A Protest That Harms Its Own Cause

Munther Isaac, Christ in the Rubble: Faith, the Bible, and the Genocide in Gaza. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2025. 279pp, $24.99.

“The beginning of love for the brethren is learning to listen to them.” Those words from Bonhoeffer’s Life Together should encourage Christians in the West to listen to a group too often ignored: Palestinian Christians.

The best-known Palestinian Christian leader is Rev. Dr. Munther Isaac, who pastors churches in Bethlehem and Beit Sahour. He’s been interviewed by a host of global media sites, including CNN, NBC, and BBC News; his views have been promoted by the Vatican; and he recently addressed a packed auditorium at the prominent evangelical school Wheaton College. 

However, after reading Isaac’s new book, Christ in the Rubble: Faith, the Bible, and the Genocide in Gaza, my overwhelming impression is that Palestinian Christians would be better served by a leader with a different message. Isaac’s radicalism may pack a punch in TV interviews, but, when expounded at length, it doesn’t stand up to historical or moral scrutiny. 

Allegations of Genocide and Settler-Colonialism

Isaac wrote Christ in the Rubble against the backdrop of the current Israel-Hamas War, which began with Hamas’s invasion of Israel on October 7, 2023. The attack resulted in 1182 deaths, with a further 251 people taken hostage. In the ensuing war, more than 50,000 Palestinian combatants and civilians have been killed; the number of Israeli combatants killed is nearly 450. Isaac’s highly contentious claim, included in the very subtitle of the book, is that Israel’s actions in the war amount to genocide.

Isaac doesn’t argue that Israel’s self-defense is disproportionate to the extent of constituting genocide. Instead, he declares, “This war is not about self-defense” (242). In his view, “a settler-colonial state” (41) has no moral right to defend itself at all: “Colonizers do not defend themselves. They attack” (47). This explains why, on Twitter, Isaac was already describing Israel’s campaign in Gaza as “genocide” just three weeks after the October 7 attacks. 

Isaac defines settler colonialism as “a form of colonialism in which the existing inhabitants of a territory are displaced by settlers who take land by force” (41). But modern Israel’s origins don’t fit that definition. Martin Gilbert’s meticulous Israel: A History shows that, beginning in the 1880s, Jewish immigrants to the land acquired property lawfully and peaceably. The UN’s 1947 partition plan, which divided the British territory of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states, was accepted by Jewish leaders but rejected by their Arab counterparts. The resulting civil war, an existential threat to both populations, was won by the fledgling Jewish state. 

Even if we set aside the historical record, Isaac’s case against Israel seems poorly-aligned for his stated audience: “everyday Christians” in “Western faith communities” (9). Identifying Israel as a settler-colonial entity “like Australia, New Zealand, and North America” (41) won’t delegitimize Israel in the eyes of most Christians in those places. In order to avoid hypocrisy, America’s Christians could only agree with Isaac if they simultaneously denied their own country’s right to defend itself. That’s never going to happen. Isaac loses his intended audience through his lack of realism. 

It should be noted that Isaac’s position on Israel has apparently shifted since 2016, when he signed the bridge-building, ecumenical Larnaca Statement, which spoke supportively of “the reality and legitimacy of the state of Israel.” In Christ in the Rubble, Isaac condemns modern Israel in toto as “seventy-six years and counting of military occupation” (96). When he speaks of “getting rid of the occupation” (83), he has the whole nation of Israel in view, not just the Palestinian Territories. His current ideological framework brooks no compromise with the “settler-colonial state.” 

Racial Insensitivity

The image on the cover of Christ in the Rubble—and referenced in the title—is a photo of the 2023 nativity scene at one of the churches that Isaac pastors. The infant Christ is shown wrapped in a Palestinian keffiyeh and surrounded by chunks of broken concrete. The purpose of this nativity was to display “God’s solidarity with the oppressed, distressed, and those suffering from injustice” (204–5). 

It’s wonderfully true that the incarnation offers eternal hope to suffering people. However, by portraying the infant Christ as a Palestinian, the rubble image erases the Jewishness of Jesus. While Isaac acknowledges Jesus’s Jewishness verbally (210), the image negates it visually. This matters because, as Jesus himself explains, “Salvation is from the Jews” (John 4:22). It should never be forgotten that only the Jewish Messiah can save. 

But the rubble nativity scene isn’t just problematic theologically; it also ratchets up racial tension. Just as African-Americans would rightfully be aggrieved if Martin Luther King were portrayed as a White man, so Jewish Christians (often known as Messianic Jews) will understandably take offence when Jesus is stripped of his Jewishness.

What makes the image doubly insensitive is that one of the recurring themes of antisemitism is the blood libel that Jews seek to murder children. Writing for the London Telegraph, the journalist George Chesterton said Isaac’s nativity scene “promotes the idea that Jews are systematic baby killers.” Chesterton went on to point out, “This is the sort of thing that is screamed … on the streets of London, Glasgow and Brighton [scenes of controversial anti-Israel protests].”

A third racially-insensitive feature of the nativity scene is its resonance with the misleading charge that Christ was killed by the Jewish people. Depicting Christ as the victim of Israeli aggression will inevitably bring to mind that toxic accusation. In January 2024, a Jewish faculty member resigned from the University of British Columbia due to the antisemitism he’d experienced at the college. The final straw, according to a report in The Globe and Mail, was “seeing a colleague post an image of Christ in the rubble of Gaza.”

Isaac is a highly-educated regional leader who cannot claim ignorance of these antisemitic tropes. It’s well documented that relations between Palestinian Christians and Messianic Jews have deteriorated in recent years. For that to change, each side will need to love the other by striving to avoid unnecessary offense. Isaac himself expresses concern about anti-Palestinian racism (117–24); this concern should cut both ways. 

Unjust Scales

Books by Christians on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict ought to be scrupulously careful, and, regrettably, Christ in the Rubble isn’t. There are factual mistakes, such as the claim that the entire Gaza Strip is two-thirds the size of Manhattan (73; in reality, Gaza is more than six times larger). But, more importantly, there are misleading anti-Israel claims that bring to mind the “unjust scales” of Proverbs 11:1. The following list of four could easily be supplemented with other examples.

First, Isaac implies Israel carried out “the attack on the Al-Ahli hospital ten days into the war that left hundreds killed and injured … a massacre of innocent civilians” (7). But, according to assessments by, among others, the Associated Press and CNN, the explosion in the grounds of Al-Ahli hospital was almost certainly caused by a misfired rocket launched by Palestinian militants within Gaza. 

Second, Isaac claims Palestinians gave Hamas a legislative majority in the 2006 elections “because they were frustrated with the failed peace process led by Fatah leaders, which led to more settlements and an intensified occupation” (83). This criticism of Fatah also implicates Israel. But in the year preceding the elections, Israel had in fact withdrawn all 21 Jewish settlements from Gaza, and four from the West Bank. Hamas’s electoral success in 2006 was a global event; it deserves better analysis than Isaac’s reflexive, misleading Israel-blaming.

Third, Isaac says Israeli policies are carried out with “the cruel intent of making life hell on earth for Palestinians in Gaza.” By way of evidence, he points to a strategy known as “mowing the lawn,” claiming that its “blatantly murderous” purpose is “to wear down and reduce the population” (89). Yet the article he cites in support of this claim defines the policy as “acting to severely punish Hamas for its aggressive behavior, and degrading its military capabilities.” The policy is thus directed at Hamas rather than the population—a vitally important distinction that Isaac can’t legitimately erase because he himself upholds it elsewhere (79–85; 138).

Fourth, Isaac says the 2018-19 Palestinian demonstrations known as the Great March of Return were “nonviolent border protests” (96). This claim has the effect of demonizing Israel on account of its lethal response to the protests. But the “nonviolent” assertion is untrue. To cite a Times report, “Those assaulting [the border] threw firebombs and rolled burning tires at the fence to try to melt it; at least some carried pistols, according to both the Israeli military and Palestinian witnesses.” The report also mentions “Molotov cocktails thrown at Israeli soldiers and firebombs attached to kites.” Isaac would have been fully entitled to express his opinion that Israel’s response was excessive. But it’s not acceptable for him to put his thumb on the scales by claiming the protests were nonviolent.

It’s often said that the first casualty of war is the truth. Yet Christian communicators have an obligation, in the sight of God, never to let the truth take a hit on our watch. 

Start Here

Many years ago, I lived in Oxford, England, a city that—before smartphones—was horribly difficult to get around by car. Whenever a driver pulled up beside me and asked for directions, I had to resist the temptation to say “Don’t start here.” Despite the difficulty of the directions, it was better to give them than to deplore the starting point.

The message of Christ in the Rubble is, essentially, “Don’t start here.” Isaac regards present-day Israel as “the occupier” (111). He wants Western Christians “to condemn the ongoing Israeli occupation of Palestine” (172). He describes Zionism—the movement that backs a single majority-Jewish state among a score of majority-Arab states—as “racist supremacy” (67). He cites with approval the view that “theologies used to legitimize the Zionist settler-colonial project … proclaim that God is a racist” (243). All this plays well with progressive activists, but it’s self-defeating, due to its lack of realism, when addressed to a wider audience.

Modern Israel is a nation with its own language, parliament, media, judiciary, financial currency, diplomatic relations, defense forces, and nearly 80 years of history. Even if one grants, purely for the sake of argument, that Israel is the “occupier,” its occupation cannot come to an end without 7 million Jews being placed at the dubious mercy of Hamas, Hezbollah, ISIS, and Iran. Most Western Christians will instinctively grasp that opposing Israel’s ongoing existence isn’t a constructive, “real world” argument. Isaac’s goals are political, and yet politics is, as the adage says, the art of the possible.

Consider the contrast between, on the one hand, Isaac, who says, “Hamas is a response to Israeli colonialism. If people are genuine in their desire to destroy Hamas, I suggest we begin by getting rid of the occupation” (83); and, on the other hand, Palestinian politician Samer Sinijlawi, who says, “Palestinians need to put in place a strategy that prioritizes the security of Israelis—not for the Israelis’ sake, but for our own national interest.” Sinijlawi, unlike Isaac, has a pragmatic willingness to “Start here.” 

There are great reservoirs of goodwill and sympathy among Western Christians toward our Palestinian brothers and sisters. But—aside from all the other problems with Christ in the Rubble—Isaac’s lack of realism will leave those reservoirs untapped.