Christ in the Rubble
Western Christian Complicity in the Genocide of Gaza
Way back in October, perpetually “persecuted” wannabe rockstar and insufferable White Christian nationalist Sean Feucht retweeted this claim that the only Planned Parenthood facility in Gaza had been destroyed by an IDF airstrike. There are a number of obvious issues with this retweet and most of its replies.
Planned Parenthood is an American organization. There is no explicit Planned Parenthood medical facility in Gaza. It’s misleading to claim that the IPPF (International Planned Parenthood Federation) and PFPPA (Palestinian Family Planning and Protection Association) are identical to your nearest Planned Parenthood clinic in the US.
Abortion is only legal for medical reasons in the Palestinian territories. This clinic would only have performed abortions if the mother’s physical health were in danger or if there were significant fetal abnormalities. That’s it. The majority of their services would instead have been handling contraceptive care, comprehensive sex education, prenatal care, and providing aid for gender-based violence. You know, all those evil things that improve the quality of women’s, children’s, and babies’ lives.
Targeting medical facilities is a war crime. A blatant violation of international law.
Evangelicals seem to have Big Opinions™ about “baby killers” and saving “several babies” when said babies don’t actually exist. Not only are fetuses not babies, but this clinic wouldn’t have been performing elective abortions anyway. (Although they would have been in Israel, where it’s a legal procedure.) They would have been providing other types of reproductive health care. But these forced-birth maniacs don’t seem to care one bit about the thousands of actual Palestinian babies that have been murdered by the IDF over the past three months. I guess in their minds a Palestinian woman has to carry both a wanted/unwanted and a dangerous/unviable pregnancy to term so that the IDF gets to target her baby once it’s born? IDK. I’m not really getting the so-called pro-life movement’s logic here.
About a month later came the story of the NICU (neonatal intensive care unit) babies that had been left to die alone in their beds and decompose in Gaza’s Al-Nasr hospital. When the IDF invaded the area, they ordered all patients and medical personnel to leave the hospital. But premature babies cannot easily be moved. Doctors and nurses simply cannot leave their patients. It is against their code of ethics. The NICU staff only left because they had been assured by the IDF that the ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross) had been contacted and were on their way to the hospital. They would see to it that these preemies would be evacuated to safety.
They were not. The IDF never contacted anyone. The ICRC didn’t know about the abandoned babies in the Al-Nasr NICU. These defenseless babies were left, hooked up to nearby oxygen tanks, without food or care for weeks. When journalists were finally able to make their way into the hospital during a humanitarian pause, they found these babies. All of them were dead. All were visibly decomposing and had been for about two weeks.
I kept an eye out on prominent evangelicals’ social media accounts for outrage about these murdered babies. Actual murdered babies. Not fetuses. Babies that belonged to Palestinian mothers and fathers who had wanted them. Loved them. Given birth to them. These were real, flesh-and-blood babies; they were not the fabricated “40 beheaded babies” that had been splashed across headlines around the world only to be quietly retracted a few days later. But I saw nothing. Not a peep. These overly vocal evangelicals who had been so adamant about non-existent beheaded babies couldn’t spare even a tweet for the real ones left to die alone. These were premature babies and should have still been in utero. What I can surmise from this is that a 30-week fetus still developing in the womb is of the utmost importance in their book, but a preemie at the exact same gestational age being kept alive in a NICU is fair game for the Israeli army. This juxtaposition clearly shows that the aim of the pro-life movement is control of women’s bodies, lives, and choices rather than any real concern for the welfare of babies. Brown babies in particular.
After this was the reposted tweet on Instagram that I came across late one night. I thought it simply had to be an exaggeration, if not outright fake news, so I didn’t repost it or even initially google the story. It seemed so unbelievably barbaric. I realized the next day that it was accurate. There was news coverage from a variety of sources about the incident. Palestinian women, in active labor, carrying white flags and on their way to hospital to give birth, were attacked, killed, and then run over with bulldozers by the IDF. Their bodies, and those of their unborn children, were left in the street to decompose.
Again, I kept an eye on these evangelical leaders’ social media profiles to see if there was any note regarding this unimaginable cruelty. Of this outright medieval barbarity. Murdering women in labor. Murdering unborn babies along with their mothers. In the street. Running over their dead and dying bodies with goddamn bulldozers. But there was nothing. Not a word. The only people I saw posting about this war crime were independent media, leftists, and non-religious folks. Conservative American evangelicals couldn’t be bothered to care about real women and babies being ruthlessly murdered in the streets of Gaza.
And then we came to Christmas. All of this had been taking place during Advent, which was a very surreal, dystopian experience. Most of my social media timelines and inboxes were a competition between Advent meditations and documentation of this Palestinian genocide. When it comes to Advent, a large portion of evangelicals don’t actually know what it is. Anything from the more liturgical side of Christianity is normally viewed with suspicion at best. (I learned this firsthand as a teenager when I suggested lighting incense during junior high worship services.) But every Christian of any denomination or creed is familiar with Christmas.
You would think that the story of the First Christmas — a poor Middle Eastern family, displaced, seeking refuge, in Bethlehem itself no less — would trigger these alleged followers of Christ into feeling some kind of solidarity, or at the very least compassion, for Palestinians. Most films about the First Christmas depict Mary in active labor out on the streets of Bethlehem while Joseph desperately searches for any place for them to stay. The shepherds and Magi are depicted as later visiting the Christ Child in a makeshift crib. A first-century NICU, if you will. The Holy Family is then seen fleeing under the cover of darkness to Egypt in order to escape the ruthless government assassins sent by King Herod, a client king of the Empire whose subjects detested him. The parallels are all right there; you don’t even need to think all that hard to see them. They’re even happening in more or less the exact same geographical locations.
On Christmas Day 2023 in Bethlehem, the Lutheran Rev. Dr. Munther Isaac, a Palestinian Christian, gave a homily, in English, titled “Christ in the Rubble.” Most of the Christmas celebrations had been cancelled in Bethlehem. The official Nativity scene showed the Christ Child, wrapped in a Palestinian keffiyyeh, lying among the broken pieces of stone and concrete.
In Gaza today, God is under the rubble.
And in this Christmas season, as we search for Jesus, he is to be found not on the side of Rome, but our side of the wall. In a cave, with a simple family. Vulnerable. Barely, and miraculously surviving a massacre. Among a refugee family. This is where Jesus is found.
If Jesus were to be born today, he would be born under the rubble in Gaza. When we glorify pride and richness, Jesus is under the rubble.
When we rely on power, might, and weapons, Jesus is under the rubble.
When we justify, rationalise, and theologise the bombing of children, Jesus is under the rubble.
Jesus is under the rubble. This is his manger. He is at home with the marginalised, the suffering, the oppressed, and displaced. This is his manger.
I have been looking, contemplating on this iconic image. God with us, precisely in this way. This is the Incarnation. Messy. Bloody. Poverty.
This child is our hope and inspiration. We look and see him in every child killed and pulled from under the rubble. While the world continues to reject the children of Gaza, Jesus says, “Just as you did it to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it to me.” “You did it to ME.” Jesus not only calls them his own, he is them!
We look at the Holy Family and see them in every family displaced and wandering, now homeless in despair. While the world discusses the fate of the people of Gaza as if they are unwanted boxes in a garage, God in the Christmas narrative shares in their fate. He walks with them and calls them his own.
I have seen several clips of the Rev. Dr. Munther Isaac, and it seems that he is often speaking directly to Christians in the West. Especially American evangelicals who have built up this theology of empire, power, domination, and control and then gleefully wield it as a weapon against the poorest of the world. White American evangelicalism likes to claim that it is the one true successor to the Early Church. That it is the only way to do the Christian faith right. This was a common topic of conversation in my junior high and high school youth groups. How the early Christians had it right but then it was all liturgy and heretics for hundreds of years until Martin Luther managed to save the day by inventing Protestantism. It is not only a childish belief, but also a relic of colonization and imperialism. This Western evangelical theology has become a tool of obscene wealth, violent power, and domineering control. “It’s our way or the highway” is one of the main tenets of conservative evangelicalism, but it is not to be found in the teachings of Christ. Jesus is not on the side of empire, whether Rome or the United States. He has always been on the side of the weak, powerless, and oppressed.
Power and control, not life, have always been the aims of the “pro-life movement.” It has been increasingly turning its ire on women, girls, and AFAB people in the US and abroad for decades. Most notably at the moment in Palestine. Vengeance against Palestinians for daring to live in their own land rather than get out of the way to fulfill some far-fetched “End Times prophecies” based on little more than cherry-picked Bible verses, a Scottish teenager’s fever dreams, and post-American Civil War White supremacy. There is no room in this kind of theology for Palestinians, whether in first-century Palestine or in the twenty-first century Occupied Territories. Which in turn means that it has no room for God Herself/Himself.
