A Palestinian minister’s Good Friday sermon portrayed Israel’s continuing massacre of Gazan civilians as a mirror image of the passion and subsequent crucifixion of Jesus at the hands of a brutal foreign power.
“Today, we place the cross in the rubble, remembering that Jesus shared the same fate with us as he died on the Cross as a victim of the colonizers,” Evangelical Lutheran pastor and theologian Munther Isaac preached in a March 29 homily livestreamed on YouTube.
Munther Isaac
“Today we remember the arrest, trial, torture and execution of Jesus Christ on the cross of the Roman empire. On the Cross, injustice, oppression and pain are evident — the injustice of those who rejected him and condemned him out of the fear for their throne and the oppression of those who occupy, tyrannize and oppress the land and people for the sake of their ambitions,” said Isaac, the pastor of two congregations in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
The United Nations estimates at least 32,000 Palestinians have died and 70,000 have been wounded since Israel’s October invasion of the Gaza Strip. The offensive came in retaliation for raids by Hamas terrorists into Israel from Gaza, resulting in the deaths of more than 1,200 Israelis and foreign nationals and the taking of 253 hostages.
Israel’s retaliatory assault by air, land and sea not only has killed and wounded tens of thousands of civilians but has disrupted aid deliveries so severely that the World Health Organization warns of imminent famine in the Gaza Strip.
“Before this crisis, there was enough food in Gaza to feed the population. Malnutrition was a rare occurrence. Now, people are dying, and many more are sick. Over a million people are expected to face catastrophic hunger unless significantly more food is allowed to enter Gaza,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.
The U.N.’s World Food Program announced the threshold for famine already has been “far exceeded” in the Gaza Strip.
“People in Gaza are starving to death right now. The speed at which this man-made hunger and malnutrition crisis has ripped through Gaza is terrifying,” WFP Executive Director Cindy McCain said. “There is a very small window left to prevent an outright famine and to do that we need immediate and full access to the north. If we wait until famine has been declared, it’s too late. Thousands more will be dead.”
Isaac described the arrival of famine as a “new phase of the war of genocide” in which disease and hunger are used as weapons against the Palestinian people in Gaza just as the Romans used hunger and thirst to multiply Jesus’ suffering on the Cross.
“Today, Gaza screams, ‘I am thirsty’ and they drop aid from the sky stained with the blood of the innocents.”
“He shouted, ‘I am thirsty,’ so they gave him vinegar to drink. They added more pain to his pain, more anguish to his anguish. Today, Gaza screams, ‘I am thirsty’ and they drop aid from the sky stained with the blood of the innocents. Some have been killed by drowning while trying to pull the dropped aid from the sea. How difficult the situation is. How cruel it is.”
The U.S. Department of Defense said March 31 that U.S. Air Force aircraft dropped more than 50,000 military-style meal kits into northern Gaza. “The DoD humanitarian airdrops contribute to ongoing U.S. and partner-nation government efforts to alleviate human suffering. These airdrops are part of a sustained effort, and we continue to plan follow-on aerial deliveries.”
A Palestinian child at a makeshift tent in Rafah, amid the battles between Israel and Hamas. (Photo by: Abed Rahim Khatib/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images)
But for some, the supplies have resulted in more suffering. In one incident, at least a dozen Gazans drowned trying to retrieve packages that landed in the Mediterranean Sea, CNN reported: “Footage obtained by CNN shows hundreds of Palestinians rushing to the site of the aid drop, with some venturing into the water as parcels crashed down on the shores of Gaza. One graphic scene shows civilians performing CPR on several unresponsive bodies in a desperate attempt to resuscitate them.”
It is for just such tragedies that Jesus endured the Cross and the other forms of torture and indignity he suffered, Isaac said. “Who would have imagined that Easter would come upon us while Gaza was still being annihilated in this horrific way? This reminds me of my Jesus’ cry on the Cross — ‘I am thirsty’ — in solidarity with those being annihilated by famine and siege. He stands in solidarity with all the victims of wars and forced famine caused by unjust and tyrannical regimes in our world.”
Likewise, Gazans have been ridiculed in their suffering as Christ was ridiculed by his captors, he added. “Christ was hanging on the cross and they mocked him, gloated and challenged him to come down from the Cross. (Israeli) soldiers broadcast scenes of their gloating as they massacre Gaza neighborhood after neighborhood, house after house, and child after child.”
And as Christ did in the garden, the people of Gaza ask why God has forsaken them, the preacher asserted. “In this land, even the Son of God is a victim of oppression, death, the war machine and colonialism. He suffers with the people of this land, sharing the same fate with them. These words describe our reality today. It is a cry that resonates over the years. It is a cry of every oppressed person hanging in a state of slow death.”
Nevertheless, Isaac pointed to the Resurrection as the source of hope for Gaza.
“We took the symbol of Rome‘s power, and its humiliation of others, and made it a symbol of our strength and victory in the face of death,” he said. “Yes, we will rise. Let us face our reality with the faith of the Resurrection and that sorrow and death in Christ are our only way to Sunday dawn.”