A Palestinian Christian’s view of this week’s tragedy in Israel—and how to address the roots of the problem.
This article is published pseudonymously for the author’s safety.
Israel has suffered a 9/11-scale attack by the Islamic Resistance Movement, commonly known as Hamas, which has devastated Jews and Palestinians alike. No words can describe the sadness and horror. But we must not allow this terrible event to cloud our vision or to push us into vengeance against civilians.
To even ask if I, a Palestinian Christian and Israeli citizen, condemn this violence is insulting. Of course I condemn it, and I also want to share with fellow Christians my view of how we can cut terrorism off at the root—thinking not only of the immediate military response by Israel but also of longer-term questions about justice, security, and God-given dignity for Israelis and Palestinians alike.
This month’s brutal attack against Israeli civilians came 16 years to the day after a Palestinian Bible Society worker in Gaza named Rami Ayyad was kidnapped and murdered because Islamist radicals believed he was doing missionary work. Despite public demands that Hamas leadership in Gaza find the criminals, no one was held accountable for his death.
Rami’s murder remains officially unsolved to this day, and some Palestinian Christians moved out of Gaza as a result of that violence. It appears that the abduction and killing were done by a radical faction, and Hamas’s leaders were not willing to confront them or hold them responsible.
A decade and a half later, we find ourselves in another cycle of violence—a fiercer and more complicated one this time. The Hamas onslaught is atrocity on an unprecedented scale, and Israel’s response must account for around 150 Israeli hostages in Gaza and a second war front in the north of Israel, …
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