I recommend people listen to this talk and read the two articles below.
Fr David Neuhaus: Gaza: Witnessing the horror
Transcript of video:
Fr Russell Pollitt, SJ: Fr David has been working in Israel for over 45 years. He is a scripture scholar and he has been teaching there both in Bethlehem and tour guides and various people who want to study the scriptures. He studied scripture at the Biblicum in Rome. Before that he did a doctorate in political science at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
He grew up here in South Africa in a Jewish family and then he went to Israel and he converted to Christianity there, and eventually, for one reason or another — you can ask him afterwards — he joined the Society of Jesus, a strange bunch of people, so, and he’s been working there ever since.
Fr David returned to South Africa last weekend. He spends eight months of the year in Israel and he spends the rest of the year here working at the Jesuit Institute. So it’s also good to have him back. So thank you very much, David, for agreeing to come this morning and to talk.
Fr David Neuhaus, SJ: Thank you, Russell. Thank you, everybody.
Fr Russell Pollitt, SJ: So we’ll have a bit of a discussion and then I will open the floor for questions because I think it’s important maybe that we just begin by giving some context for those maybe who would like a little bit of context, but I think it’s also very important for us to understand context when we talk about a matter such as this.
So David, I want to begin by asking you to give us some context of what really has been going on, especially in the last two years in Gaza.
Fr David Neuhaus, SJ: What was triggered by the 7th of October? And let’s just state very clearly that what happened on the 7th of October was absolutely horrific. Crimes against humanity. 1,200 people killed, 250 people kidnapped, 10,000 people wounded by Palestinian militants who surged out of the Gaza Strip. We need to say this was absolutely terrible. This was the trigger.
What we also need to say, of course, is that what happened on the 7th of October followed in a series of events that go back for decades. Many people now, of course, are saying that everything began in 1947, 1948. I would push it back even further and say it began in 1917 when the British marched in. Hopefully there aren’t any ardent British patriots here, but we can have a fight afterwards.
So this trigger led to an important change in Israeli policy towards the Palestinian people. And I would define it as moving from repression and control which had began in 1948. In other words, an ethnocentric state formed with world support. 1947 the vote in the United Nations. 15th of May the proclamation of the state of Israel as a Jewish state.
Then began this policy of repression and control, controlling the Palestinians that remain behind that had not been ethnically cleansed, pushed out of Palestine. Of course, at that stage, all of you will remember, Israel was in a more reduced territory. And then in 1967, Israel conquered the rest of Palestine. Let’s give the figures: about 77% of Palestine became the state of Israel and in 1967 the remaining 23% were conquered by the Israeli authorities and the repression and the control continued.
The trigger of 7th of October unleashed a genocide and again I say that with absolute conviction. I didn’t always say that. What Russell didn’t say is that I am an Israeli citizen and for many of us who are Israeli citizens, it was difficult to pronounce that word. We saw the repression. We saw the control. We had started using the word apartheid at the beginning of the 2000’s saying this is an apartheid state. But genocide is a whole new game.
First we noticed, of course, the expressions of genocidal intention and then we started to realize that this can be well documented. In fact, one of the great genocide scholars in the world, who is an Israeli, said that nowadays you need a lot of intellectual acrobatics to argue that it’s not a genocide.
And I want to lay out four paragraphs that can define this genocide.
Number one, killing people. We are dealing with now a death toll of over 60,000. But let’s be very clear, that means 60,000 people who are named and documented and whose bodies have been brought to hospitals in Gaza. That means that there’s probably a lot more people who have been killed, buried under the rubble. And will we ever know how many? It’s unlikely.
But let’s immediately say that that is direct killing. There is also a lot of indirect killing going on. That is people have been wounded, and because there is no hospital care, they die of their wounds. People who are chronically ill who are dying and of course we are all aware now that people are dying of starvation. So there is a lot of more death going on than the figures that are being vehicled — the just over 60,000. Okay, so that’s number one. I want to stress that.
Number two, the physical destruction of Gaza. Again, what started on the 7th of October was bombing. Then the Israeli army went in and started bulldozing, and bulldozing entire neighborhoods. Again, this is not some kind of warfare that’s going on. This is a plan to make the Gaza Strip unlivable. It began in the north and it’s spreading into the south. Now, of course, as you’ve all read in the newspapers, the Israeli government has decided to actually physically conquer the remaining 25% of the Gaza Strip and the fate of that part of the Gaza Strip will be the same — to destroy, to physically destroy. I learned a new word in these last few months. I always knew the word genocide. There is a word called domicide, and that is wiping out homes so that people will have nowhere to come back to. But it’s not only homes, it’s infrastructure, water, electricity, and all other forms of infrastructure. It’s of course also destroying any semblance of agriculture.
Let’s remember that the Gaza Strip is one of the most overpopulated areas in the world. 70% of the people in the Gaza Strip are refugees that were chased there after 1948 and never allowed to return. So Gaza Strip has always been dependent on aid coming from outside and that of course has been completely halted at times by the Israelis and always strictly controlled. Okay. So physical destruction.
Number three, third paragraph of the genocide that is unfolding is expulsion. Moving people continually away from their centers of life. This began immediately. The Israelis giving orders for the population to leave the northern part of the strip, move to the south. And over the last 20 months, what we’ve seen is orders and counter-orders of people moving to safe areas that are completely unsafe, that are bombed, and genocidal intent. Israeli people responsible in the government saying our end goal is to move them out, to get them out. The ones who are not killed must leave!
Of course, the frightening thing is that earlier this year, the US President Donald Trump gave complete support to that idea and said it would be for the best if they all got out. That was music to the ears of the Israeli leadership.
And the fourth element of genocide, and that is the wiping out of political, social, educational, cultural, religious and very importantly health structures that give this people a life as a people. Wiping them out with absolute deliberation. Everybody is Hamas. Okay, we can later discuss what is Hamas. Hamas is a political movement, an incredible diversity of people within Hamas, from people willing to engage in dialogue to people who are not. But Hamas has become this kind of western word that means something terrifying that should be wiped out. And so when you say everyone’s Hamas, well again a recipe for genocide, but really trying to assassinate as many of the political leaders as possible, the social activists, journalists, doctors, medical workers, teachers, wiping out the universities.
This is a genocide and I say thank you to South Africa for recognizing it early.
Fr Russell Pollitt, SJ: David, you describe what’s going on in Gaza, but I think maybe also just to tell us a little bit about the West Bank because I know, for example, in our conversations when there was the so-called ceasefire in Gaza and the cameras were there, this was not the case in the West Bank. So just to give a bit of context about that as well.
Fr David Neuhaus, SJ: So let’s be very, very clear again about terminology. Many of the newspapers talk about a war between Israel and Hamas — again that word that appears everywhere and is a very convenient word as a smokescreen. This is not a war between Israel and Hamas. This is a war between Israel and the Palestinian people.
Gaza is a laboratory. And if Israel is not stopped, this genocide is going to spread first to the West Bank. And let’s be very, very clear. It already has begun. It already has begun. Again, the West Bank has been under Israeli control since 1967. Most of the energy was devoted towards repression and control. But now under the cover of this war — it began before, but now it’s gone off the screen — wiping out villages, shooting people with no accountability.
We just buried last week Awdah Hathaleen from the collection of villages called Masafer Yatta. He was from Umm al Kheir, a peace activist, a man deeply engaged in dialogue, who was shot by an Israeli settler. We have the Israeli settler — we know his name, Yinon Levy — he’s on the screen shooting and in the aftermath he was taken in for questioning, few days later released. He’s back in Masafer Yatta going around with his bulldozers, shooting left and right.
Whereas Awdah’s family were arrested. His body was held for 10 days, the Israelis finally agreed to release his body and said that the funeral could be in Umm al Kheir and people could come to the funeral. And when people arrived at the funeral, the Israelis put a military closure on the zone so that people could not participate in the funeral. One little example.
Okay, this in Masafer Yatta — I hope that some of you at least have seen the movie No Other Land. No Other Land is a parable for Israel–Palestine made by an activist from Masafer Yatta with an Israeli activist, Yuval Abraham. An excellent movie that everyone should see if they want to understand what is going on.
This destruction has spread through the West Bank. In the north part of the West Bank, and I just read in the newspaper this morning a headline: “Shapul, congratulations to the Israeli army” — they have succeeded to do what no one has succeeded to do in the years since 1967. They have put highways through the Palestinian refugee camps of Janine and Tulkarm, allowing control of — our favourite word — Hamas. Okay, control of terrorists. What that has actually entailed is the wholesale destruction of the refugee camps in Janine, Tulkarm, Nur Shams. Tens of thousands of people expelled from their homes.
And so there too we see it going on — of course with the concomitant destruction of political institutions, social institutions, religious institutions, cultural institutions, etc.
So it’s going on in the West Bank and, Russell, I will add that if this does not stop it will creep into Israel proper. In Israel proper, we are 9 million citizens. Two million of them are Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel who have come under the most incredible repression and control since the 7th of October. And again, genocidal intent is spoken with absolutely no reserve by those now in the government, also directed at that population of Israeli citizens — Palestinian Arab citizens of the state of Israel — who have been citizens since 1948.
Fr Russell Pollitt, SJ: The position of the Christian community — I mean, because that’s important for us. We know that, for example, the church and people have been bombed in the church in Bethlehem — is it…
Fr David Neuhaus, SJ: …Kataza.
Fr Russell Pollitt, SJ: …and also, David, now the only Christian village left has also come under fire from the… just a sense because most of the Christians are Palestinians — just maybe a sense of the Christian community there.
Fr David Neuhaus, SJ: Russell, I’m going to push back. When Christians are killed, it gets into the newspapers. So, let’s talk about the Christians. Yes. The tiny Christian population in Gaza, which was about a thousand people before the 7th of October 2023, and is now really reduced to about 600 people, 700 people are left. Not many have left. About 50 have died.
Okay. So, first what happened is that the Israelis — probably the Israelis, of course immediately denied it — fired missiles and a missile hit the Greek Orthodox Church. Eighteen people were killed. Then a few weeks later in December, two women who were taking refuge — there were about 600 people in the Roman Catholic Church taking refuge, they’ve been there since the 7th of October — two women wanted to go to the bathroom. Well, actually, one of them wanted to go to the bathroom. She went out, a sniper shot her dead, and her daughter ran out to help her. She was shot dead, too.
The organist of the Roman Catholic Church, although she herself was Greek Orthodox, wanted to step out of the church to see what had happened to her house. She was shot dead — an 85-year-old woman. So yes, like everyone else, the Christians are being picked off.
What was major news a few weeks ago is that the Israelis sent a missile — a tank missile — into the Roman Catholic Church, killing three people. And Russell, I’m sorry to say this, but I was horrified that not only they died — that’s horrific — they are now a part of over 60,000 people whose names we have who have been murdered by the Israeli army. But what horrified me is that Donald Trump called Mr. Netanyahu because Christians were killed.
And okay, if that’s something that will move Donald Trump to say something I suppose what, we need to be grateful? And say while those three Christian deaths were not in vain — although nothing much has changed since they died.
The Christians are part and parcel of the Palestinian people. In the light of that attack on the Catholic Church, the Latin Patriarch — meaning the Roman Catholic Archbishop — and the Greek Orthodox Patriarch, Pierbattista Pizzaballa and Patriarch Theophilos, got permission to go into Gaza. And they were able to bring with them some supplies. They were able to get some of the wounded people out. So it was a very, very brief respite.
I might add that the Israelis see the presence of the churches there as something very inconvenient because if the churches were not there then many Christians in the world would be a lot less interested in Gaza. That’s perverse but it’s true. And so we are hoping that we can insist that the churches stay there, be witnesses to what’s going on. Of course, the people who are there — everybody wants to get out.
Fr Russell Pollitt, SJ: You’ve mentioned the president of the United States a few times. However, it seems like many world leaders just simply remain silent and almost complicit in what’s going on. There just doesn’t seem to be the moral gravitas to say enough is enough. How do you — I mean, from your perspective — how do you read that?
Fr David Neuhaus, SJ: So maybe it would be good to name at least some of the elements that lead to this silent complicity with Israel at a time when the world was opening up to human rights, democracy, recognizing the dignity of the human person. How come we accepted it back then? And why are there such huge bundles of support for the state of Israel until now?
And I’m going to throw out three possibilities that make people — like certain Americans, certain people in the United States, certain Europeans, and people all over the world — even here in South Africa, there’s been a lot of pushback in certain evangelical circles in South Africa against the South African government’s stand on Palestine. Why? So again, I’m going to throw out three.
Number one: the Bible — a source of absolute poison and venom. I’m a Catholic priest. Not only am I a Catholic priest, my love is teaching scripture. I adore teaching scripture. But we need to recognize that our sacred texts have been used and misused, abused and manipulated, exploited in order to create hell for people. Hell.
So let’s say it as it is. Russell, answer me: did God not give this land to Israel? The Bible says so. Is Israel not called to genocide the Palestinians? Oh, sorry — Philistines. The Bible says so. And this repeated use of the Bible in the history of the state of Israel is terrifying.
Just three days ago, I published an article in the Osservatore Romano. I was very edified that they agreed to publish the article, but it said, “Let’s be careful of how we read the Bible.” David Ben-Gurion — remember that great hero, David Ben-Gurion, the first prime minister of the state of Israel — was an avid reader of the Bible. He didn’t believe in God and he couldn’t stand the Jewish religion, but he loved the Bible. And in 1958, he set up a little group around him to study the Bible. Who can guess what his favourite book was in the Bible? The Book of Joshua, because it was the blueprint for what he would have liked to have done. He couldn’t, but he would have liked to — which would have been a genocide.
Netanyahu, on the first day of the war, already is mobilizing the Bible because we must wipe out Amalek. Now, I’m sure many of you didn’t even know who Amalek was, but people in Israel know who Amalek was. We’re constantly reminded because, for the Jewish people, we remember that Hitler was Amalek and that all the intense enemies of the Jewish people are called Amalek. So calling the Palestinians Amalek makes it very, very clear what needs to be done.
So again, Russell, I’d say number one — we have a huge job of reading our religious texts properly so that they are good news for life, dignity, freedom, equality — the values that we know our God and Creator would like us to promote. But the Bible has often served in this country and in many other countries as a text to imprison and enslave.
Number two: Jew. Whoa — that’s a very loaded word and I say it as a Jew. I think that for many, many, many — when we say the word Jew still today we see a genocide that took place between 1942 and 1945, the Final Solution of the Nazis. We think of Auschwitz and Buchenwald and Dachau.
And certainly white Christians, particularly in Europe, still — some of them — feel a horrible sense of guilt for what was done to the Jewish people during the Second World War. And that’s right — they should. But the problem is that that is now being used in order to wipe over, silence Palestinian voices.
For if I today say “Free Palestine,” I’ll be accused of being an antisemite.
If I say “Stop killing Palestinians,” I’ll be accused of being an antisemite.
If I say “Equality and not apartheid in Israel,” I’m accused of being an antisemite.And this complete confusion of legitimate, necessary, obligatory criticism of Zionism and the state of Israel today with antisemitism — that has plagued our white Europeans and many other places as well for decades. This confusion leads to people being silent.
And of course the Israeli authorities know how to manipulate this with great, great aplomb.
Point number three: Muslims. Arrggh! Terrorists. Fear, fear, fear, fear, fear. This is a myth that we have been propagating and spreading. You know what — it began with Islam. Islam was not supposed to be there according to Christian theologians. Everyone was supposed to become Christian. So there was something very, very bad with Islam suddenly appearing. And then came the Crusades and then colonialism. So there’s a lot of dark, dark darkness attached to that word, with total ignorance — no knowledge of what Islam is or who Muslims are.
And this too is magnificently manipulated by the Israelis. Okay. Now, Islam — of course everybody is terrified of Iran, and Hamas is an agent of Iran. So we have created these satanic, diabolical conspiracies where Israel is defending the western world against the barbaric masses of Muslims who are going to take over the world if Israel isn’t there.
Now these are very, very powerful myths — Bible, Jew, Muslim — and I think that, at least in part, it explains why people at best are confused and at worst are silently complicit with the genocide in Gaza.
We need to go back to the post–Second World War period, look at the world at that time — the US attempts to control the world, this new form of imperialism, and the very important role that Israel has played in that all along. First station — terrifying — 1956, when Israel, in my opinion as an Israeli, chose the wrong side: to unite with the United States, Britain, and France against Egypt. I think you’ll all remember the name Gamal Abdel Nasser, who was a popular leader in the Arab world. I think that would have been a moment for Israel to say, “Well, we understand the desire to be free,” and Israel then put another nail in the coffin of ethnocentricity when it went into an alliance with the United States, England, and France and Nasser was smashed.
So it’s got a long, long history. Now, I’m not sure that Netanyahu is manipulating the United States or the United States has got such a hold on the Israeli political establishment that they are manipulating Israel. But this is a symbiotic relationship that is perverse and brings destruction. And we have seen over and over again the result of the 1948 war, the result of the 1956 war, the result of the 1967 war, the result of the supposed — and don’t be fooled for a moment — ‘peace initiatives’ since the 1990s, which were just another way of dominating. Okay — just another way of dominating the region where the Israelis and the United States administration worked hand in hand.
When is — when — when are people going to wake up? This is really — now we see the rotten fruit of this collaboration.
Fr Russell Pollitt, SJ: Some states now are coming out saying they recognize Palestine and this has happened in the last couple of months. Do you think that’s too little too late? I mean, what’s left to recognize besides the people? The physical is being utterly destroyed.
Fr David Neuhaus, SJ: So, here I’m a little controversial. I think it’s good that states come out and say we recognize Palestine because it means that at least they are coming clean with putting Palestine on the map. But the two-state solution was never legitimate, was perhaps possible — perhaps possible — but is certainly no longer.
Now, let me say why it was never legitimate. Because the two-state solution is based upon enshrining ethnocentricity. And this is the huge problem with the way that the Israeli presence has developed in the last 120 years in Palestine. Let me state very clearly so that no one will think otherwise: I do believe the Jewish people have a deep and intimate link to the land of Palestine. I do believe that the Jewish people are historically connected to that land. Everyone heard me. Okay. The Jewish people are an integral part of the history of Palestine and that’s how it should be.
I do not believe that Jewish colonial settlers who started arriving in Palestine from the 1880s onwards in thousands and then in tens of thousands and then in hundreds of thousands and then in millions had any right to march in and take over. The Jewish Europeans who came to Palestine starting from the 1880s — the vast majority of them had absolutely no intention of living with the people who were there. They wanted to live in place of the people who were there. And the first and most important indicator of that is there was never any attempt to learn the language of the region — a language that is a very important language of Jewish communities in the region: Arabic.
And so the Arabs were more and more pushed out, marginalized, repressed, controlled, and now we move into genocide mode. So again, I say: Jews have a right to be there as individuals, as even a religious community, as a cultural community. But what was okayed in 1947 — based upon, thank you Great Britain, this enshrining of a Jewish national home in the Balfour Declaration in 1917, taken up into the mandate of the League of Nations in 1920, taken up into the partition of Palestine in 1947 by the United Nations — is the enshrining of an ethnocentric, which means non-democratic, state that needs to be dismantled.
Okay. So again, saying we recognize Palestine and then dreaming of some little homeland — and I use that word with your knowledge of South African history — some little homeland in Palestine for Palestinians is absolutely not only too little too late, but absolutely immoral and wrong and illegitimate. Okay. Nonetheless, recognizing that there is a Palestinian people is very, very important.
Fr Russell Pollitt, SJ: So I want to open the floor to questions but maybe before I do that, David, in your estimation what is the way forward?
Fr David Neuhaus, SJ: The state of Israel today is being portrayed as a country divided — demonstrations in the streets. There is an illusion being created that perhaps from the inside, Israelis who hate Netanyahu — and many of them do — could bring down the Netanyahu government and that would set us on the right path. I want to say that I don’t believe that at all.
I do believe many of my very close Jewish friends cannot stand Netanyahu. He’s corrupt. He is destroying the internal structure of the Israeli state. They really want to get rid of him. But the problem is that many of my friends are completely focused on Netanyahu and they are not looking at some very basic facts, and that is: the vast majority of Israelis support the war. The vast majority of the Israelis don’t care about dying children, starvation. The vast majority — not all, thanks be to God — there are prophetic voices. But when I say the vast majority, we’re talking about around 80%.
So that although Netanyahu today has support of only about 29% of the electorate, about 80% of the electorate are not fighting against him in order to put an end to the suffering of the Palestinian people, in order to bring the genocide to an end. They just don’t think he’s doing a good job.
So I want to make that very, very clear. When you ask the question “How can we go forward?” — the way we can go forward, at least from the perspective of the international community, can be summarized in three letters that you know very, very well in South Africa: B D S [Boycott, Divest, Sanction]
[Applause]
Fr Russell Pollitt, SJ: David, I’d like to thank you very much. I think one of the things to really thank you for is your honesty. I know that when we started to talk about this two years ago when I was at the Jesuit Institute, when we used the word genocide, you cautioned us and said please don’t use that word. So I can see as well how things have changed for you as you reflected on the situation and lived in that context.
So thank you for your honesty. Thank you for your time. And thank you for the sanity I think you bring to this issue, which is such an evocative one and I think one that is going to stamp our humanity in the years to come in a way that perhaps now we are not actually cognizant of. You know, we ask questions about what happened in Rwanda and we said “Never again,” and now we seem to be back exactly there, and this will say something about our humanity.
So thank you, David, very, very, very much.
Fr David Neuhaus: ‘Bible is abused to create hell for people’
by Terence Creamer [Originally published in The Southern Cross]
“The Bible has been a source of absolute poison and venom” in the ongoing conflict in Gaza that has left the territory in ruins and its people starving, a leading Catholic biblical scholar and teacher lamented during a presentation at the Holy Trinity church in Braamfontein, Johannesburg.
Jesuit Father David Neuhaus, an Israeli citizen currently serving at academic institutions in both Jerusalem and Bethlehem as well as at the Jesuit Institute South Africa in Johannesburg, where he was born and raised, has taught the Bible in Palestine/Israel for 25 years, including to Arabic-speaking Catholic seminarians and Hebrew-speaking rabbinical students.
“I have a great love for scripture. I adore teaching scripture,” Fr Neuhaus said. “But we need to recognise that our sacred texts have been used, abused and manipulated to create hell for people.”
Noting that at first he had been reluctant to conclude that Israel’s actions in Gaza amounted to genocide in the immediate aftermath of the brutal October 7 attack on Israel, during which more than 1 200 people were killed and 251 mostly civilian hostages were taken, Fr Neuhaus used objective criteria to explain his current view that the charge of genocide was undeniable.
These include:
- The ongoing direct and indirect killing of Gazans, including through bombings, shootings, starvation, and the reality that there are insufficient health facilities to treat the wounded and chronically ill after the bombing of hospitals and clinics.
- Evidence of “domicide”, or the destruction of homes and social infrastructure that simultaneously made it impossible for Palestinians to make a living off the land.
- The repeated expulsion of people from their homes, leading to mass internal displacements and, more recently, the plan to conduct an active military campaign to ‘conquer’ remaining areas not yet under direct Israeli control.
- The destruction of the political, social, educational, cultural, journalistic, religious and, crucially, health structures required for a functioning society.
These actions were underpinned by a “genocidal intent”, which had been confirmed in numerous statements by senior Israeli politicians, who sought to justify these statements not only on security grounds but also through references to Biblical texts.
“Did God not give this land to Israel? Is Israel not called to genocide?” Neuhaus asked provocatively, citing Deuteronomy: “But as for the towns of these peoples that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, you must not let anything that breathes remain alive. You shall annihilate them – the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites – just as the Lord your God has commanded” (20:16-17).
Neuhaus highlighted, too, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s reference to “Amalek” at the start of Israel’s campaign in Gaza; a term drawn from Exodus 17, which refers to the archetypal enemy of the Israelites, who they are commanded to wipe out.
Those committing acts of violence against Palestinians continually draw on terminology from the Bible to justify their actions, including through frequent references to the Book of Joshua, which tells how the Israelites destroyed their enemies in Canaan, Fr Neuhaus noted.
He stressed that such references, while a distortion, were not new, recalling how even before he became prime minister, David Ben Gurion claimed that the “Bible is our Mandate”. And despite not being religious, Ben Gurion saw the Book of Joshua as a historical blueprint for the conquest of the “Land of the Bible by the People of the Bible”.
Christian Zionism, with its fundamentalist reading of the Bible, had reinforced and legitimised Israel’s claims over the territories referred to in the Bible, viewing Israel’s military action and the seizing of Palestinian land in the illegally occupied West Bank by settlers as part of a divine battle supported by God.
“We have a huge job of reading our religious texts properly so that they are ‘Good News’ for life, dignity, freedom, equality; all the values that we know our God and Creator would like us to promote,” Fr Neuhaus said.
“Instead, the Bible has often served — during apartheid in South Africa and in many other countries — as a text to imprison and enslave,” the priest said. He noted how the Church used the Bible during the Crusades and how it is still used by some Christians to stoke and rationalise Islamophobia.
The Catholic Church, he noted, called on the faithful to read and interpret Holy Scripture “in the sacred spirit in which it was written”, which reveals values of equality, justice and peace, rather than a justification for war and death.
“We need to read the Word of God so that it is not — again — manipulated and exploited to commit genocide,” Fr Neuhaus concluded.
Fr David Neuhaus: Reading the Bible After the Destruction of Gaza
by Fr David Neuhaus [Originally published in L’Osservatore Romano in Italian, and translated into English by Virginia M. Forrester and re-published in English by Zenit News]
The current Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is heir to Ben-Gurion’s legacy in using the Bible to legitimize and further consolidate the Occupation.
I have been teaching the Bible in Palestine/Israel for twenty-five years, primarily to Arabic-speaking Catholic seminarians, men and women religious, and religion teachers. I have also taught the Bible in Hebrew to Jews in Israel, to Rabbinical students, to tourist guides, and to ordinary people eager to deepen their formation. It is a mission for which I feel particularly grateful and which still fills me with fear and trembling. Although I am very grateful to live in a time when the Church is more aware, more sensitive, and more prudent regarding how the Bible should be used in Christian teaching –deeply repentant for the way it has been used as a weapon against Judaism and Jews –, I know that there is still much work to be done regarding those who suffer the consequences of distorted biblical readings.
The most urgent thing for me, in the midst of a conflict that pits Israel against Palestine in a bloody war that has left Gaza in ruins and reduced its population to starvation, is: How should I approach God’s loving plan for humanity in the Bible, a plan that includes the election of Israel, the gift of the land, and the annihilation of the peoples who inhabit the earth? How can I read the word that Christians acclaim as the Word of God: “But in the cities of these peoples that the Lord your God gives you for an inheritance, you shall save alive nothing that breathes, but you shall utterly destroy them, the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, as the Lord your God has commanded” (Deuteronomy 20:16-17)? Wouldn’t it be better to put the Bible in a closet and find other resources for developing spiritual life, moral conduct, and religious leadership? Or, at the very least, shouldn’t the most problematic parts of the Bible be censored? It can be, and has been, a dangerous book, not only for many in the Middle East today, but also for many others throughout centuries of history.
On January 7, 1937, David Ben-Gurion, head of the Jewish Agency in British-Mandated Palestine (a shadow government that prefigured the creation of the State of Israel), spoke before the Peel Commission, which sought to resolve the problems of the British Mandate in Palestine, which was mired in conflict between Jews and Arabs. Questioning the very concept of a «British Mandate for Palestine» established in the aftermath of World War I, Ben-Gurion declared: «In the name of the Jews, I say that the Bible is our Mandate, the Bible that was written for us, in our language, in Hebrew, right in this country. This is our Mandate. Our right is as old as the Jewish people». In 1958, ten years after the creation of the State of Israel, Ben-Gurion, then Prime Minister, inaugurated the first World Bible Competition in Jerusalem. Shortly afterward, he established a regular Bible study circle, which he frequently attended. The group began its work with Ben-Gurion’s favourite Bible book, Joshua, which he considered absolutely factual. For him, it was the historical model of the conquest of the Land of the Bible by the People of the Bible, then and now.
Ben-Gurion was not a religious Jew, and his faith in God was overshadowed by his faith in the «Jewish» nation, a concept derived from his avid reading of the Bible. Moreover, he explicitly rejected the religious betrayals of the Jewish people that had developed over the centuries in the Rabbinic writings collected in the Talmud. As a «Jewish» nationalist, he viewed the Bible as the ultimate and eternal literary and spiritual apex of the Jews in their homeland, while considering the Rabbinic writings — the Talmud — as a secondary collection, created in exile and destined to disappear over time. Ben-Gurion’s biblicism (a secular reading of the Bible used as a treasure house of nationalist terminology and mythology) was instrumental in the early history of Zionist activity in Palestine. Although harshly criticized by religious Jewish intellectuals in Israel, such as Martin Buber and Yeshayahu, Leibowitz — both deeply aware of the troubling issues raised by Israel’s military conquests, the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Israeli territories and the entrenched discrimination against Arab citizens in the State of Israel — Ben-Gurion’s version of Zionism dominated.
The current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is heir to Ben-Gurion’s legacy of using the Bible to further legitimize and consolidate the Occupation. At the beginning of the Gaza war on October 8, 2023, Netanyahu described Israeli soldiers as «eager to take revenge on the murderers for the horrific acts perpetrated against our children, our wives, our parents, and our friends. They are committed to eradicating this evil from the world, for our existence and, I add, for the sake of all humanity. All the people and their leaders embrace them and believe in them. ‘Remember what Amalek did to you.’» His citation of Deuteronomy 25:17 was a chilling reminder of how the Bible can be used to promote war and hatred. Amalek, described in Exodus 17, is the archetypal enemy of the Israelites, and they are ordered to exterminate him and his descendants. Netanyahu, his allies, the Israeli settler movement, and those who commit acts of violence against Palestinians constantly resort to biblical vocabulary to justify their acts of death and destruction.
There is nothing new in the ideological abuse of sacred texts. «Mobilizing» an idea of God and sacred narratives that speak of God adds authority to human ideologies of dominion and exclusion. This causes the Bible to be frowned upon by those who fight for freedom, equality, and fraternity. However, for Christians, the Bible provides the words to speak of God, the human person, and the relationship between the two. It offers a vocabulary, a grammar, and a syntax through which Christians can attempt to express God. The biblical narrative traces a story of origins, relevance, and hope that situates believers in a long history of humanity, in which they can find meaning, vocation, and mission in a world seeking redemption. And, like all treasure, appropriating it carries risks.
In 1994, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Michel Sabbah, published a key tool for Bible readers in this time of conflict in Palestine/Israel: Reading and Living the Bible Today in the Land of the Bible (Michel Sabbah, Latin Patriarchate, Jerusalem, 1993). The Introduction to this Pastoral Letter is a verse that constitutes a Christian hermeneutical key for reading the Bible: «For He is our peace, who has made us both one, and has broken down the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing it in His flesh […] that He might create in Himself one man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God» (Ephesians 2:14-16). In this Letter, Sabbah poses a poignant question to those who read the Bible in Palestine today: «Should we be victims of our own history of salvation, which seems to privilege the Jewish people and condemn us? Is this really the will of God, to which we should submit inexorably, without appeal or discussion, and which would not ask us to leave everything for another people?» (n. 7c).
Addressing those who have rejected the Bible because of the way it is read to justify the Occupation and discrimination, Sabbah says: «By this rejection of the Word of God, dear faithful, you make yourselves accomplices and victims of those you accuse and, having been robbed of the land, you allow yourselves to be robbed also of your Sacred Scripture and of the light it contains to help you emerge from the darkness and overcome every difficulty» (n. 56). Towards the end of the Letter, Sabbah concludes: «To read and live the Bible, today in the land of the Bible, is a grace and a challenge. A grace because every day we walk with Jesus Himself along the same paths that He walked with His disciples, as a partner and friend. A challenge because today, in this war of conflict, we experience sufferings that are at the heart of our dialogue with the Lord. And the Lord, who sets our hearts on fire when He speaks to us (cf. Luke 24:32) along our pilgrim’s journey, «opens our hearts to an understanding of the Scriptures» and helps us to understand, through an understanding of our history, the Will of the Father» (n. 64).
Christians must be aware that concepts such as «Chosen People» and «Promised Land» have very concrete existential and moral consequences for the peoples of the Middle East, and are not merely speculative and theological exercises. In line with these concerns, the Holy See has emphasized the importance of international law, rather than biblical discourse, in understanding the conflict in Palestine and Israel. Christians are invited to understand the conflict — the Jewish religious link with the land of Israel — which has its roots in the biblical tradition, although no particular religious interpretation of that relationship should be adopted. Regarding the existence of the State of Israel and its political decisions, it must be seen in a perspective that is not religious in itself, but refers to the common principles of international law” (Dicastery for the Promotion of Christian Unity, Sussidi per una corretta pesentazione degli ebrei e dell’ebraismo nella pedicazione e nella catechesi della Chiesa cattolica, 1985, VI, 1).
Ultimately, the Bible read with faith, love, and charity reveals itself as the living Word of God. In Palestine today, the Bible is used to legitimize and justify wars, Occupation, and discrimination. Along with the Bible, the Koran, the scripture favoured by Muslims, is «mobilized» in political struggles over the fate of the Holy Land and who should govern it. However, Dei Verbum, the Dogmatic Constitution of Vatican Council II on divine revelation, emphasizes that «Sacred Scripture [must] be read and interpreted in the light of the same Spirit by which it was written» (no. 12). Discerning this Spirit, also according to the authentic interpretation entrusted to the Magisterium (no. 10), is therefore an essential part of reading the Bible. In essence, the Bible read as the Word of God teaches equality, justice and peace, values that are in harmony with the God we learn to know in the Church’s reading of the Bible.
David Mark Neuhaus, SJ, born in South Africa in 1962 to German-Jewish parents who fled Nazism, served as Superior of the Jesuit Community at the Pontifical Biblical Institute of Jerusalem. Professor of Sacred Scripture at the Seminary of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, from 2009 to 2017, he was Patriarchal Vicar for Hebrew-speaking Catholics in the Latin Patriarchate.