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munther isaac
Pope Francis Urges Genocide Probe of Israel's War on Gaza
The pontiff's call comes as the International Court of Justice is reviewing evidence in a South Africa-led genocide case against Israel.
Nov 17, 2024
In a new book set to be released this week, Pope Francis I endorsed a genocide investigation into Israel's war on Gaza—which has killed or maimed more than 150,000 Palestinians and forcibly displaced, starved, or sickened millions more over the past 13 months.
"In the Middle East, where the open doors of nations like Jordan or Lebanon continue to be a salvation for millions of people fleeing conflicts in the region: I am thinking above all of those who leave Gaza in the midst of the famine that has struck their Palestinian brothers and sisters given the difficulty of getting food and aid into their territory," the pontiff wrote in his latest book, which goes on sale in some countries on November 19.
"According to some experts, what is happening in Gaza has the characteristics of a genocide," the Pope added. "It should be carefully investigated to determine whether it fits into the technical definition formulated by jurists and international bodies."
The Pope's words echo last week's finding by a United Nations expert panel that Israel's annihilation of Gaza is "consistent with the characteristics of genocide."
The International Court of Justice—a U.N. organ—is currently weighing a South Africa-led genocide case against Israel backed by more than 30 nations and regional blocs as well as hundreds of groups and experts around the world.
Meanwhile, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court is seeking arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israel Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, as well as three former Hamas leaders assassinated by Israel, for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity, including extermination.
Many jurists, scholars, and other experts—including some of Israel's leading Holocaust historians—have called Israel's policies and actions in Gaza genocide. Early in the war, Raz Segal—an Israeli historian and professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Stockton University in New Jersey—called Israel's Gaza onslaught "a textbook case of genocide."
Numerous world leaders and other international officials, artists, entertainers, and others—including half of Democratic voters in the United States surveyed in May—also agree that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
Many Palestinian Christians have been killed, injured, or otherwise harmed by Israeli forces during the bombardment, invasion, and siege of Gaza. With just 800 to 1,000 people believed remaining in Gaza, members of the world's oldest Christian community warned early in the war that they were "under threat of extinction."
In their most infamous attack on Gaza Christians, Israeli forces bombed the 12th century Saint Porphyrius Greek Orthodox Church, Gaza's oldest, in October 2023, killing 18 Palestinians including numerous children. Among the victims were two women and an infant related to former Republican U.S. Congressman Justin Amash of Michigan.
After an Israeli sniper fatally shot an elderly woman and her daughter on the grounds of a Catholic church in Gaza City last December, Pope Francis condemned what he called an act of "terrorism."
Amid the death and destruction wrought by Israel's assault on Gaza, last December's Christmas celebrations were canceled in Bethlehem, the purported birthplace of Jesus Christ.
"How can we celebrate when we feel this war—this genocide—that is taking place could resume at any moment?" asked Palestinian Lutheran pastor Munther Isaac at the time.
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'The Land Theft Continues': Israel Announces Biggest West Bank Seizure in Over 30 Years
The Israel-based activist group Peace Now says "2024 is by far the peak year for Israeli land seizure in the occupied West Bank."
Jul 03, 2024
Human rights defenders on Wednesday condemned the far-right Israeli government's announcement of the largest seizure of Palestinian land—many critics bluntly called it "land theft"—in the illegally occupied West Bank in over 30 years.
On June 25, Israeli occupation authorities unilaterally declared 12,700 dunams, or 4.9 square miles, of land in the Jordan Valley "state lands." Israel's Custodian of the State's Property in the Civil Administration published the declaration on Wednesday. The move supplements previous Israeli land grabs totaling nearly 11,000 dunams (4.2 square miles) in February and March.
Combined, these are the biggest seizures of Palestinian land since the 1993 Oslo Accords.
"Land theft is a component part of colonial genocide as a social process," noted Heidi Matthews, an assistant professor at Osgoode Hall Law School of York University in Toronto.
Muther Isaac, academic dean of Bethlehem Bible College in Jerusalem, lamented that "the land theft continues in the West Bank!"
Israel's goal, according to Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, is to "establish facts on the ground" in service of annexing the Palestinian lands and establishing or expanding overwhelmingly Jewish colonies there. The push comes as more and more countries—nearly 150, according to Palestinian officials—officially recognize the state of Palestine and as Israeli forces continue an assault on Gaza that has been widely condemned as genocidal.
"We will establish sovereignty... first on the ground and then through legislation. I intend to legalize the young settlements," Smotrich said last month, referring to illegal outposts that are newer and smaller than established Jewish settler colonies.
"My life's mission is to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state," he added.
Under international law, all of the settlements are illegal. Most were built on land seized from Palestinians through terrorism and ethnic cleansing during the Nakba, or catastrophe, when more than 700,000 Arabs were expelled during the establishment and consolidation of modern Israel in the late 1940s, and during the conquest of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza, and the Syrian Golan Heights in 1967.
Smotrich and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "are determined to fight against the entire world and against the interests of the people of Israel for the benefit of a handful of settlers who receive thousands of dunams as if there were no political conflict to resolve or war to end," the Tel Aviv-based activist group Peace Now said in a statement Wednesday.
"Today, it is clear to everyone that this conflict cannot be resolved without a political settlement that establishes a Palestinian state alongside Israel," the group added. "Still, the Israeli government chooses to actually make it difficult and distance us from the possibility of peace and stopping the bloodshed."
That bloodshed includes a surge in settler violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem since last October. More than 500 Palestinians—around a quarter of them children—have been killed by Israeli soldiers and settlers there over the past nine months, according to Palestinian and international agencies.
Protected and sometimes aided by Israeli troops, Israeli settlers have launched multiple deadly pogroms targeting Palestinian people and property in the occupied territories since last year.
These and other previous attacks prompted the Biden administration to impose sanctions on a handful of the most extremist Israeli settlers. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken also reverted to classifying Israeli settlements as inconsistent with international law, which was the State Department's position from 1978 until the Trump administration reversed it in 2019.
However, the U.S. remains Israel's staunchest international supporter, providing billions of dollars in military aid and diplomatic cover for Israeli policies and actions that, in addition to occupation and colonization, critics say amount to apartheid and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
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In Christmas Sermon, Palestinian Theologian Condemns Enablers of Gaza Genocide
"Gaza today has become the moral compass of the world," said Rev. Dr. Munther Isaac. "If you fail to call this a genocide, it is on you. It is a sin and a darkness you willingly embrace."
Dec 25, 2023
In an unsparing Christmas sermon delivered from the occupied West Bank over the weekend, Rev. Dr. Munther Isaac decried the complicity of the church and Western governments in Israel's ongoing assault on Gaza, a nearly three-month military campaign that he called an "annihilation" and a "genocide."
"Leaders of the so-called 'free' lined up one after the other to give the green light for this genocide against a captive population. They gave the cover," Isaac, a Palestinian Christian theologian, said during a service titled, "Christ in the Rubble: A Liturgy of Lament."
"Not only did they make sure to pay the bill in advance, they veiled the truth and context, providing political cover. And, yet another layer has been added: the theological cover with the Western Church stepping into the spotlight," Isaac added. "Here in Palestine, the Bible is weaponized against us. Our very own sacred text... The theology of the empire becomes a powerful tool to mask oppression under the cloak of divine sanction."
With most of the territory's population struggling to survive under the intertwined threats of starvation, disease, and near-constant bombing, Isaac said that "Gaza today has become the moral compass of the world."
"If you are not appalled by what is happening, if you are not shaken to your core, there is something wrong with your humanity," Isaac said from Bethlehem, which Israeli forces attacked on Monday. "And if we, as Christians, are not outraged by this genocide, by the weaponizing of the Bible to justify it, there is something wrong with our Christian witness, and we are compromising the credibility of our Gospel message. If you fail to call this a genocide, it is on you. It is a sin and a darkness you willingly embrace."
Isaac delivered his sermon a day before Israel launched one of its deadliest barrages of airstrikes of the 11-week war, killing dozens of people in central Gaza.
Displaced Gazans described fearing for their lives as Israeli warplanes and tanks bombarded homes, a refugee camp, and main roads, disrupting efforts to transport airstrike victims to the territory's overwhelmed and collapsing hospitals.
Aided by the United States, Israel has dropped hundreds of 2,000-pound bombs on the densely populated Gaza Strip since October 7, killing more than 20,000 people and destroying huge swaths of the enclave's infrastructure. A New York Timesinvestigation found that Israel dropped many of the bombs on southern Gaza, where the Israeli military had ordered people to move as it assailed the north in the early stages of the war.
Isaac said Saturday that he was in the U.S.—Israel's leading arms supplier—last month just after Thanksgiving.
"I was amazed by the amount of Christmas decorations and lights, and all the commercial goods," he recounted. "And I couldn't help but think: They send us bombs while celebrating Christmas in their land. They sing about the prince of peace in their land while playing the drum of war in our land."
"Christmas in Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus, is this manger. This is our message to the world today," Isaac continued. "It is a gospel message, it is a true and authentic Christmas message, about the God who did not stay silent, but said his word, and his word was Jesus. Born among the occupied and marginalized. He is in solidarity with us in our pain and brokenness. This message is our message to the world today, and it is simply this: This genocide must stop now."
Reutersreported Monday that instead of their usual Christmas celebrations, Palestinian Christians in Bethlehem held a candle-lit vigil and prayed for peace in Gaza.
"There was no large tree, the usual centerpiece of Bethlehem's Christmas observances," Reuters noted. "Nativity figurines in churches were placed amid rubble and barbed wire in solidarity with the people of Gaza."
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