified the ICESCR, is that it stipulates that the State “must provide budgets to make sure everyone can access medicines” and be able to afford decent housing.

The Swiss businessman Henri Dunant personally witnessed the carnage of the 1859 Battle of Solferino in Italy, which led him to found the International Red Cross and rally people behind a conference to draw up rules for modern war. This became the first Geneva Convention (1864), “for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded in Armies in the Field.” Another Geneva Convention in 1929 dealt with the treatment of prisoners of war, but all of this was updated and expanded in the 1949 Geneva Conventions ratified by 196 nations. It includes four conventions (treatment of the wounded; the victims of maritime warfare; treatment of prisoners; and for the first time, the treatment of civilians in wartime).

You may be wondering how all of this connects to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. After the May 14, 1948 Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel, a shaky coalition of fighters from Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon decided to invade. Deeply divided among themselves and distrustful of the Palestinian leadership, they were defeated by the Israelis in the matter of months. The resulting armistice agreements of 1949 allowed Israel to hold most of the British Mandate territory, while Egypt took over the administration of Gaza and Jordan that of the West Bank.

When hostilities heated up again with its Arab neighbors, Israel preempted their attack in June 1967 and won a decisive victory in 6 days (hence, “The Six-Day War” from their perspective). This time, Israel decided to hold on to Gaza and the West Bank and the small territory belonging to Syria, the Golan Heights. Then on November 22 of that year, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 242, calling on the Israelis to withdraw from these territories they now occupied militarily. Six years later, after the so-called Yom Kippur War (the Arabs attacked by surprise on the Jewish Day of Atonement, or Yom Kippur), which Israel nearly lost, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 338, calling Israel to withdraw from those territories a second time.

Significantly, Resolution 242 asserted “the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war and the need to work for a just and lasting peace in which every State in the area can live in security.” Besides scores of resolutions over the years by the UN General Assembly and the UN Human Rights Council condemning Israel’s actions in the Occupied Territories (this was not possible in the UN Security Council, as the US routinely vetoes any resolution condemning Israel), the General Assembly adopted a resolution drafted by the Palestinians in September 2024, calling on Israel to end “its unlawful presence in Occupied Palestinian Territory” within 12 months. It passed with 124 votes in favor, 14 against, and 43 abstentions. This means almost two-thirds of the world’s nations favor a two-state solution to this ongoing crisis.

But it is not just continued military occupation that contravenes international law in the case of Israel (57 years so far), it’s also the transfer of its own population into that territory—this Amnesty International page provides a useful summary on the issue of Israeli settlements. In particular, it cites Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention: “The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.” It also prohibits the “individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory.” The list of human rights violations and actions by the Israeli military that routinely breach international law on this page is breathtaking. We lived as a family in the West Bank for three years in the 1990s and I can attest as an eye witness to many of these indignities done to Palestinians. And these have only intensified and multiplied over the years.

But the barbarity of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) in the current war in Gaza goes beyond anything all of us could have imagined. The atrocities committed by Hamas on October 7^th, 2023, cannot justify in any way the collective punishment of a whole population by continuous bombing of civilian areas and dozens of forced transfers in various parts of Gaza since that day. Close to 90 percent of Gaza’s buildings have been reduced to rubble—rubble that covers up thousands and thousands of bodies yet uncounted.

But there is more. Prof. Boyd Van Dijk, an Oxford University professor and author of Preparing for War: The Making of the 1949 Geneva Conventions, wrote a piece in Foreign Affairs in April 2025, entitled “Israel, Gaza, and the Starvation Weapon.” Writing as I do at the end of July 2025, the international community as a whole is increasingly outraged by pictures of starving children and adults in Gaza. Most of the 140 who died of starvation so far (88 of those children), have died in the last two weeks. One third of the population is in the fifth stage of starvation, the last stage before death. How can one not conclude that this massive, unfolding wave of starvation is precisely the intent of the occupier? Even the American State Department has concluded that there is no validity in the Israeli allegation that Hamas is stealing the aid from its people.

Yet already in November 2024, the International Criminal Court (established by the 1998 Rome Statute) “issued international arrest warrants not only for the leaders of Hamas but also for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity.”

Why? The prosecutor, Karim Khan, accuses them of a rarely invoked war crime, mentioned in the Rome Statute as including “intentionally using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare” and in particular, by “willfully impeding relief supplies.” The total blockade of Gaza since March, apart from just a trickle of aid at seemingly random points by an aid organization set up exclusively by Israel and the US, while IDF soldiers shoot at them (over a thousand killed so far), has led to massive starvation that worsens every day.

One small ray of hope today: because of the international outcry, the IDF says it will stop its attacks for several hours in different areas every day and let more international aid come in. But you cannot blame this Gazan journalist’s disbelief. Mohammed Mohisen posted this today: “Gaza is drowning in aid in the media. On the ground, starvation endures.” Why?

1. 1. 1. Israel controls every step of the process for the food in these trucks to actually reach hungry people; the red tape is phenomenal and most of it rotted in the past few months, giving the Israelis the excuse to destroy it.
      2. Israel in most cases doesn’t allow any military protection of the aid convoys coming in. As Mohisen points out, “the trucks follow the same known paths familiar to every thief and gang in the area.” Today, he writes, “only a handful of trucks reached the storage centers. From the outside, people think the borders are open and Gaza is being fed. The starvation is as brutal as ever. Each truck is stolen with Israeli approval or collusion.” Read on, and especially about how some luxury fruit like mangoes and bananas are sold in the market for $100 a pound. All the prices are exorbitant, affordable only by the few rich and those in organized crime.
      3. This is all “a media trick,” while people cannot afford flour, sugar, milk and infant formula. Yet the doctors, the few journalists left (they have been Israeli targets from the start), and a few others are speaking out, taking pictures (like the one at the top) to expose Israeli propaganda for what it is.

In my next post, I will show that the dehumanizing of Palestinians and a violent campaign to terrorize them and drive them out formed an integral part of the Zionist plan, almost from the beginning. Just as I have written with candor in this blog about our American genocide of the native population in our country and our shameful treatment of the Africans we brutally enslaved and then oppressed through Jim Crow laws, and, despite the Civil Rights Act, continue to discriminate against by allowing a network of systemic racism to stand—I believe we must speak the truth if we want to see justice, peace and reconciliation to happen. And thankfully, many Israeli historians and activists today are speaking out.

My last blog post dates back to February 2024—over 16 months ago. I had put off long enough serious work on my latest book project, The City Where All May Flourish: The Holy Spirit in Mission and Global Governance. That manuscript was accepted for inclusion in a Brill Publishing series, “Theology and Mission in Global Christianity,” and the review process has begun. To know more about this project, have a look at my article coming out this month in the Missiology journal (also available in Resources).

Here I begin a series of shorter posts on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and my primary concern is to show that the brutally systematic crushing of the Gazan population (2.3 million) in the current war against Gaza following Hamas’s horrendous attack on Oct. 7, 2023 (close to 60,000 killed so far—men, women and children; their forceable displacement multiple times; the destruction of their homes, medical infrastructure and most all of their food sources) is part of a longstanding Israeli plan to “erase” the Palestinian people living in the Occupied Territories (Gaza and the West Bank), either by forcing them to emigrate to various other nations, or by subjugating them to such an extent that they acquiesce to their second-class, colonial identity.

In this first post, I simply make the point that the dehumanization of Palestinians goes back at least to the 19^th century, long before the founding of the Israeli state in 1948.

About a year ago, Adam Yaghi contributed a piece to Religion Dispatches, in which he contends that “the desire to annihilate Gaza wasn’t born on 10/7” (the day in 2023 that Hamas launched its horrendous attack on the Israeli communities just outside of Gaza). You begin to see this dehumanization of Palestinians if you read some of the 19^th-century travel logs, the most famous of which was Mark Twain’s 1869 650-page book, The Innocents Abroad, Or, The New Pilgrims’ Progress (Subtitle: Being Some Account of the Steamship Quaker City's Pleasure Excursion to Europe and the Holy Land: with Descriptions of Countries, Nations, Incidents, and Adventures as They Appeared to the Author).

Part of Twain’s humorous satire was directed at Catholic, Orthodox, and Muslim Palestinians, something he could easy to get away with, since most of the “pilgrims” (Christians going on a Holy Land pilgrimage) accompanying him on this luxurious cruise were Protestant. Here’s how Yaghi describes Twain’s take on them:

“Though espousing a secular worldview, Twain paradoxically presented Palestinians as morally and spiritually corrupt, and therefore dispensable. The holy city of Jerusalem—symptomatic of the rest of multifaith Palestine—he imagined as ‘mournful, and dreary, and lifeless.’”

Setting the tone for much subsequent literature on Palestine, Mark Twain’s secular eye only noticed a land that, as Yagi puts it, was either “underdeveloped or empty.” For Twain, “Palestinians, portrayed as silent heathens or indigenous savages who hinder progress, had to go.” Indeed, this was “a land infested with marauding Bedouins, overtaken by disease, superstition and poverty.” In Twain’s words, “a thankless and impassive race.” Then he takes an Islamophobic jab, stating that even men with shaved heads would be “careful to leave a lock of hair for the Prophet to take hold of” because “a good Mohammedan would consider himself doomed to stay with the damned forever if he were to [die without it].”

Yet there is an even more troubling dynamic at work here—and you might have noticed it in the above expression “indigenous savages.” Twain intentionally connects indigenous Americans to the native population of Palestine, and thereby betrays his cultural and ideological roots. “Manifest destiny” and the American genocidal settler colonialism that almost annihilated the native American population are the lens through which Mark Twain reads the Palestinian context he very superficially witnessed in a week or two. He is writing this, it turns out,  just as American “dime novels” were becoming popular in the United States. In their first incarnation in the 1860s these ultra cheap novels under 100 pages were all about American Indians and their way of life, but their treatment was just as cartoonish as his description of Palestinians life:

“In portraying Palestinians as stereotyped Indians, scalping and whooping on horseback, Twain was equating indigenous people in Palestine and the Americas. The colonial solution to both was implied. In the absence of effective stewardship, colonial logic dictated that only Euro-American settlers could transform this unsettled land into a paradise. Indigenous Palestinians were unworthy of it and should be eliminated or displaced, just like the Native Americans to which this discourse compared them.”

Yet Twain’s racist humor and colonial ideology didn’t stop with his writings. It was eagerly picked up by advocates of a much more powerful 19^th-century ideology: Christian Zionism, which in due course helped to produce Jewish Zionism. American and British Protestants of the time were largely influenced by a new reading of the Bible called “dispensationalism,” that is, the dividing up of sacred history into different eras (or dispensations), each one marking a different way God chose to deal with his people. In this scheme, the return of Christ is imminent, putting an end to the current dispensation of God dealing primarily with the church. When Christ returns, he will set up his 1,000-year reign in Jerusalem. This means that Christians have a mandate to make sure the Jewish people return to the land of ancient Israel!

Adam Yaghi mentions two British writers whose books on Palestine were written about fifty years apart, with similar titles and with similar Christian Zionist tropes:

1. 1. 1. Alexander Keith, The Land of Israel: According to the Covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and with Jacob (1844). He used an expression that was often quoted, well over a century after him: Palestine was “a country without a people” ready to welcome “a people without a land.” Most famously, Golda Meir (Israeli prime minister, 1969-1974) quoted this, as if it were a historical fact. Ironically, it’s only an aspirational “fact.” You have to get rid the Palestinians entirely for it to be “fact.”
      2. Robert Laird Stewart, The Land of Israel: A Text Book on the Physical and Historical Geography of the Holy Land Embodying the Results of Recent Research (1899). Both Keith and Stewart “created a foundational myth that fueled a Zionist discourse bent on using force to establish a settler-colonial Jewish state in Palestine and attracted a Euro-American political elite in support of it.” Stewart was especially instrumental in this process:

“Palestine was, according to Stewart, the ‘land of the Patriarchs,’ ‘the Prophets,’ ‘the Sacred Poets,’ ‘the Apostles,’ and ‘David and Solomon.’ Palestine was not the land of the ‘Moslem hordes from the desert,’ Stewart argued, or the property of ‘the Arabs or their successors [read: Palestinians], and co-religionists, the Turks.’ The message was simple: under nomadic Palestinian and corrupt Ottoman Islam, Palestine fell to ruins, but it will prosper in the hands of Euro-American Christians who will restore it by establishing a settler-colonial Jewish presence. Stewart’s geography of Ottoman Palestine Judaized the land and erased Palestinian belonging all in service of the Western Christian colonialist project.”

That old dream of blotting out the Palestinians from this Western-supported Jewish colony of Israel is seemingly unfolding before our eyes, Yaghi says. In the next installment I will touch on a theme central to my current book—the founding of the United Nations, the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the emergence of international law.

An article I wrote in 2023 is finally seeing the light of day, or getting published, as the case may be. I had delivered a paper at a joint conference of the Evangelical Missiology Society and the International Society for Frontier Missiology in October 2022 (read it here). That was my second draft of thoughts I had entertained for three years at that point. The first draft was a book proposal written to the main editor (Prof. Kirsteen Kim) of the series, "Theology and Mission in Global Christianity," at Brill Publishing (Leiden, The Netherlands) already in 2019. Her answer was a tentative green light ("Let's have a look at it when you've finished").

It all started at the end of 2018 and the beginning of the next year. Protests were exploding in many parts of the world and spilling out into the streets as people aired their grievances about economic hardship, but most of all about the lack of government transparency and oppressive policies enacted without any regard for their own wishes and demands. In other words, they were witnessing a rise in autocracy. Pictures of crowded protests and brutal police repression filled the pages of the news media reporting on places like Hong Kong, Chile, France (the yellow vests), Sudan, Iraq and Lebanon, and more. [see my blog post of March 2020 on this, and my 2-part series on the massive protests in Algeria where I lived for nine years in the 1970s and 1980s ("Algeria and the Postcolonial Straightjacked"; "Algeria: The Hirak Phenomenon").

Was God the Holy Spirit stirring the hearts of people and, building on deep aspirations instilled in them at creation, was he pushing the needle toward greater democracy? In terms of political theology, is there a connection between human flourishing, good governance, and the values of God's Kingdom as announced and lived out by Jesus Christ -- values to be fully implemented in the New Jerusalem that one day will come down from heaven? The last two chapters of the Bible describe the nations of the world pouring into that city and contributing their own unique gifts for the well-being of all in this completely renewed creation of God, where tears, sorrow, disease and death are no more, and where God takes up residence for the first time.

This article lays out the main themes of the book, which is now being reviewed and should be published in 2026 (The City Where All May Flourish: The Holy Spirit in Mission and Global Governance). The article's title is "Mission and Global Governance: Convergence of Pneumatology and Human Flourishing."