(LifeSiteNews) — There is surely no ongoing conflict on the international stage that has been more widely documented than the birth of the state of Israel and its subsequent 77-year relationship with its Arab neighbors. As an example of the wealth of available literature, the well-known 1986 book The Siege: The Saga of Israel and Zionism, by the Irish diplomat Conor Cruise O’Brien, contains a bibliography of some 300 books and articles. And that book is now almost 40 years old! On the other hand, my own library of books on the subject, which I began collecting in the mid-1980s, is barely one hundred volumes, some of which I had forgotten until stumbling on them in my basement.
Like most other topics, if one wishes to learn about the “Arab-Israeli conflict,” a large quantity of books is not essential. However, books that weave together history and morality against a background of objectivity and an international context are crucial. To that end, I was pleased to discover and read the just-released book Christ in the Rubble: Faith, the Bible, and the Genocide in Gaza by Munther Isaac, published in March by William B. Eerdmans in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Munther Isaac is a 46-year-old Christian Palestinian pastor, born and raised into an Orthodox Christian family on the West Bank. As a youngster of eight, he witnessed the First Intifada of 1987-1988 and recalls Israeli soldiers seizing his family’s car in response to a Palestinian tax strike. He eventually earned a PhD at the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies in England, after which he was ordained as a pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land in 2016. In December 2023, just weeks after the start of the Israeli onslaught against Gaza, his Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bethlehem displayed an iconic Nativity scene depicting the Christ Child on a pile of rubble. The image went viral and eventually became the cover for the just released book. Isaac’s activist protests against Israeli policies have earned him a world-wide reputation but at the cost of his travel being curtailed or cancelled by the Israeli Government. In his April 2024 interview with Tucker Carlson, Isaac accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza, a charge previously leveled by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.
Christ in the Rubble is actually Isaac’s third book. In 2015, he wrote From Land to Lands, from Eden to the Renewed Earth (originally his PhD dissertation), which examined the concept of land in the Bible right from its beginnings in the garden of Eden. A second book, named The Other Side of the Wall, followed in 2020. The title is a reference to the monstrous 25-foot-high barrier wall, some 400 miles in length, constructed by Israel to restrict movement of Palestinians. The book gives a perspective of the tragic realities on the ground, the injustices suffered by the Palestinians, and offers a vision for a shared land. In that regard, it reminds me of a book by another Palestinian cleric – Blood Brothers by Elias Chacour, the now retired Melkite Greek Catholic Archbishop of Galilee. After its publication in 1984, complete with a foreward by former U.S. Secretary of State James Baker, Blood Brothers helped Chacour to receive three Nobel Peace Prize nominations.
As for Christ in the Rubble, it has earned some noteworthy early endorsements and will certainly collect more. Among the most impressive is the following, from Lily Greenberg Call, a young American Jewish activist: “Munther Isaac has written a heartbreaking indictment of world leaders, religious leaders, and humanity for failing the Palestinian people. With striking moral clarity, Isaac delivers an impassioned argument for the defense of Palestinian life and freedom, one that speaks deeply to universal religious and human values.” Notably, Greenberg Call resigned from her post at the U.S. Department of the Interior in 2024, becoming the first Jewish political appointee to do so in protest of Israel’s war on Gaza. In so doing, she joined a list of other U.S. Government officials who likewise quit over the Biden administration’s endorsement of Israel’s brutality in Gaza.
Spanning 266 pages and outlined in eight logical chapters, Christ in the Rubble addresses all aspects of the admittedly complicated relationship between Israel and its neighbors – historical, political, theological and pastoral. It also helpfully notes that what exists now in Palestine is not a “conflict,” as though the two sides were approximately equal. Rather, Palestine is the venue in which one side systemically dominates and oppresses the other, due largely to political, diplomatic, military, economic, and religious support from the Christian West. Written more than a year after the start of Israel’s latest Gaza campaign, Isaac states: “This book challenges dominant Western Christian theologies and perspectives about Israel, the land, and the Palestinian people. It presents alternative historical and theological perspectives to counter dominant narratives about Palestine and Gaza. My alternative perspectives will unsettle many readers. A genocide has taken place. An uncomfortable conversation is required [italics mine].” And Isaac proceeds to lead the conversation in a non-violent and Christian manner.
Rather than address the book’s outline, I will offer here a few random vignettes from Isaac’s trenchant observations throughout the book. One example involves the notable similarity between the infamous apartheid system of South Africa and the Israeli treatment of Palestinians. “Just as the United States and the United Kingdom defended and supported apartheid in South Africa to the very end, resisting and blocking global campaigns for economic sanctions against South Africa, today they resist and block global movements to boycott and sanction Israel. And just as in the 1980s both Reagan and Thatcher condemned Mandela and the African National Congress as communists and terrorists at a time when the apartheid government promoted itself as a Cold War ally against communism, the superpowers of our day, led by the United States, condemn Palestinians as terrorists while the apartheid Israeli regime promotes itself as an ally in the ‘axis of good’ against Iran and Islamic terrorism.” Worse, most of the same authorities who eventually did condemn apartheid in South Africa have rejected that position vis-à-vis Israel, calling it “antisemitic.”
A second set of vignettes entails the visceral reaction of American Christian Zionists to the Hamas attack of October 2023. One such individual is Tim Walberg, a Republican representative from Michigan who had previously served as an evangelical pastor. At a town hall meeting in his district, during the height of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza in early 2024, Walberg made the appalling comment that bombs should be dropped on Gaza “like Nagasaki and Hiroshima.” As for helping the starving Palestinians, he further remarked that “we shouldn’t be spending a dime on humanitarian aid.” Isaac has captured similarly ghastly remarks from other members of Congress (all Republicans and Christian Zionists).
Isaac also included a comment from an American pastor, Greg Locke, of the Global Vision Bible Church in Lebanon, Tennessee. In a sermon shortly after the start of hostilities in October, Locke sermonized that he now had a sense of “hope” that this would “usher in the coming of Jesus.” He added that Israel should “make the Gaza Strip a parking lot by this time next week.”
To paraphrase Isaac, it seems that Americans like Walberg and Locke (and there are millions of them) have never heard of the beatitudes of Christ. “Blessed are the peacemakers”…”Blessed are the merciful”…”Blessed are the meek (not the mighty) for they will inherit the earth.” The fruit of Christian Zionism is power, not peace.
Christ in the Rubble is not only a highly relevant resource for the Israeli-Palestinian “conflict,” but it is arriving on the scene at an urgent moment. In summary, Isaac refers to his book as “a call to lament – for a genocide has taken place for all the world to see. It has unfolded before the silence of many who turned a blind eye to it – and those funding and empowering it. This book exposes and refutes the use of biblical texts in the service of any form of violence. It is an indictment of Western Christian traditions and theologies of supremacy. It is also, therefore, a call to repentance.”
In closing, I not only heartily recommend this book, but I urge readers to consider purchasing a copy for their pastors, political representatives or other officials. Palestinian pastor Munther Isaac has done a great service for Israel, the United States, and the world in writing it.
To quickly contact your members of Congress and implore their support for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza click here.
