A Prayer for Palestine
Last year I had the privilege of interviewing Elias Chacour, the Melkite archbishop of Haifa.
Archbishop Elias was born in 1939, in what was then known as Mandatory Palestine. Their village, Kafr Bir’im, was made up entirely of Arab Christians. As a boy, Elias would accompany his father to visit a Jewish village down the road. Palestinian Christians were friends with Palestinian Jews, as they were with Palestinian Muslims.
One day, Elias’s father called the family together. He explained that an evil man named Hitler had come to power in Europe and was killing every Jew he could find—men, women, and children just like their neighbors. Some of Europe’s Jews were coming to live in Palestine, their ancient homeland. Elias’s father was excited to welcome them, as were all the villagers.
Then, in 1948, when Elias was nine years old, the Israeli Defense Force invaded Kafr Bir’im and evicted the Christian residents. Much of the Chacour family was deported to Jordan. However, the IDF told the villagers they could return on December 25. Here’s how Archbishop Elias remembers that Christmas:
Mother, Father, Wardi, and my brothers all joined in singing a jubilant Christmas hymn as they mounted the hill. . . . At the top of the hill their hymn trailed into silence. . . . Why were the soldiers still there? In the distance, a soldier shouted, and they realized they had been seen.
A cannon blast sheared the silence. Then another—a third. . . . Tank shells shrieked into the village, exploding in fiery destruction. Houses blew apart like paper. Stones and dust flew amid the red flames and billowing black smoke. One shell slammed into the side of the church, caving in a thick stone wall and blowing off half the roof. The bell tower teetered, the bronze bell knelling, and somehow held amid the dust clouds and cannon fire. . . . Then all was silent—except for the weeping of women and the terrified screams of babies and children.
Mother and Father stood shaking, huddled together with Wardi and my brothers. In a numbness of horror, they watched as bulldozers plowed through the ruins, knocking down much of what had not already blown apart or tumbled. At last, Father said—to my brothers or to God, they were never sure—“Forgive them.” Then he led them back to Gish.
Right now, at this very moment, the Israeli government is committing genocide against the Palestinian people.
Clearly, this is nothing new. The village of Kafr Bir’im was among the first targets, back in 1948. For nearly eighty years, the Israeli government has been trying to cleanse Palestine of its Arab population. Muslims, Christians, and dissident Jews are all being targeted.
This genocide entered a new phase following the October 7, 2023, attacks by Hamas terrorists against Israeli civilians. The actions of Hamas always have been, and always will be, unconscionable. However, Israeli crimes against the Palestinian people are vastly greater, in terms of both scale and brutality.
Consider the raw numbers. Here are the comparative casualties since the October 3 terrorist attack:
50,021 Palestinians total vs. 1,139 Israelis total
37,500 Palestinian civilians vs. 815 Israeli civilians
17,400 Palestinian children vs. 36 Israeli children
Damages incurred by Gaza total between 147-171% of their GDP, compared to 1-2% in Israel.
This data is all taken from Grok on March 25, 2025. Grok, of course, is Twitter’s new A.I. component. Twitter is owned by Elon Musk. Benjamin Netanyahu recently described Musk as “a great friend of Israel.” There’s no pro-Palestine bias here.
Again, the October 7 attack by Hamas—barbaric though it was—could never justify the atrocities being committed in Gaza. Hamas has killed about 0.01% of the population of Israel. Israel, meanwhile, has killed over 2% of the population of Gaza. A further 5% have fled the territory, while over 90% of Gazans have been internally displaced.
As in the 1940s, Israel has not spared Palestine’s Christians.
In fact, on October 4, 2023—just three days before Hamas launched its attack—I wrote an expose for The American Conservative called, “Who Will Stand for Palestine’s Christians?” In it, I addressed a myth that one commonly hears in pro-Israeli outlets: that the IDF is actually defending Arab Christians against Islamists. Nothing could be further from the truth.
At the turn of the last century, roughly 10 percent of Palestinians were Christian, including about 25 percent of Jerusalem. Today, Christians comprise about 1 percent of the population of Palestine. Again, according to Palestinian Christians, the main reason for this drop is not radical Islamism. It’s radical Zionism.
According to a 2017 study by Dar al-Kalima University (a secular college led by a Protestant minister), only 2 percent of Palestinian Christians cited “Muslim religious conservatism” as a reason to emigrate. By far the most common complaint was “the pressure of Israeli occupation.”
Clearly, the situation was grim even before Israel’s most recent offensive. Today, it’s unbearable.
Before October 7, Gaza’s Christians were served by three churches: one Orthodox, one Catholic, and one Baptist. All have since been destroyed. The Orthodox parish—the Church of St. Porphyrios—was founded in the fifth century. It was thought to be one of the oldest churches in the world. On October 19, 2023, an Israeli airstrike reduced St. Porphyrios to rubble. Eighteen Christians were killed, while many others were injured.
Christians should not only grieve the Christians who have died in this conflict. We should grieve the Muslims and Jews as well. We should weep bitterly for both Palestine and Israel, and especially their dead children. May God remember them forever in His Kingdom.
Here’s the thing, though: Israel’s genocide is supported and funded by the U.S. government. Joe Biden and Donald Trump both support the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. For some reason, this is the one policy that unites Democrat and Republican leaders.
We have a duty, as Christians and as Americans, to speak out. Those who remain silent will be held to account at the Last Judgment.
By the prayers of the Saints of Gaza—Porphyrios, Dorotheos, Vitalis, Paul, Sylvanus, Irenio, and those known only to God—may the love of Christ soften our leaders’ hearts.
By the prayers of New Martyrs of Gaza, may God protect the people of Palestine.
Come, Lord Jesus.
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