The blindness of the world today, in particular Christians, to see the suffering of the Palestinian people is terribly appalling. A clear display of an era of ‘moral numbness’ driven by religious fundamentalism. Like the walking dead, we carry and read bibles everyday, but we no longer feel Jesus’ grief in the cries of parents losing their children, his pain in the agonies of fatherless or motherless children, his hunger in the starvation of the mass, his suffering through the blood of the innocent spilled by continuous bombing, and his crucifixion in the tortures and deaths of many in Palestine.
Today, in the age of artificial intelligence, love is becoming more and more a mere artificial concept regulated by doctrinal correctness and no longer a gift freely offered. Faith has made us only believers at the cost of our humanity. Faith has lost its power as an ethical guide to do what is right. The forsakenness of Gaza reminds that we are no different from the Pontius Pilate who washed himself clean from the death of someone’s only child⸺God’s child, or the crowd who stood by the side of the road and mocked the victim cruelly tortured, or the disciples who went silent when their brother was dragged by armed soldiers, crucified and killed him.
Until we move beyond the tradition that the displacement in Palestine is divinely ordained in the name of a covenant, the same tradition that displaced and killed Jesus, we will never liberate Gaza and provide a potential solution to the ongoing genocide. This issue should no longer be about who’s side we are on. Rather the issue is whether we can identify with the suffering of Jesus ‘in’ the suffering of those mauled down by a ferocious beast called ‘military power’.
Note: There are organisations such as the World Food Programme where we can donate to save a life.