The horrors of Gaza – I cannot stay silent!

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This post is far removed from the nor­mal topics of my blog. But as a Chris­tian, I can­not remain in­dif­fer­ent faced with the hor­rific images com­ing out of Gaza. It seems that Israel is per­pe­trat­ing atroc­i­ties and there are many who are already talk­ing about “geno­cide”. The Bible tells us that “God is love” (1 John 4:8). How can Israel, the people chosen by God to be a light to the nations (Isaiah 42:6) be com­mit­ting such abom­i­na­tions? It’s inflict­ing suf­fer­ing, when not actual death, on hun­dreds of thou­sands of civil­ians, includ­ing babies and chil­dren. It has turned entire neigh­bour­hoods into rubble. And now it’s on its way to slowly starv­ing an entire popu­lace to death.

Photo by Emad El Byed on Unsplash.

And what are we Christians doing about it?

I find it shame­ful that the crit­i­cism of Israel by Chris­tian lead­ers and move­ments, at least here in Spain, has in gen­eral been so muted. It’s only (some­what) com­pre­hen­sible when you know that, in amongst our evan­gel­i­cal churches, there are Zion­ist and pro-Israel ten­den­cies that are highly reac­tion­ary and fun­da­men­tal­ist in nature. So much so that even the very restrained State­ment on Gaza (in Spanish) [1] issued by the FEREDE (the Feder­a­tion of Evan­gel­i­cal Reli­gious Organ­i­sa­tions in Spain) pro­voked a furious reac­tion in these rad­i­cal circles. Here is a sam­ple (enlarge the images if you can read Spanish, other­wise go to the brief extract I pro­vide below them):

Source: Message from 5 June 2025, captured by a person in the WhatsApp group “UCB Spain – La Palabra Para Hoy”.

Brief extract in English

Dear friend,

Once again Reli­gion is attack­ing Israel in the 21st Cen­tury. This time it’s the FEREDE in the name of the evan­gel­i­cals under its domain, with­out obtain­ing their per­mis­sion. Surprise? Not really, because most of their leader­ship espouse a replace­ment doc­trine and, there­fore, are anti-Zion­ist.
[…]
Remem­ber, if we don’t want our dear Iberian Penin­sula (which is at death’s door) to be cut off from heav­enly bless­ing, and if we want it to avoid eternal death, my recom­men­da­tion is this: come out from this organ­i­sa­tion allied, on this occa­sion, with Satan, and follow only Yeshua who died and rose to make us free. […]

From what I gather, there is a debate among Chris­tian theo­lo­gians about the role and future of Israel, after the coming of the Mes­siah (Jesus) and his rejec­tion by the major­ity of the Jewish people. Some under­stand that God’s prom­i­ses of a glo­rious future for Israel are still liter­ally valid, includ­ing the occu­pa­tion of the entire “prom­ised land” assigned to the twelve tribes.

The most radical even argue that this legit­i­mises the use of mil­i­tary might, forced colon­i­sa­tion and the expul­sion of the non-Jewish (Pales­tin­ian) pop­u­la­tion from that ter­ri­tory. Basically, what we are seeing on tele­vision every day.

I am not an expert in theo­logy, but as a sim­ple fol­lower of Jesus, my under­stand­ing is that we should total­ly reject such actions. My reason for saying this so cate­gor­i­cally is very simple. As Chris­tian author David Run­corn explains [2], Jesus did not leave us theo­log­i­cal para­meters for eva­luat­ing which doc­trines or teach­ings may be true and which false. He gave us a much simpler rule, in rela­tion to its pro­po­nents: “By their fruit you will recog­nise them” (Matthew 7:16).

Pretty obvious, right? If the result, the fruit, of this forced appro­pri­a­tion of the “prom­ised land” are the atroc­ities we see in Gaza, some­thing is not right. So, when we en­coun­ter rad­i­cal Chris­tian Zion­ists, such as those in the Whats­App group (fea­tured above), we are deal­ing with “false proph­ets” or “fero­cious wolves” even (Matthew 7:15). For me, there is no way round this con­clu­sion.

Any doubts? Not really!

Hardline backers of Israel want us to believe that the num­bers of deaths and dis­placed people in Gaza have been exag­gera­ted, and that the images are fake. It’s what the Netan­yahu govern­ment has also been trying to foist on us:

Image provided by the Israeli Prime Minis­ter’s Office, re­pro­duced in an ar­ticle in elDiario.es on 11 August 2025.

It is true that some of the most strik­ing photos of ema­ci­ated child­ren corres­pond to infants with prior health issues [3]. But the lack of food is real, as is the destruc­tion, the dead and in­jured, the forced dis­place­ments, and all the rest. I have no doubt about this, for three very clear reasons:

• The Israeli Govern­ment has sys­tem­at­ic­ally banned inter­na­tional repor­ters from the occu­pied ter­ri­to­ries of Gaza [4]. The only pos­sible inter­pre­ta­tion is that they want to hide what is hap­pen­ing there.
• The tes­timo­nies of people that have been there in per­son (such as the Valen­cian anaes­the­tist Raül Incertis, who recent­ly returned after work­ing for four months at the Nasser Hos­pit­al in Khan You­nis [5]) con­firm the hor­rors that are being com­mit­ted there.
• The state­ment issued simul­ta­neously by over a hun­dred inter­na­tional human­i­tar­ian and human rights organ­i­sa­tions denoun­cing the famine situa­tion in Gaza leaves no room for doubt. Among the sig­na­to­ries are highly respected enti­ties (includ­ing Oxfam, Doc­tors With­out Bor­ders and Save the Children).

An appeal

“Blessed are the peacemakers” said Jesus (Matthew 5:9). I therefore appeal to all his fol­lowers, and par­tic­u­larly our pas­tors and lead­ers, not only to pray for peace and for those who govern, but also to be 📣 loud and clear 📢 in their con­dem­na­tion of the atro­ci­ties being com­mit­ted by Israel.

☝️Let’s not look the other way, as the priest and the Levite did in the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37)!

☝️Please don’t forget Gaza!

Photo by Mohammed Ibrahim on Unsplash.

📌 If you would like to comment on this post (in the language of your choice), you can do so at the end of the Span­ish ver­sion, here.

Notes

[1] To be precise, the statement issued was about Gaza and Ukraine, which in my view was another way of “softening” it, and generalising the issue, in an attempt to avoid criticism from radical Christian Zionist or pro-Israel groups.

[2] Runcorn, David: Love Means Love – Same-sex Relationships and the Bible, Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, London (GB), 2020, chap­ter 13. Run­corn applies this argu­ment to homo­sexual rela­tion­ships, but it’s a good rule of thumb for eval­u­at­ing any thorny theo­log­i­cal issue.

[3] For clarification see, for example, these articles in EuroNews and NPR.

[4] This is a well known fact, com­mented on in many media, for example, in this recent BBC article.

[5] There are several videos on YouTube with Raül Incertis, includ­ing this inter­view (in Span­ish) by Cadena SER.