Grappling with the Violent Ugliness of Gaza
A Feature Review of
Christ in the Rubble: Faith, the Bible, and the Genocide in Gaza
Munther Isaac
Paperback: Eerdmans, 2025
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Reviewed by John W. Morehead
The world is plagued by many international conflicts as well as internal divisions within nations themselves. One of the most intractable conflicts, that between the nation of Israel and the Palestinians in Gaza, took another deadly turn with Hamas terror attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023. Hamas forces engaged in acts of murder and brutality, and Israel responded with overwhelming force, reducing much of Gaza to ruins and killing thousands of Palestinians, many of them civilians. This war has polarized the international community, particularly in America, with those on the political right arguing that Israel is acting in self-defense, and those on the left calling Israel’s actions a genocide.
Munther Isaac, the author of Christ in the Rubble: Faith, the Bible, and the Genocide in Gaza, is a Christian pastor from the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem and the Lutheran Church in Beit Sahour. The cover photo for this book is the Christ child rapped in a Palestinian keffiyeh scarf lying in a pile of rubble, an image taken by of a nativity display created by Isaac’s congregation. The image was incorporated into a sermon preached by Isaac titled “Christ in the Rubble: A Liturgy of Lament.” The image and the sermon went viral, and in this book the author provides a broader context for it as he makes a case for the Israeli response to October 7 as one of genocide of the Palestinian people.
Isaac develops his argument over the space of eight chapters. He acknowledges the horrors of the attacks by Hamas on Israel on October 7, 2023, but says that the war did not start on that date. He draws attention to the longer history and socio-political context of conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, including the Nakba of 1948 where thousands of Palestinians were displaced from their homes, as well as the harsh conditions Palestinians have had to live under with strict Israeli control, which Isaac considers a form of apartheid. The author also makes a case for coloniality and racism, as well as empire theology playing a part in Palestinian framing and treatment. He also discusses genocide from a theological perspective, and how certain Bible verses have been used to justify the highly destructive military force used by the Israeli military.
One notable example of this justification came from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who gave a press conference announcing the ground invasion of Gaza where his forces “had one supreme goal: to destroy the murderous enemy.” He followed this by stating that Israeli soldiers were “committed to eradicating evil from this world,” and then quoted the Hebrew Bible: “Remember what Amalek did to you.” Maya Rosen discussed this use of the Bible in connection with genocide in an article in JewishCurrents where she said, “The citation refers to the biblical account of the nation of Amalek’s unprovoked attack against the weary Israelites after they left Egypt, and concludes with an enjoinder from God ‘to wipe out the memory of Amalek from under the heavens’—often understood as a perpetual commandment to kill any descendents [sic] of the Amalekite people.” Netanyahu’s reference of the verse seems to make a contemporary application wherein Israel is scripturally justified in wiping out the Palestinians.
After making his case for Palestinian genocide, Isaac goes on to call Western Christian leaders to repent for their silence over this tragedy. For him the crushing of the Palestinians serves as a moral compass and a litmus test not only for Christian leaders, but Christian laity and others around the world.
Given the polarization in the West over the war in Gaza, it comes as no surprise that Isaac’s book has been received praise as well as condemnation. In terms of praise, the noted Chrisitan philosopher Nicholas Wolterstorff provided an endorsement blurb for the book and calls it “an extraordinary cry of lament over the suffering of the Palestinian people”. Then there are those like Jewish interfaith advocate, Joshua Stanton, who in an article in Religion News Service critiquing Isaac’s theology in the book of a nativity Christ in a keffiyeh, said that “The attempt to project contemporary politics or our own aspirations onto such a sacred figure is always problematic. In this case, the parallels being made have gone from implausible to outright toxic and antisemitic.”
But what of Isaac’s central thesis that the war in Gaza represents not a legitimate military response of self-defense, but instead an act of genocide intended to wipe out an entire people? Working in the field of religious diplomacy and having some familiarly with the academic literature on genocide, I wonder if the ethical and theological concerns related to the suffering of the Palestinians is lost in a debate over the concept of genocide. With the statistics Isaac cites on the numbers of casualties, including women and children, as well as the mass destruction of Gaza’s infrastructure, that should be enough to make the case that Palestinian suffering should be acknowledged by the church and the world. As Abdelwahab El-Affendi states in “The Futility of Genocide Studies After Gaza” in the Journal of Genocide Research, “if a series of actions approach genocide sufficiently to occasion a debate on whether they are genocide or not, then they are evil enough to be denounced without ifs or buts; even more so if the aim is to sustain an unjust system.” I appreciate that arguing for genocide allows one to draw upon important international legal and ethical frames, but if the main intention is to address the neglect of the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza, then the focus on genocide may be unnecessary.
Munther Isaac has written an important book that should be read and fairly considered by Christians in the West. Whether readers lean toward support for Israel or the Palestinians, the desire for justice and peace among both peoples means we must grapple with this violent ugliness as we challenge our assumptions. The war in Gaza demands our attention and discerning assessment.
John W. Morehead
John W. Morehead is the Executive Director of the Foundation for Religious Diplomacy, and the Director of its Evangelical Chapter (Multifaith Matters). He is the co-editor and contributor to A Charitable Orthopathy: Christian Perspectives on Emotions in Multifaith Engagement (Wipf & Stock, 2020). You may contact him at johnwmorehead [ at ] msn.com .
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