KJS DC 4.1.26

This question isn’t going away. And I can’t sit with it quietly anymore.

This week, Israel’s defense minister announced the military will destroy all homes in Lebanese border villages. His exact words described it as following “the Beit Hanoun and Rafah model in Gaza.”

One expert at the Center for International Policy called that statement “an open admission of intent to commit ethnic cleansing.”

More than 1.2 million people have been displaced in Lebanon. At least 1,247 have been killed, including 124 children and 52 medical workers. Six hundred thousand people are being told they cannot return home until Israel decides their country is safe enough.

This is happening in real time. Palm Sunday week.

The first American Pope stood in St. Peter’s Square this Palm Sunday and said God “does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war.” He called the conflict “atrocious.”

Religious leaders across Lebanon could not fully observe Holy Week rites because of the bombardment.

And yet a significant portion of American Christianity continues to support this unconditionally. Not quietly. Loudly. As a theological position.

I need to ask seriously: How is this the Israel we were protecting?

The theological argument for Christian support of the Israeli state doesn’t exist anymore because it rests on a specific reading of scripture — covenant, chosen people, the land as sacred promise. I respect that tradition. I was raised inside a faith that takes those texts seriously.

And I was also raised inside a faith that said the chosen are known by their conduct. That covenant carries obligation. That the prophets — the actual prophets — spent most of their words not celebrating Israel’s military victories but condemning Israel’s treatment of the stranger, the widow, the dispossessed.

Isaiah. Amos. Micah. They weren’t gentle about it.

“Your hands are full of blood,” Isaiah wrote. The same passage Pope Leo quoted on Palm Sunday. He wasn’t speaking to Israel’s enemies. He was speaking to Israel.

The younger generation watching this isn’t confused about the theology. They’re watching the footage. They’re seeing the rubble in Gaza, the destroyed bridges in Lebanon, the displacement orders covering entire cities. They’re watching a government use the word “model” to describe what it did to Rafah — a city that no longer exists — and announce it intends to do the same thing again.

They’re asking what we are protecting. And they deserve an honest answer.

I don’t have a clean one. What I have is this:
If the chosen people concept means anything at all, it was never meant to confer immunity from moral accountability. It was meant to demand more of it. That’s what the prophets said. That’s what Jesus said. That’s what the Pope said this Palm Sunday from the steps of the Vatican.

You don’t have to choose between your faith and your conscience.

They’re asking the same question.