[ARCHIVE] Christmas—and Christians—in Palestine w/ Dr. Mitri Raheb

You live in the US and Christmas is about the reindeer and the white Christmas and the jingle bells and so on. Nothing of that has to do with the real Christmas story. I mean, this is the commercialized society. It's a consumer society and it's entertainment society. Most of the American Christmas songs, they had nothing to do with Jesus. I mean, think of jingle bells or think of. It talks about something to tell and they were not written by Christian actually. It's very interesting. It's an entertainment. While if we take the Christmas story and read it into this context, you think this story is written just now in Gaza. Welcome to a new episode of the Martici Street podcast. My name is Usama, Martici and I'm joined as always by my brother's Sadi. Sadi is good to see you again. Hello, everyone. And my brother, Kareem in Beirut. Kareem is great to see you again. Kareem, you're on mute. Everybody. Yes, I am. We're delighted to have with us one of the most distinguished Palestinian liberation theologians of our time. Dr. Mithri Rahib as our guest today on the Martici Street podcast. Dr. Mithri is the founder and president of the Darul Kareem University in Beit Lahem in Bethlehem. He holds a doctorate in theology from Phillips University in Marburg in Germany. He is more importantly the author and editor of around 50 books, including the most recent book, Decolonizing Palestine, The Land, The People, The Bible, which was published by Orbus Books this year. He is a founding member and board member of the National Library of Palestine and he's an elected member of the Palestinian National Council. Reverend Dr. Rahib received in 2022 an honorary doctorate of divinity from the Vortburg Theological Seminary. In 2017 he received the Tolerance Award from the European Academy of Science and Arts. In 2015 he was awarded the Olaf Palame Prize and in 2012 the German media prize was given to Dr. Rahib, although I'm not sure today's climate if he would have received any of these prizes. Because more than anything else Dr. Rahib is a person of courage. He's a person who exemplifies what is most beautiful I think and we think about the ecumenical Palestinian experience about he exemplifies in a body, a wider Arab Christian tradition that often gets neglected when we talk about the history and the politics of the contemporary Middle East. So Dr. Mithri welcome again to our show where we're delighted to have you. If you could just tell us a little bit at the beginning about your experience, especially what's going on now in Gaza, in Bethlehem where you are in Jerusalem and Nazareth all across Palestine, it just gives us a sense of what's happening. Yeah, actually these days are the most difficult days I would say in my entire life. I never ever experienced something like what we are experiencing nowadays. Let me start with Gaza. I mean what we experience there is a genocide over 20,000 people have been murdered over 50,000 people injured over 1700 massacres done there. Hospitals, most of them are out of service, damaged schools were destroyed over 150 mosques and even the Christian community was heavily targeted. 3% of the Christian population in Gaza was murdered in Israeli strikes. 5 Christian institutions in Gaza were attacked by Israeli air strikes. But for me, you know, these sounds like numbers, but for me it's also personal because the Dalai Calema University is the only university in the West Bank with a satellite program and the center in Gaza. So we have students there, we have staff there. Every day when I woke up, I look at my mobile to see who's still alive to hear just a sign that they are still there. The director of our satellite program, a young Palestinian accomplished artist from Gaza had to be evacuated is displaced now in the south with her family, Rana is her name. She is like in her late 30s, very active liberal, great artist. We lost four of our staff and volunteers, artists, three women and one man. The young man, a Mohammad Sami, he's actually a performing artist. He was volunteering at the Israeli hospital, which is the Anglican hospital, the Christian hospital, to bring some calm and joy to the kids who were frightened and, you know, traumatized in the hospital with their parents. And actually while he was singing with them, a song about peace, teaching them that song, there was an asterisk and he died and the children died in that asterisk. Thinking of Halime, another artist, a visual artist, she and her entire family were murdered in Israeli asterisk at their home. Two years ago, after the last war on Gaza, how she was actually working with kids to do art therapy. So we are missing all of these volunteers and people that we came to love and to cherish. And we have over 300 students in Gaza. We have no idea who is alive still, who is dead, who is displaced. What's happening to them? You know, one of our staff here to be separated from his wife, they were newly married, but his wife has a foreign passport and so they could go out of Gaza while he's stuck there. And you know, just to see how that moment at Rafah crossing where they had to say goodbye to each other, knowing that they might not see each other again. So you know, it's these personal stories that really for me touch our hearts and shows the depth of the tragedy that we are experiencing there. Thinking of the Christian community, same story, you know, I mean, just last Saturday, an Israeli sniper killed an older woman in her 70s with her daughter inside the Latin holy family compound, while they were just crossing within the compound to go to the restroom and the sniper just, you know, shot to kill. And both of them were killed on the spot. And when the other Christians, the community wanted to rescue them, Israeli sent a missile and ten Christians in that compound were injured. And you know, I know that people there, I took to them every day and so it's really heartbreaking. Now come into the West Bank, it's not much, much, much better because in the West Bank, the Israeli bombarding on daily basis, also certain cities, especially in the north. Every day they enter into Bethlehem to detain young people. So within these 75 days, over 3,000 young Palestinians were detained in the West Bank and are in Israeli prisons. And you know, now the Israeli prisons, they compare them with Guatana'a. And you know, being in Bethlehem, you see the wall surrounding the city from three sides. You see 22 Jewish colonies taking 86% of our land. So we have only 14% of our land under our own control. So Bethlehem has become like a native reservation, basically. And this actually shows the settler colonial aspect of the Israeli state. So mentally, I mean, when you, it's actually horrifying what you're describing. Honestly, it's so, for me, of course, it's monumentally evil in a sense. It's so difficult to even respond to something like this. So my question is, and I guess our question is, what is the, how does one cope and how does one respond to this right away? I mean, how do you keep going is one question. And then how does it relate to, how do you tell people who are, for example, in the West, who are reading the Bible and who are, you know, thinking themselves as good people, for example, how do you translate this experience that you're going through, that you're witnessing to the reality, to their reality. So for example. Kedim and I were discussing earlier these stories of the Bible that are familiar to a lot of people here, but that they have no connection whatsoever to the reality that you're experiencing. So I'm just trying to understand, so how do you respond at a personal level to this sort of the depravity that we see and that you're seeing and witnessing? And then how do you translate this to people who are familiar with the Canaanites and the Israelites and all these other biblical stories but are not familiar with what's going on? Yeah, that's really a good question. For me as first as a person, I mean there is lots of anger and the question is what to do with this anger and for me the best way to deal with this anger is to channel it into advocacy and this is what I do almost 24/7 a day so I mean this is I think my 10th webinar this week alone and I think alone in this week I give maybe over 50 interviews to all different kinds of media outlets and so this is how I try to tell the story of my people because I think this is the most important thing, you know our problem really was that our story was silence, our narrative is not known and even now in the social media there was a study that came out just out today showing how even on meta and many other social platforms the Palestinian voice actually is being chucked by the media and silence so that's what we experience and this is why telling our story and the human story especially is really important. Now I come to the second point which is the biblical story, you know the biblical story and now it's it's Christmas time so maybe I can take Christmas as an example, you know I mean you live in the US and Christmas is about the reindeer and the white Christmas and the jingle bells and so on. Nothing of that has to do with the real Christmas story, I mean this is a commercialized society it's a consumer society and it's an 13 man society. In fact I read a study about most of the American Christmas songs they had nothing to do with Jesus, I mean think of jingle bells or think of I mean it's it talks about something to tell the end they were not written by Christians actually it's very interesting it's an entertainment while if we take the Christmas story and read it into this context you think this story is coming is written just now in Gaza because in the West they were reading the Bible through the lens of the empire, we read the Bible through the lens of the people of Palestine and remember the Bible did not originate in the Bible, right thanks God, I mean the Bible really is a product that came out of Palestine. I always like to tease my American friends and to tell them you know in the back of the Bible there is a stamp saying made in Palestine people forget that, right so so let's read you know the Christmas story because you are in the Christmas season you hear about a family from Nazareth which is north of Palestine ordered by an imperial degree to evacuate and to go register in the south and south does it sounds familiar it's a gazaan story today and then you have the pregnant Mary on the run imagine her journey from the north to the south which is a journey that 50,000 Palestinian pregnant women in Gaza right now are going through and they arrive in Bethlehem as displaced people as refugees and there is no place at the end where should Mary deliver at the end of the day Jesus is put in a manger because in Gaza today you know hospitals are out of service 300,000 buildings are totally destroyed so all these people are in the streets you see them or intense and this is where today the children the newborn children Gaza are coming to the world and then you have the story of King Herod who to stay in power ordered to massacre the children in Bethlehem and we have actually a chapel in Bethlehem for the innocent murdered children guess 8,000 gazaan children have been murdered in this atrocity just for Netanyahu to stay longer in power like Herod and then you have the the song of the of the angels glory to God in the highest peace on earth which is actually it's a critique of the empire because it says glory belongs to to the Almighty not to the Almighty to the Almighty not to the Almighty and that peace is not the Pax Romana it's not the peace that the Roman Empire wanted to bring by subjugating nations and by military operation but it is the peace that is based on human dignity equality and justice and so if you read the story this way through the lens of Palestine who has been living through all of these you know occupations and their imperial rule it's start making sense but what the West the Empire transformed this spiritualized it and commercialized it so it became out of context but for us actually it is it's a very very important this is why when when I read the Bible we need to liberate the Bible from this Western occupation it's not only that our land was occupied it's our by-bid or so is occupied by the empire and this is what I tried to to write about in my book decolonizing Palestine this is just one example Mithri if I can follow up on that on just going back to the part of Osama's question has to do with you know here in the US when we encounter so-called Christian Zionists and I reserve the rights call them so-called because to me there seems to be a disconnect between between Zionism and what I understand Christianity to be but which we could talk about but just there seems to be I mean first of all a disconnect in the sense that there's a there's a almost total lack of awareness of Palestinian Christians as a whole not just a group among other Palestinians I mean Palestine has always been as Osama had other people have taught us you know an ecumenical community historically so Christians played it have always played an important role in Palestine culturally and so forth Christians have played a very important role intellectually and politically in the Palestinian struggle we can name very prominent Palestinian Christians who've been major figures in the Palestinian struggle but first of all so my first question I guess is Palestinian Christians seem to drop out of the picture in a kind of amazing way people in America for example when when it comes up at all it's always sort of we need on the question of Palestine we need to attend to what they call here anti-Semitism and Islamophobia and like Palestinian Christians drop out of the picture entirely so let's talk a little bit about Palestinian Christians and then secondly this you know ultimately work our way towards the not just the misreading of the Bible but the whole kind of this whole status of a kind of culture of what I will call so-called Christian Zionism and so there's a two kind of broad areas of discussion yeah thank you yeah I mean you know the Palestinian Christian community is as old you know as the New Testament it's a two thousand year history I mean again Jesus was born in Bukhlehem Palestine not in Bukhlehem, Pennsylvania and for the last two thousand years there has been a Christian a very vital Christian presence in this country so we are not converts from Islam on the contrary this is where our roots are so my family goes back to ancient history in Bukhlehem actually where Bukhlehem are this is where our roots are and I think this story indeed is not known abroad this is why one of my first books was called "I'm a Palestinian Christian" just to connect being Palestinian and being Christian was like wow a revelation for people abroad for us it's like something that's the natural I mean you know this is where it's all started the first machineries did not come from the mission list from the Midwest so it's it's all started here and as you said Christians have been playing a major role and are still playing a major role you know we did a study four years ago about the Christian institutions active today in Palestine, especially Gaza, West Bank and East Jerusalem. There are around 300 of them. Guess what? We found out that if we take them together, they constitute the third largest employer in Palestine. After, I mean, the country, the government is the first largest employer. The second largest is the Androa, the UN Relief and Work Organizations active in the refugee camp. And then, church-related organizations, they employ around 10,000 people. Though Christians and the West Bank and Gaza are less than 50,000, but they employ 10,000. And then when we looked at the health sector, Christian institutions run one-third of the health services in the West Bank and Gaza. People now heard about the hospital in Gaza, the Christian hospital. In the educational sector, we have over 100 Christian schools. We have two universities and two colleges that are Christian. Birzid University started as a Christian university almost 100 years ago. So I mean, Christians continue and everyone knows one of your relatives like Edward Said, a Palestinian Christian, who really became very famous through working on Orientalism and post-colonialism. Yeah, so yeah, we are part and parcel of the Palestinian people. We are not a minority because we are part of the majority of the Palestinians. We are not a marginalized group. Christians are active in all sectors of the society. And, you know, our identity is, you know, we are Arab, Palestinian, Christians, even secular. You know, I consider myself, though I'm a pastor, I consider myself to be more of a secular spectrum of the society. So I mean, it's, you know, it's all these multiple identities that we carry with us. Now, regarding your second question about Christian Zionism, you know, the thing is the Bible, I describe it often as the Bazar in the old city of Jerusalem. Now, I'm not sure if you have been there, but you have been, I'm sure, maybe also in Lebanon, in Bazar's and so on. You can find almost everything. So, if you want texts that talks about settler colonialism, it is there. You go to the book of Joshua. And Netanyahu was able to find it because, you know, he talked about Amalek. When he announced that Israeli troops are entering Gaza, he quoted first somewhere in 153 where God is telling Saul, go in and kill everyone, don't spare anyone, men, women, elderly people, children, ox and sheep. And this is exactly what Netanyahu is doing. This is exactly what Israeli military are doing. And it's not by chance that Netanyahu quoted the Bible to actually, for this genocide. If you want to find in the Bible texts of liberation, of justice, it's there, you know, you go to the prophets, you go to the teaching of Jesus. So, what you find in the Bible does not say a lot about the Bible, but it says about you. And so, the Christian Zionists are actually, if you look carefully, these are, if I talk now about the Christian Zionist interstates, actually they are American Christian nationalist. This is their religion. And they weaponize the Bible towards that goal. This is their identity. And this identity, I called it in my book The Meta Narrative for Them, stands above the Bible. So, then they find the verses that fits their national religious identity. It's very dangerous. You know, once you start, you know, blending religion with nationalism, it's very, very dangerous. It's dangerous in Judaism, it's dangerous in Christianity, and it's dangerous in Islam. And just quickly, on that particular, sorry, Karim, on that particular question, because it's so, as somebody, so my scholarship was on the poet William Blake, the poet artist, who was a profound Christian thinker, of course, of the ultimate, I think, radical variety, interested in liberation and freedom and equality and justice and fighting against the empire of his own time. But what strikes me about these so-called Christian Zionists in the US is that they seem to, I mean, as you're saying, they cherry pick what they want from the Bible. They seem to have an obsession with the most sort of violent bits of the Old Testament, and then they seem to fast forward to the revelation. And what's striking to me is, as somebody who comes out this from my own, my own, our collective, my brothers and my family background. And obviously, also, from my reading of Blake, striking is that they all the parts about Jesus, they seem to skip all that, which is the parts about love and forgiveness and sharing and equality, which animate somebody, like Blake, and animates many in our family too, if not theologically, then at least as matters of moral, principle and political principle as well. To me, it's amazing to see how they just skip all that, they never seem to be interested in what Jesus has to say, which I always find just particularly ironic. Sorry, can you be who can ask something? No, I don't know if Mitchell wants to respond to that directly. No, I agree. I agree. And I think they are anxious for Armageddon. This is why they love wars. And actually, deep down, if you look at it, they are the most antisemitic people. Why? Because they want to bring all the Jews to Palestine so that two-thirds of them will be killed and this Armageddon. And the last third will convert to Christianity, so they are calling for the any elation of the Jewish people. This is what they are calling for. But Netanyahu has no problem to share a bit with them, not out of love, but to fulfill their ugly desires. Yeah, if you don't mind, I'd like to kind of push a little bit on this question. So first, if you could clarify this question of the Israelites in the Bible, what they are as opposed to the modern days, where they are going to make that connection, just because to me, sometimes it's not clear. I'm sure that a lot of people are not clear in this kind of claim of the second and kind of related to this. And you're talking about the rapture and the Armageddon and this kind of annihilation, and a lot of this vengeful kind of Old Testament kind of stuff. I'm very curious about how it is that and I think I've heard you speak before about Palestine being the ultimate melting pot, where there's this coexistence, some is written by coexistence, so this on history of coexistence, in our area, in fact, our region through the Christianity and through other religions as well in our region, in the Meschite region anyway. And as opposed to these modern day Christian Zionists, as you say, the kind of nationalist, very, you know, and the settel colonial Zionist Israeli kind of state. So these two very ethnic, very nationalist, very exclusionist versus Palestine and Palestinians and our region as this kind of melting pot of coexistence, I don't know if you could just clarify this a little bit. Yeah, maybe two things, let me say two things. I hope I can answer your question. The first thing is in my other book, Faith in the Face of Empire, I tried actually, I think I'm so far, maybe the only theologian or the first theologian to work on this, reading the Bible through a geopolitical lens. So the heminatical key for the Bible for me is the geopolitical lens, which means I cannot read the Bible without doing a political and socio-political analysis. For me, the Bible actually, if you look at the oldest texts there are maybe 3000 years old, the oldest oldest. Guess what? This is exactly the same time that empire emerged in our region. And so actually the the Bible for me was a kind of what the Sankana Fanny, the Palestinian poet, called literature of resistance. This is how I read the Bible. It's a literature of resistance. It's not a literature of settler colonians. And the question of God is very much connected to the question of empire. Why? Because the empire behaves like God. There are only a potent, they have all their military equipment and might. They have all their economical wealth, they have all their media and cultural control. And when you are occupied by an empire, this triggers the question about God, where are you? I mean, this is the question of people in Gaza, you know, I mean, God, where are you? I mean, why can't you stop this at all? And this is why actually if you come to the teaching of Jesus at the heart of Jesus' message was he came to proclaim what we call the kingdom of God, but this is not a gender neutral. So the reign of God and the reign of God is the answer to the empire. The empire that comes with military, some gigation and the kingdom of God that is based on justice. Now this brings me to answer your question about the Israelites. The Israelites on the Bible are one section of the Palestinian people of that time that were fighting the empires, a Syrian, Babylonian, Persian, Greek, Roman. These are the empires actually in the Bible. Fast forward, we should not connect the Israelites of the Bible with the Israel of today, but rather from a geopolitical aspect. It's the Palestinians of today that they share a similar context like the Israelites of the Bible. And so if you want to understand the Bible for me, we have to listen to the Palestinian voices because they live as I showed in the story of Christmas, they still share that story. So this is the first thing I wanted to say. The other thing you are right. And I think, you know, Samah is the great thinker who wrote the age of coexistence, which I love. And I think this is exactly what we need. So Palestine was always, always pluralistic society. There was never ever one group of people that was able to control or like one religion or it was always diverse, always pluralistic. And so as Palestinians, we don't have problems with the Jews. Judaism was part and this part of Palestine. Christianity is part has been part of Palestine and Islam as well. And we have others, you know, we have druz and we have, you know, many other. Problem is not with the Jews because they are part of for me. I mean, the idea of a Palestinian Jew, I mean, Jesus is a Palestinian Jew is not a contradiction. Today we think this is a contradiction, no, not at all. The Jews of Palestine were sharing our history, our story. They were part of us. They were in part of the empire. Our problem became when actually the empire 19th century British empire decided to use the Jews of Europe as subcontractors for the empire. And this is why today, if you look at the atrocity in Gaza, our problem is not only with Israel, it's the empire. And this is why, holding his book about the 100-year war on Palestine, you know, I mean what what Russia is right now since two years in Ukraine is facing the Western empire. We as Palestinians, we have been facing this empire for the last 100 years. And I think Israel is so crazy now because they are realizing even after 100 years, they couldn't get rid of us. The Palestinians, the steadfast, the resilience, the resistance, became something of our DNA because we have this long history with empires. You know, in one of my books in faith or the faith of empire, I said, you know, when you hear the first of Jesus' blessed are the meek, they were inherited the earth. I mean, I thought Jesus is crazy. It doesn't make sense to me because the meek is not the one. But if you read this through a long Dure empire, and they weren't able to stay, it's the people, it's the poor people. Even you know those educated and rich people, they go to the empire, you know. It's really the poor people, they stay behind and they inherit the earth. So again, reading it through the lens of the people of the land, the Palestinians, it's amazing because it makes sense. Could I follow up, maybe on this, sorry, can I just a quick question on this? So by extension, can we understand the, you know, what I see, unless I miss something, the kind of absence, these very public absence of Christian solidarity with Palestinians, I mean Christian outside of the measure anyway. I mean, as those institutions and leaders lining up with empire as opposed to with fellow Christians, I mean, is this how it is, the Western churches and even the other churches that I'll see, even the Orthodox churches, I don't know, I haven't heard very much. So, I mean, okay, now he's maybe a little bit beginning here and there to say some things, but it's taken forever. How do you, I mean, you know, without wanting to, how does one assess the lack of empathy and lack of of feeling of being outraged as a human, as a Christian human, as a humanist, the Christian humanist, let's say, you know, especially as you were saying earlier with the lessons of Jesus and, and, and the kind of those lessons that Jesus teaches. And the suffering that's there in addition to the fact that the power of being the land of Christ over, you know, coming towards Christmas time, this total absence or near absence of outrage and discussion. How do you explain this? Yeah, I think, you know, most many of the Western churches, not all of them are hostage of vampire and, you know, I showed this for as as one example in my book about the politics of persecution, where I quote, Sam, a lot in that book. And I give, I give many examples how this happened, but let me hear mention one, which is in the first world war when Germany was aligned with the Ottoman Empire. And at that time, the emperor, the German emperor was not only the political head of Germany, but also actually the head of the church. And he ordered, he himself ordered when the Armenians were experiencing genocide, not to raise this issue at all, because this is against the interest of Germany. And so the church in Germany, as well as the government, they stayed silent and they allowed 1.5 million Armenians to be massacre by the Ottomans. This is one example that shows you actually what's coming on, however, having said that I'm glad that there are churches in the states, for example, who are very vocal, the Presbyterian church, UCC disciples to some extent Lutherans and Methodist, these are the mainline churches, but they don't have political teeth. That's the problem. The political teeth is with the Christian Zionists, because the Christian Zionists are very much in bed with the Israel lobby. And so their voice and their political is amplified. This is really our problem with the churches. And we need to keep challenging them, and this is what I try to do. But sometimes, to tell you the truth, we are also upset with our own Christian leadership here in Jerusalem. Yesterday, for example, they met with the Israeli president and had a picture with him and breakfast with him. While that's the same guy, you know, said, let's destroy Gaza, not leave stone on stone. I mean, I will stop because otherwise, if I start there. I was going to ask you, why would they do that? We can come back to that. You can try to answer that question a little later, since you don't want to get into those details. But I have a question following up from what Kedim and what said he was asking earlier. There's a story that you have in your book, a narrative of vignette of this experience you had in, and this brings us to the question of how you respond and how we should respond or how people should respond. And there's a vignette where you talk about a German theologian, a famous liberal German theologian. By the name, if I'm not mistaken, Mark Markhart or, yeah, who came to Jerusalem in the 1980s and gave you a lecture, gave you a Palestinian native Christian a lecture about how you should leave the country and get up because you stand you as a Palestinian Christian stand in God's way. Because this belongs to the Jewish people he told you. And I'm wondering, given that, I mean, it's just an extraordinary story that you tell, I mean, how you were shocked by it and how anyone, honestly, anyone who's not, who doesn't believe in this Christian sign would also be shocked by it. But how do you respond? And this is the question that we've been asking in a sense, and we keep hearing, how do you respond to people when they tell you this things. And when, for example, the Christian sign this today or the Germans, for example, talking about we have to. atone for the Holocaust and deal with the history of Western anti-Semitism. How do you deal with that? How do you tell them and how do you think words matter or do you think they're, do you think you have an effect when you, I'm really thinking about the emotional and intellectual response to these kinds of provocations, honestly. Yeah, you know, Mark Watt actually presented a different blend of Christian Zionism. It's not like the American blend of these crazy evangelicals. Actually, Mark Watt himself was a socialist, very liberal on everything except on Palestine. And so when he told me after a panel discussion, "You stand God in the way, if I wear you, I will back my luggage and go and leave this land to its right owners," meaning the Israeli, actually he thought he's doing God the favor, he's doing the Israeli favor. In my book, I explained that this blend actually, the meat and narrative there is the Holocaust. And guess what? Mark Watt himself was serving in the Nazi Germany as a soldier. He did that to the Jewish people in Germany and now he is trying to show himself as the big supporter of Israel to make up for what he did there, asking us to pay the price for their sins. And I always tell the Germans, if you want to do a tonment great, you should, but not on our cost, because then you are actually doing not only one sin, you are doing two sins. But with time, I came to realize something else. I came to realize that actually these theologians and again to the question actually of Karim about the churches, many of these churches and theologians and people, they like to side with those in power. So they sided against the Jews and not the German because they were not the one in power. They sided against the Armenians because they were not the one in power. They are siding against the Palestinians because we are not one in power. So because they are, they want to be on the side of the power. And this is where they feel actually their place is. And again, I come back to geopolitics. Jesus was not siding with those in power, but with those power. And so the church in that sense loses actually its calling and its loses its essence when they side with those in power. And this is why we need always to call them to that. So just to follow up in terms of an intellectual, but what's the, I mean, so you're, how do you, do you try to argue with them, Mitri? Because my question is, you're talking about people who fundamentally don't see you as relevant, historically, ethically, let alone theologically. They don't see you as you as in other words, Palestinians as relevant, and not just you as an individual. So how do you, my question is, do you argue with them or do you think we should not be addressing them? We should be addressing other people, younger generations, or how do you, do you see what I'm saying? How it's, it's, they seem to be set in their way and nothing is going to change them. Right. Right. You know, I mean, there is a group of Christian Zionists that I think it's a waste of time to engage with them. They are lost. It's a hopeless case. Sorry to say that, but, but there are certain segments that it makes sense to, to talk to them. If I take the US as an example, among young evangelicals, there is a change. They are very much open. In fact, yesterday I had the webinar with them. Why are they open because they discover justice as an important element of Christianity and of their faith? Not, you know, all of these other things that sin that, and they asked me yesterday, a lot about sin, because they were obsessed with this, you know, their, their spiritualized understanding of sin. While I told them, for me, yes, sin, we talked about it. It's about the structural oppression. This is what we need to talk about. This is the sin. So, so when we talk about the US, these young people are, are starting their eyes are opening, becoming more and more realizing that, you know, just social justice is important. I mean, you know, what is happening to the African American, this is very much has to do with the gospel. What's happening to the Native American is something that has to do with the gospel. So, they are starting to realizing the importance of social justice and justice. And if you need, if you are looking for one example where the whole issue is about justice, it's Palestine. Here, you have the issue of justice very dense, like in no other place. Here in Palestine, you have settler colonialism, you have racism, you have orientalism, you have apartheid, you have, I mean, Islamophobia. I mean, you know, all of it is concentrated in Palestine. And right now, people in Germany is projecting all of this into us and they hate us. And so, I stopped giving interviews to German newspaper because, you know, it's really hopeless case. But there are other certain segments where, where it makes sense and we should really work hard to tell our story. And I think people who are of good faith and who have an open heart and open eyes and open ears, they will change. And they so in my, you know, in my life, so many people are changing, so many people are changing. So, the first time I went to the States was back in 1991. People even didn't know that they are Palestinian Christians. Today, churches in the US, as I said, are very articulate. You know, I'm invited to speak at so many places, by so many different groups of people. So, yes, but we have to do something about it. Change will not come from heaven down to us. It has to be bottom up and we are called to do something about it. And I think this is exactly what Jesus was saying that he preached about the reign of God, but he told these marginalized people in Palestine at that time, you know, you are the ambassadors of this kingdom. You are cool to make the difference. Nobody else will do it unless you do it. And that's a very, we're going to wrap soon. That's a very powerful sort of way to and can you have a question? Do you want to jump in? I wanted to ask, and we've been talking about the West and the US. I'm in Beirut, and I wanted, you know, you had mentioned a little bit earlier about some of the Palestinian churches in Jerusalem and others. What about the larger Christian Eastern Christian setup here? And whether there has been some kind of solidarity coming within this region, within the churches from here, or how does that work? Or is there not that kind of expectation? Or, you know, so the relationship in a sense that I'm understanding from you is that many of the big churches, the established forms that are connected to Christian Zionism and connected to kind of American politicians and European politicians, these people serve the empire as opposed to Christianity per se. What about the Eastern Christian? Is it the same apply? I mean, are we, are they connected to the empires that are here or even the Western empires? Or is this also an individual pastor level? Individual church level? I'm just if I could add to Karim's question too, to, I mean, to double down in a way, specifically for example, the Greek Orthodox Church, I mean, after all St. Porphyrius Church was bombed in Gaza, right, a couple of few weeks ago, the Armenian church, you know, was given what's happening in, with the Armenian community in Jerusalem, for example, that just ramped up dispossession and violence against the Armenian community. So those kinds of churches too, it's such, and of course, the Arab Church is as well. So I think, I don't know if Karim, if you meant all of the East as opposed to the Arab world specifically, but I would also want to know what about the Armenian church, what about the B.C. Orthodox Church, what do they have to say, and why, how can we understand their silence? Are they also, you know, on the side of empire in that sense? You know, again, I think it's, there is a big spectrum within the churches in the West, but also in in our region. If I take, for example, Lebanon since-- that you mentioned. I mean, last Monday, there was in Palestine, they called for a day of mourning and strike. And Lebanon actually, people went on strike in support of Palestine. So you could see that there is something. And many of the Arab states, you see people actually are marching. Where they are allowed to march, they are marching on the streets. And some countries they are not allowed to march in support of Palestine. They are in the Greek Orthodox Church. I mean, we miss like Greek Orthodox leaders, like George Huddord, the Bishop George Huddord in Lebanon. He was a great hero, and very outspoken on Palestine. He worked on Islam, and he knows that, I think, very well. I mean, so there are these voices, but also there are the other voices, that because of what happened, if I take Lebanon again as an example, because of what happened in the 60s and 70s, maybe there are some sensibilities. I mean, there is now in the last few weeks because I was so outspoken on Gaza, there was one from those, lajd people, you know, those southern Lebanon who were collaborating with Israel, who was attacking me on daily basis on social media. So I mean, you have also these voices, definitely, because in this case, he works for the empire, collaborator with Israel. So yeah, so we have all of this, we should not lose hope, in fact, when I see all the people who are pouring into the streets in so many countries, I see that humanity is still alive. I see, you know, these especially young people are ready to speak up for justice. And so really, that gives us lots of hope, including many Jewish groups, like Jewish voices for peace, not in my name and others, because if you believe in justice, irrespective of what your religion is, Palestine is the issue that you have to take on. - Mithri, thank you for that. I'd like to wrap with two final questions, because I agree with you, on terms of, we're almost at the hour, but I agree with you, of course, that there's a Jewish emancipatory tradition. There's an Islamic emancipatory tradition. And as you said, there's, there's, and Palestine is a moral compass for all these traditions. And it's revealing, so revealing in terms of what you're saying. So from that, the last questions we have are the questions of, what is an ethical resistance? And a very difficult question would be about the question of violence and all that stuff. But since you are a theologian and you are someone who's not just a theologian, you're also Palestinian, what is ethical resistance to you and what message would you have at the end since we're going to release this on Christmas day, probably this podcast, or this episode? What message would you have for individuals, as well as churches, but also individuals, institutions, around the world about standing in solidarity? My sense is that they could take a lot of messages from what you've said over the past hour. But specifically, the question of resistance, what is ethical resistance to you? I know this could be another 10 hours, but how would you close with a message for people? What should they do? Because a lot of people keep asking, what can we do? - Yeah, that's a very important and difficult question. For us, it's important when we think of this question to align it with international law, to align it with human rights charge, but also to align it with the heart of the gospel in our document, the Kairos Palestine document. We talked about creative resistance. When I hear the news say in the US, talking about the right of Israel to defend itself, I mean, the occupier tried to defend themselves. So what about our right to defend ourselves? And the international law answers that question. For me, personally, what I thought maybe the most powerful tool was to establish a university with a focus on arts, culture and design. For me, that is maybe the most important aspect of resistance. I mean, look now, one image of Jesus, of this crash with Jesus in the Robin was much more powerful than many other things. When I see the films that our students are producing, telling our story, the human story, a much more powerful than many other things. And so how can we, for me, that the submission became basically to educate the next generation of creative leaders for Palestine who can communicate our story. And not just through political slogans, but through new creative mediums that are today, through a post, through a small video, you can touch hearts and minds of people like no other thing. So for me, that was the answer I found for myself. And I'm so proud of our students. And again, coming back to Gaza, you know, I went there the first time, where after 20 years I was banned from going there by Israel. So the first time I went there, I met three young artists. I came back to Berlin and within two weeks, over 200 young artists from Gaza added me on Facebook. And they were telling me, you know, come, we need you in Gaza because we need just space, and skills to be able to tell our story the best way. And so for me, that was really the answer. So what can people do? Usually I say five things. They are the five piece that I like. The first, as a pastor, I say, pray, we need your prayers. Though a sister in Gaza, a sister, a Catholic sister, told me, stop praying. We need more than praying. This is why we cannot stop there with the one P, because I hear many Christians telling me, you know, we're praying for you. I say, great, but praying alone is not enough. So the second P is political advocacy. It is very important for people in the States to write their representative. I have friends who are writing their representative and even present by the on daily basis. It's important because whenever I go to Congress, they tell me, you know, your people, they come here maybe twice a month. The Israel lobby are here almost on weekly basis. So they need to hear that there are people who care for Palestine. But again, that's also not enough. We need part of that advocacy to go to the streets, to march in the streets and to demand justice, to demand ceasefire, to demand just peace. So that's the second P. The third P are pilgrimages, but not to come here to run where Jesus walk, but to come on a solidarity visit. Right now, actually, we have a South African delegation on a solidarity visit to Palestine and to the people in Gaza. Tomorrow, we are having a joint service together with them. Very important because once you see the wall, once you see the Jewish colonists, once you see the checkpoint and what we have to endure on daily basis, eyes would open immediately. The fourth P are products. It's important to buy products that are made in Palestine. You have agricultural products. You have now for Christmas ornaments coming out of Bethlehem. You have books to read books that are written by Palestinian authors or on Palestine. Yeah, we need people to have, to buy Palestinian products. And the fifth is a pick a project to support. It could be a scholarship for a student in Gaza. It could be something for a displaced person in Gaza. It could be, I mean, something tangible where you share this. And my last, in my message to the world today on Christmas, you know, Bethlehem gave Jesus to the world. I think it's high time. for the world to give a just piece to Bethlehem to Gaza to Palestine. Thank you so much, Mithu. This was really genuinely inspiring. And I just based on that, I just wondered what there's Christmas in Bethlehem, how would it be? What is it? Yeah, please. I mean, churches decided to cancel all Christmas celebrations, all the packaging and the festivities and the glamour and so on. What we will do, for example, tomorrow, our university and few other civil societies, we are actually inaugurating a large scale manger with destroyed a building on manger square with the family, holy family in the rubble there, but it's a huge scale and the one that you see in them. So this is going to be inaugurated tomorrow. And then there will be five children sending love messages from the children of Bethlehem to the children in Gaza, life on air. And then there will be huge banners in black cloth with white writing on them, talking about Gaza. There will be a service, as I said, with our South African friends, it's going to be broadcasted live on 20 different social platforms. And so again, it's a creative ways of telling the Christmas story, but also our morning as Palestinians at this time of the year. And I'm sure that many of the even American channels are going to show some of that. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you for all that you do. And in the circumstances, we of course, wish you all the best. And we would say we pray, but given what you said, we hope that you're well and you stay well. And of course, that justice comes to Palestine, this Christmas or as soon as possible. We wish you all the well, all the best. Thank you again for all that you've been doing. No, thank you, Sam. Thank you very much. Thank you so much. No, thank you. But the most important thing you see is the three of you. So guys, I think that was an incredible episode. Honestly, incredibly moving, incredibly powerful testimony and witness of Mithri, who of course is in Palestine and Bethlehem. That was at first, there was an element of despair. And then by the end, you know, again, our spirits are have to be in solidarity with everyone there. And what do you think? I think he spoke very eloquently to this question of speaking about speaking against empire. And so in our previous podcast, we talked about or Elon talked about the business of global Israel and global Palestine. And here, really, it's about it's and Kehri me we were saying earlier, there's no longer the global south, global north doesn't make sense anymore as actual geographies. So do you want to just to be rough on that point? I think that's an important point. Yeah, I think it's quite interesting. I think many started, especially in as we're coming to Christmas, I think he started this idea of retelling the story of Christmas as a kind of parable of Gaza, as it was going on now, that I was really really interesting. And this business of empire versus, you know, the Christian Zionists and others taking the side of the big institution, taking the states, taking the side of empire versus the the the people in the biblical tradition and in in the Palestinian tradition. And Jesus himself being sort of fighting against the empire. I think that's really, you know, quite I found quite profound in that sense as well as that's what liberation theology is all about, taking Jesus in that sense of fighting against empire as opposed to just serving empire. Serving empire exactly in that kind of sense. I thought that was really, and the second point and it related to that that I pushed in that was really interesting was precisely that Palestinians from the very beginning and Palestinian Christians from the very beginning is all about this, you know, what today you call diversity, but this kind of multi-cultural coexistence, you know, it's open for everybody. There is no one denomination or only one kind of person's diverse. It's it's people that are coming and going, groups that are coming and going and there's always, and we see it here in Beirut in Lebanon, we have Christmas celebrations coming up. You see it's opened to everybody, you know, everybody in Beirut in Lebanon, the idea of Christmas, it's there, it's normal. So it's not something so strange and it's as opposed to this Christian Zionist nationalism that he was talking about or as opposed to Zionism itself and the Israeli state, which is hell bent on ethnic cleansing, hell bent on imposing a certain fanatical interpretation, you know, of an ethnic nationalist state that's there. I thought this this I think is something that is not appreciated as much, you know, that something that even people in solidarity don't appreciate as much in terms of we just don't understand it necessarily, even if we're living it, we don't really understand it how important that tradition is. Yeah, and Sally, do you want to do it? You had something to say also about our our family's traditions, so to speak. I mean, yeah, I couldn't help thinking as he was talking, you know, as powerful. He was very powerful, I think, as you said, but I also was thinking in terms of our own family history that, you know, our our mother's grandfather was the first Arab pastor in Palestine, our great grandfather on our father's side. Our name comes from the fact that he was a Jewry, he was a Greek Orthodox priest who went to Jerusalem from Lebanon, came back to Jerusalem as that Jewry and Muckthesie, the the you know, the priest of Jerusalem, the one who went to Jerusalem on a pilgrimage. So there's a we have deep family ties to these questions too. And Edward Said himself, who's our uncle, this the his work on secularism and so you know, he's known as a secular critic and people often misread that word in the context of Edward's work to think about secular as opposed to religious. That's not that was never it for Edward, partly because of our own which means his own family tradition, his own, you know, his own location in in Palestine and Christianity, you know, writ large as a as a cultural political press and intellectual formation, not a theological one, but secularism for Edward meant that what Mitri was talking about, it means that the the an interest in in challenging orthodoxy and challenging power and challenging state religion and challenging, you know, empire obviously above all right and speaking for the dispossess, speaking for the downtrodden. So I mean exactly they really maps onto what Mitri was talking about, you know, very neatly. And the last thing on in this connection is there's obviously, you know, some of you were saying this earlier, there's an ecumenical component to both what Edward talks about in secular as opposed to, you know, orthodox culture. And then what Mitri was talking about too, this presence of a Palestinian, you know, Christianity that's an important part of a ecumenical fabric as he was saying that goes back, you know, through history, Palestine has always been, I mean, you should be the one talking about this as I'm about to say Palestine has always had this ecumenical frame to it. There's a there's a, you know, Muslims, Christians and Jews, that's what Palestine is. It's what it's his what it has always been. So I think it's important to see that in this context against an other, you know, a violently exclusive state project. 100% and it's not just that it always was, it always will be almost certainly. And the question of course is, what he said was something. If we come to them, the Zionism, Azina Papi was talking about in the previous colonial, colonial Zionism, yeah, absolutely. But what he said, what Mitri said is so interesting that the idea of cherry picking, I mean, the point is that the Bible or the Quran or or Jewish religious texts, all these things is the question of, right, it's all this question of which part are we going to emphasize, which phrases are we going to emphasize. And what he said that struck me the most was it doesn't tell you anything about the Bible. It tells you really about the person who's reading the Bible or reading the Quran or reading, you know, various texts like the Jewish theological. It's amazing, right? This is the idea that that this is ultimately nothing to do at one level, that the most human level has nothing to do with with with religion as such. It has to do with the interpretation of these texts and the person, of course, doing these interpretations. And I think on that note, I think we should probably wrap this because it really was, I'm still struck by how powerful his testimony is. Can he go ahead? Yeah, just just a connectable, it's that he's saying there. I think, you know, he himself, Mitri says that he, you know, one point he's saying, I'm secular. And so it's an interesting way that he says, he's the priest and he's often the pastor and he's saying, I'm secular. And then of course, he, you know, he explained it, but it's the this precise of this way, meaning in that liberation theology way of interpreting Jesus as fighting empire and as a resistant person and therefore we'll go back to the story of Ezdi now and resisting this empire which is not just the Israeli state but the larger empire that's backing the Israeli state and all the other collaborates that go along with it. I think that's incredibly important to emphasize and the theory of saying in our climate we have this kind of connection and this will and the need to resist these kinds of empires. Well wishing you all I mean I wish we could all be together but you know I wish I wish it was Christmas in a better in a better time but we'll keep going and see you guys soon take care. Happy Christmas. Happy Christmas. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]