608. Judaism: Part Two – What does the New Testament say about Israel? Israel and the Palestinians, Christians in the Holy Land, and more.

1 Jesus told a parable about vinedressers (the Jews) who were chosen to care for God’s vineyard but then rejected God’s servants (the prophets) and finally killed His Son and so “the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit.”  Matthew 21, Mark 12, Luke 20

2 Saint Paul described the Jewish nation (his own people!) as a branch that is cut off, while the Gentiles have been grafted on, because the Jews as a nation rejected their Messiah. Romans 11

3 Paul wrote that the true sons of Abraham are not those who are physical heirs of Abraham but those who follow Abraham in his faith. Galatians 3

4 When, in Galatians 6:16, Paul speaks of the “Israel of God”, he is clearly talking about the Church.

5 Hebrews says God “has made the first [covenant] obsolete. Now what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away”. Hebrews 8

6 Saint Peter wrote “They stumbled in their disbelief, but [applying Old Testament images of the nation of Israel to the Church], now you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people…you are the people of God.” I Peter 2

7 Jesus predicted that the nation of Israel would be destroyed (as it was by the Romans forty years later, and the Jews were scattered): “They will not leave one stone upon another… because you did not know the time of your visitation”. Luke 19

8 Is there still a promised land? Yes, but not in the Middle East or anywhere on earth. Jesus said to Pilate, “My Kingdom is not of this world.” John 18

These are a few of the New Testament passages that make it clear that the Church is now the new Israel. We Orthodox see the New Testament as unequivocal and consistent about this: When the Jews rejected their Messiah, the Church succeeded them as God’s Chosen People.

Based on a misreading and peculiar misuse of Old Testament prophecies, we hear a very different view of this from many Protestant fundamentalists, who have become politically powerful in America.

What should now be our attitude towards the Jews?

1 The same as if our mothers and fathers had gone astray in some way – with sadness, with gratitude, with love, with hope.

2 The same as towards all people. Christ commanded us to love everyone. The Jews are our fellow human beings, made in the image of God. There is no room for “anti-Semitism”. Remember that the blessed Theotokos, Saint Joseph, Saint John the Baptist and Forerunner, and the Twelve Apostles all were Jews. So was our Lord Jesus Christ!

At first Jews persecuted Christians. Then Christians came to power and have too often persecuted Jews, sometimes claiming they were Christ-killers. That’s absurd. A few Jewish rulers 2000 years ago arranged the death of Jesus Christ. Most Jews have followed them, as most people follow their leaders. But Jews in general, even at the time, were not responsible for Jesus’ death. Nevertheless, they still suffer from the actions of those false, prideful and ignorant leaders, as many innocent people in many situations have and still continue to do. In our treatment of Jews, we Christians have a lot to be ashamed of.

The Holocaust and Modern Israel

Now to modern times, and I’m afraid we must dabble in politics here. All politics, both good and bad, has its origins in theology, both good and bad, whether theistic or atheistic.

A few people say the Holocaust never happened. It did. Or that Hitler didn’t kill six million Jews, only two million. “Only two million”? The Holocaust was an indescribably horrible catastrophe for the Jews, which has shaped them ever since and will continue to do so, probably forever.

There had long been some Jews in Palestine, as well as a Zionist movement to restore the Jews to their ancient homeland. In 1917 in the Balfour Declaration, the British government (as part of continual Western colonialist reshaping of the Middle East) first signaled their intent to create a Jewish state in Palestine. After World War II the Western powers – out of sympathy and guilt, since Germany was part of traditional Western Christendom – gave the Jews their homeland.

Many American fundamentalists, again misusing Old Testament prophecies, have long said that Palestine still belongs to the Jews. So now bad theology made bad politics. In 1947 the United States took the lead in partitioning Palestine, giving part of that land to the Jews as the new nation of Israel, and millions of Jews mostly from Europe poured in. Surely we can understand their desperate desire for a secure homeland.

Israel and Palestine

Before we were Orthodox my wife, an ardent reader, discovered the truth about this. When she told me, I was amazed. I said “This is not what I’ve read and heard and seen on television – and in the movie “Exodus”. Since then I’ve learned even more from Palestinian members of our Antiochian Archdiocese and our Saint Nicholas Church – who now under the present American political conditions hesitate to talk about it, because they still have relatives there whom they don’t want to endanger.

The problem was that there were already people living in Palestine: the Palestinians. You will sometimes hear it said that Palestine was an empty land, with only a few Arab bedouins in it. That is a lie. Many Palestinians, including Christian Palestinians, had lived there for centuries. Many had become well-educated. Nevertheless, over the next few years, more than 750,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes and lands. The nation of Israel was built on the backs of the Palestinian people.

Palestinians call this the “Catastrophe” (Nakba. نَكْبَة.)  Official Israeli statistics say that 531 Palestinian villages with their churches and mosques were destroyed. Most Palestinians fled to nearby countries which couldn’t or wouldn’t cope with so many. Some came to the United States which for the most part welcomed them, thank God. A minority remained in the new country, Israel.

Today, almost eighty years later, about 1/3 of Palestinians still live in refugee camps. All of Palestine is now occupied or directly controlled by Israel. The situation of the Palestinians has been similar to that of native Americans in the United States who were once confined to “Indian reservations”, or the former Apartheid in South Africa.

It was even worse in Gaza, where two million people were confined to this small area – one of the most densely populated regions on the planet – permitted to leave or enter only with Israeli permission.

Can we understand why Palestinians have been resentful? It was a pressure cooker, just waiting to explode.

Here’s what’s happening today in the occupied West Bank: Illegal Israeli settlements continue to expand into Palestinian territory – encouraged by the radical right-wing Israeli government, and even by the US ambassador – who believe the land is theirs,“from the River to the Sea”. Settlers take the best lands and most of the water. They violently drive people out of their homes and villages and cut down their ancient olive groves, preying not only on Muslims but also on Christians.

Here is an account of a recent settler attack against Taybeh, mentioned above.

By the way, if you want to know what’s happening in the Middle East, much of which isn’t reported in America, go to aljazeeera.com

700,000 Israeli settlers now live on land that, in the Camp David Accords, was guaranteed to be part of a Palestinian state. There are now so many Israeli settlements that Palestine has been essentially cut in two, destroying hope of establishing a Palestine state.

Loss of original Palestine to the Israelis

We could have wished that the Israelis who had suffered their own catastrophe would not impose this catastrophe on others, that those who knew oppression would not have become oppressors themselves.

For what we hope is an extreme recent example:

http  s://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/6/9/they-were-laughing-israels-use-of-rape-and-sexual-abuse-in-prisons

On the other hand, the counter-productive reaction on the part of some Muslim Palestinians also was to turn to terrorism. We can understand why Israelis erected (illegal) walls to protect their people, but this has made life extraordinarily difficult for ordinary innocent West Bank Palestinians. When they try to travel, the walls around the illegal settlements make travel extraordinarily difficult. Trips which once took minutes now take hours, getting past checkpoints and often hostile Israeli guards. This has stirred up even more Palestinian resentment.

The other sad result has been that most Palestinians and Jews now are separated and rarely are acquainted. You know how separation causes negative ideas about people to grow even worse.

Meanwhile, Israel (a small nation surrounded by Arab nations many times their size) feels so threatened that they have obtained a large stockpile of nuclear weapons. This is an open secret which is never publicly admitted, rarely spoken about. However, this causes other Middle Eastern nations to arm themselves or want them too.

Christians in the Holy Land

Here’s a brief look at how Christians fit into this situation.

As Christ had foreseen, the Jews were driven out of Palestine about A.D. 70, but still remained a significant minority in the Roman Empire, holding considerable resentment as Christians increased and they diminished. Under the Byzantine Empire Christians were dominant in the Middle East, and Jews also returned to Palestine. Both Christians and Jews  were greatly diminished after the Muslim conquest in the Seventh Century. Not long after, Western Crusaders set out to reconquer the Holy Land. At the time Christians were still the majority in Jerusalem. Never again. Crusaders killed everyone who looked “Muslim” – Muslims, Jews and Christians alike. When the Muslims regained control, there was less tolerance for Christians for fear they would be allied with the West, but still we remained a strong minority. Then when the Turks conquered the Middle East, they encouraged evangelism by wealthy Western denominations, in order to divide the remaining Christians. Orthodoxy was even further diminished.

By the 1920s Christians still numbered perhaps as many as 15% of the population of Palestine. However, by now most Christians – caught between Muslims and Jews – have fled, and number only about 1 or 2 percent of what’s left of Palestine and 2 percent of modern Israel. Before the establishment of Israel, the West Bank city of Ramallah was almost entirely Christian. Now it is almost entirely Muslim. Each summer Americans formerly from Ramallah have a convention over here with several thousand attending.

Everybody in the Middle East, including the Christians, have someone to be resentful of, and in the Old World memories fade very slowly.

Lord, have mercy.

Now back to the chief conflict: Israelis and Palestinians.

An attempt to understand both sides.

I am not trying to justify terrorism, oppression or genocide. To understand is not to justify. (Physicians understand disease. That doesn’t mean they’re in favor of it.)

To those of us who sympathize with the Palestinians:

Can we try to understand Israel, a small country surrounded mostly by hostile nations who vastly outnumber them, who at the time of their founding tried to wipe them out. They were traumatized by the Holocaust and will always be terrified of another one happening. It will take many generations (if ever) for the images of their Holocaust to fade from the front of their minds. How might you react if your family and friends, living in a land where you had been at home for generations, suddenly were shipped off to be killed in gas chambers? How would you feel if, now having moved to a land which you believe belongs to you and finally offered security, were under regular threat from suicide bombers or from other nations who threaten to blow you off the face of the map?

For any who sympathize more with Israel:

If you were a Palestinian, how would you react if you and your people are being driven out of your ancestral homes and lands, in some cases being denied food and shelter and medicine, if you have lived under oppression for nearly eighty years and have nearly lost hope because the richest, strongest nation in the world finances and almost unquestioningly supports your enemy?

Orthodox Reaction

Almost all Orthodox patriarchs and bishops and synods have spoken vehemently against Israeli treatment of Palestinians. Just before the Russian war against Ukraine, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia strongly condemned the targeting of civilians, churches and cultural institutions. *

• ! inasmuch as, with his endorsement, Russia regularly targets Ukrainian civilian and religious institutions, including recently the ancient Monastery of the Caves

American reaction

America could have been a rational mediator. However, for nearly eighty years the American government, of both parties, has supported only Israel  – even during the destruction of Gaza and the current attempt to annex the West Bank.

There was one exception. The Oslo Accords of 1993 and 1995, signed in Washington under the auspices of Presiden. t Bill Clinton, guaranteed a “two state solution”: Israel and Palestine. Why did that fail? Because the borders were not fixed, allowing Israeli settlers to expand into the West Bank.

According to Gallup, about 60% of American people no longer support Israel and oppose what the Israeli government is doing to Gaza. This may give an answer to last week’s question: Why the rise of Anti-Semitism? – which, to repeat, is never justified, not in any circumstances. Individual Jews are not responsible for the actions of the Israeli government. In fact  many Jews oppose present unjust Israeli policies, but they rarely speak up for fear of being ostracized.

So, to conclude:

Is there a solution for the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians? a just solution?

And is there any hope for Christians in the Christian homeland, the land where Our Lord Jesus Christ was born and lived and died and rose again?

Brothers and sisters, please pray.

Next Week: We need a break. Let’s go to Greece: The story of How I first met Saint Nektarios.

Week after Next: America’s 250th. Patriotism. Christian Nationalism.