The killing and the dire humanitarian crisis in Gaza and in the Israeli-occupied territories of the West Bank of Palestine continue unabated, almost eclipsed from public view in the United States and Western Europe by the disruptive global actions of President Donald Trump, first with deportations and now with the war of tariffs.
Amid all this, a heart-rending statement—“Out of the depths I cry to you”—was issued by a group of Christians in Jerusalem, expressing solidarity with the Palestinians suffering in Gaza and the West Bank and appealing for help from their fellow Christians worldwide “who see our wounds but do not speak out.” The statement also challenges “those Jews and Christians who have been led to believe that God wants Israel to annex our homeland.”
A Jerusalem Voice for Justice introduced itself with a 640-word statement, which the Social Justice and Ecology Secretariat of the Jesuit Curia in Rome published on April 2.
To understand the significance and aim of this statement, I interviewed David Neuhaus, S.J., who is one of the signatories. Born into a Jewish family in South Africa, Father Neuhaus became an Israeli citizen at age 17 and has lived most of his life in Israel. After obtaining his Ph.D. in political science from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, he decided to become a Catholic and entered the Society of Jesus in 1992. He was ordained a priest in 2000.
Father Neuhaus studied Scripture in Rome and has spent many years teaching at the Seminary of the Latin Catholic Patriarchate in Bethlehem and in other academic institutions in Israel and Palestine. He is an astute political observer and a man committed to peace.
This interview was conducted by email and has been edited for length and clarity.
Could you offer a bit of background to the group A Jerusalem Voice for Justice?
We define ourselves as “an ecumenical witness for equality and a just peace in Palestine/Israel.” We formed ourselves in the aftermath of the recent events that have led to even more death and destruction in the Holy Land.
We seek to be an ecumenical think tank that witnesses to a Christian vocation, actively promoting a discourse that focuses on equality, justice and peace. We are all deeply anguished by what is going on, not only in Gaza but also in the north of the West Bank: so many dead and wounded, so many displaced and hungry. Alongside the more than 50,000 dead—including more than 15,000 children, according to UNICEF—and close to two million displaced in Gaza, we also have hundreds of dead in the West Bank and tens of thousands of displaced, and over 10,000 in prison.
And there are people dying in Lebanon, Syria and Yemen, too, as a direct consequence of this conflict. Israelis also are despairing and suffering. We would like to try and speak out for our people, wake up our political and religious leaders at home and abroad, especially in the powerful countries of the world, and address the international community. We also want to echo the deep concerns Pope Francis has expressed with regard to our situation.
Who are some of the other signatories?
A Jerusalem Voice for Justice is composed of Christians from different denominations—Roman Catholics, Greek Orthodox, Lutherans, evangelicals—from Jerusalem. Most of its members are Palestinians, but some of us are also priests and religious who are long-term residents. The group includes some of our elders who have been reflecting on these themes for decades, including Emeritus Latin Patriarch Michel Sabbah and retired Lutheran Bishop Munib Younan.
Together with these eminent voices and men and women working in various contexts, younger Christian Palestinians who are engaged and active in the community are also members of the group. In the aftermath of the destruction of Gaza, the threat of the annexation of all the Palestinian territories to Israel and the ethnic cleansing of vast areas of Palestine, this group seeks to speak out, offering a discourse for a vision of what this land could be if we were able to live together.
The signers say, “We are living in a time of deep crisis” and “We believe that our faith is meant to shine out in times like these.” What is at the root of this deep crisis?
The Holy Land has been in a state of conflict for more than 100 years. The present crisis began in 1917, when the British committed to establish a “Jewish homeland” in Palestine. The indigenous people of Palestine were not consulted, even though they constituted 90 percent of the population. Many of the Jews who migrated to Palestine in the following decades sought to replace the Palestinians as the inhabitants of the land rather than live with them. When the state of Israel was established in 1948, there were about 1.3 million Palestinians and just over 600,000 Jews. Over 600,000 Palestinian Arabs were driven out of their homes and off their lands, becoming refugees.
In the decades that followed, discrimination within the state of Israel and later, in 1967, the occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, have created a reality in which many Palestinians are exiles (Palestinian refugees number about six million today), and those who live in the land of their ancestors (five million in the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel and two million in the state of Israel) are deprived of equality, human dignity and freedom.
Attempts to achieve freedom, peaceable or violent, have been crushed by a powerful Israeli army. All attempts at negotiations have failed as the Israeli state continues its policy of refusing to make room for the Palestinians. This ongoing conflict is the major source of instability throughout the Middle East.
In the declaration, we say that as the war in Gaza continues, Israel has launched a war in the West Bank, hidden from the eyes of the world. The Israeli army is carrying out the largest displacement of Palestinians in the West Bank from their homes since 1967.
Your recent statement refers to the parable of the good Samaritan. What inspires you in this parable?
The parable is told by Jesus to illustrate discipleship. The disciple is the one who stops to care for the wounded man. He or she is the good Samaritan, unlike the priest and Levite, who pass the wounded man by without stopping. As we say in our statement: “Rev. Martin Luther King proposed that they passed him by, fearing: what will happen to me if I stop? Rev. King wrote that the good Samaritan instead asked the question: what will happen to him if I pass him by? Only the good Samaritan acted in order to save the wounded man’s life.”
In your declaration, you address your own people in the midst of the catastrophe they are living through. What do you have to say to them?
We believe that our primary audience is the people of this land, especially those bearing the brunt of the ceaseless violence. To them, we say: “We refuse to simply pass you by. We not only do not forget you, but commit ourselves to solidarity with you. We carry you in our prayers. We cry with you. We seek to make your cries heard in a world which needs to be shaken out of its complacency.”
You also encourage those abroad to speak out.
We believe that many are aware of what is going on and see the horrific images broadcast daily from the Holy Land. We know that in our times, however, speaking out might bring dire consequences, especially in places where free speech about the Palestinian question is more and more threatened. Those who speak out against Israeli policy, against ethnocentricity and the subjugation of the Palestinians, are too often accused of being antisemites. This confusion of real antisemitism with the critique of Israel, Zionism and the practices of discrimination and occupation is instrumentalized to silence the critics. In our statement, we write: “We recognize your fear and know that the stakes of speaking out now are high. Perhaps you still hope, in your silence, that someone else along the way will stop to help.”
We hope that those who are still remaining silent might be inspired by those speaking out. We hope they might be inspired by courageous Jews, individuals and groups, who are calling out that what is being done is not in their name and that it is against their principles. We hope that they might be inspired by Pope Francis, who has been speaking out for justice and peace since the beginning of the latest round of the conflict and calling the parish in Gaza City almost every day to be updated on the situation.
To the group of people who still do not speak out, we also confide our worst fears. If people do not speak now, it might be too late. We note in the statement: “We fear that the annexation of Palestinian territories by Israel may be imminent. Increasing use of the names ‘Judea and Samaria’ (instead of the occupied West Bank), exploiting biblical terminology to confuse present political realities, manifests a desire to wipe Palestine and the Palestinians off the map, claiming we do not exist.”
These plans are being carried out by totally ignoring international law at a time when the institutions founded to protect international law are being weakened by populist regimes. The erasing of Palestine goes hand in hand with the unceasing attacks on the United Nations, international legal institutions and other bodies that insist on safeguarding Palestinian rights. Therefore, the statement exhorts: “Now is the time to insist that Palestinians have the right to live in their homeland, and to join with those calling all over the world for equality, justice and peace for Palestinians and Israelis alike.”
These words are particularly addressed to leaders, political and religious, who are silent in the face of the ongoing war against men, women and children of all ages whose crime is that they are Palestinians seeking to live with dignity in their homeland. This silence seems to us like a common front, drawing together too many leaders in the United States, Europe and even the Arab world.
The signatories of the declaration do not only address those who might join protests against what is happening; they also address those who support the war against the Palestinians because they believe it is part of God’s plan.
Indeed, we also address those who seek to justify this interminable war with religious language, manipulating biblical categories. “We want to state clearly that you have been misguided,” we write. “All, Palestinians and Israelis, are created in the image and likeness of God. They are all equal in dignity and rights. Furthermore, our God is a God of love who abhors violence and loves all God’s children. The Palestinians are your ‘neighbor.’ The inviolable commandment in the Word of God we share is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”
It is devastating for those of us who read the Scriptures and live from the Word of God in them to realize that some people are taking this Word and turning it into a word of death, a word that sentences the Palestinians to perpetual exile or worse. Therefore, we insist: “To expel the Palestinians from their homeland is not only an act of violence; it is sacrilege.”
How do you make sense of those who distort Scripture in this way in order to support the war?
It is difficult to understand those who do this. Do they not realize that their biblical discourse is justifying the death of countless men, women and children, the devastation of their homes and the ravaging of their land? Has dehumanization and demonization reached such a level that Palestinians no longer are considered among God’s children?
You note that we are approaching Easter. Why is that important to your intentions?
We constitute a Christian voice, rising up out of the city that is home to Jesus’ empty tomb. As we gaze into the tomb, we do believe that death has been conquered. When death surrounds us on every side, this belief is all we have to sustain us. We are called to witness to it despite everything.
We conclude our statement with this very proclamation of our faith. “As we approach Easter, we affirm yet again that the light shines in the darkness and darkness does not overcome it. ‘What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it’ (Jn 1:3-5).”
