A year and a half ago, I was preparing to travel to Palestine and Israel with fellow students and scholars. As a Christian pastor and theologian, I had long wanted to visit the “Holy Land.” However, this opportunity had never been offered through church-affiliated trips, which focused primarily on the Palestinian perspective of what it means to resist and survive under occupation.
We would still visit all the important Jesus-related holy sites. However, we would spend most of our time learning from Palestinians engaged in life-giving forms of organizing and sustaining community. It would be different, deeply informative, connection-building and life-changing.
But before the trip, on October 6, 2023, nearly forty family and friends had gathered in our backyard on a beautiful autumn day to celebrate my daughter’s first birthday. I had planned for this almost as meticulously as one would for a trip across the world. The following morning, with so many family members visiting, my husband and I would baptize her at the church where he serves as pastor.
That morning, we would wake to the news of the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel.
Just like that, two events are forever connected in my memory. One is the joy and freedom of experiencing the day with so many beloved members of our community. The other is the horror of the events that triggered a military response so disproportionately atrocious that it can only be called genocide.
Needless to say, our trip was canceled with the outbreak of the war that continues today. During that time, I’ve lived in the beauty, wonder and normalcy of watching our baby grow into a happy, healthy, rambunctious toddler–as every parent should.
I’ve lit a candle in worship every Sunday for mamas who’ve lost their babies and babies who’ve lost their mamas in Gaza. I spent time at the spring 2024 student protest at the university where I recently earned my PhD. I’ve since learned some of those student leaders were expelled.
I’ve attended lectures given by Palestinian scholars informing American audiences of the simplicity of occupation, erasure, and genocide–all while many believe the struggle for Palestinian freedom is “too complex” to understand or get involved in. I’ve signed petitions and sent emails urging my congressional representatives to stop the billions of dollars we have poured into military aid to Israel since this genocidal war began.
But by and large, my life has gone on, unaltered by the daily horrors unfolding before our eyes. This is the privilege so many of us living in the West are afforded as beneficiaries of a neoliberal global economy that values the lives of our children more than the lives of Palestinian children.
As of this writing, the death toll in Gaza stands at over 50,000, with over 114,000 wounded. Thousands more are missing and presumed dead.
While the horror of 1,139 Israelis killed and more than 200 taken hostage by Hamas should never be overlooked or forgotten, over 100,000 Israelis who have joined in protesting their own government’s response remind us that this war was never really a “response” to the October 7 attack. It is an attempted genocide–on our watch and funded by our tax dollars.
Our lives go unaltered as we sign the checks and the bombs being dropped on Palestinian mamas and babies. Thinking about it constantly leads to utter despair. But averting our eyes forfeits our humanity to a system that continually encourages us to do so.
In his recently published account of mainstream Western liberalism’s transactional response, award-winning novelist and journalist Omar El Akkad pens a brief but convicting must-read for any American entangled in the mindset of neoliberalism. Imploring us to do anything to resist these forces of evil, El Akkad warns in his book “One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This” that “in the end, we will be asked to normalize not only unlimited extraction and unlimited suffering, but total absence…Just for a moment, cease to believe that this particular group of people are human.”
He urges us to resist a system so cruel it has convinced us to justify genocide.
Genocide.
What is happening in Gaza is genocide. And while everyone might come to reject it someday, what is the Christian response today when the powers and principalities of our nation continue to enable it?
How many of us are in danger of selling our souls to the belief that “if the Democrats had won the election, things wouldn’t be as bad,” when a Democratic administration funded the bombs for over a year?
More importantly, why are we so willing to accept “not as bad” when the ethical response should be not at all? That question is the heart of El Akkad’s book. It should compel people of faith to do more than settle for a system that forces a choice between the lesser of two evils.
I have fallen prey to this mentality. What’s worse is I’ve done so as I watch my baby grow into a happy, healthy toddler…while lighting candles for mamas in Gaza who don’t get to do the same.
This Sunday, my candle will also be a confession: I have not done enough to resist this evil undergirding both sides of U.S. politics. My tax dollars and my false hope of “not as bad” have funded those deaths.
I have been far more complicit than I have been resistant. And my soul can no longer afford the cost.
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Dr. Rebecca M. David Hensley holds a PhD in religious studies, with an emphasis in theological and social ethics. She is a member of the adjunct faculty for Iliff School of Theology and an ordained Deacon in the United Methodist Church.
