Liberation Theology of the Palestine Movement

Meeting a demand for peace requires the justice of liberation.

Masses of people are joining an international movement who are gradually realizing the question of Palestine is no exceptional case. The ongoing genocide in Gaza resembles the atrocities inflicted by our own country’s wars in Asia and around the world. In a 2023 interview, the Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen carefully mentions the continuity between Palestine and Asia:

“The greatest acts of anti-Asian violence are not carried out within the United States. The greatest acts of anti-Asian violence are carried out in America’s wars in Asia. That’s been true for a century. And if you consider Palestine to be a part of Asia very broadly speaking, I see total continuity between what the United States has done in the Philippines, in Korea, in Japan, in Laos, in Cambodia, in Vietnam, and now with Gaza.” (2023)

Palestine shares with Vietnam the destiny of nations enduring the violence of colonial oppression. Commonplace positions equivocating “both sides” conceal how easily the United States and Israel both succeed in saving face by confusing the terms for war. What is going on in Gaza is not war, it is genocide. Bombing doctors and refugees, where only one side has an army and air force, it is not a tragedy, it is a crime. Only an ideology could rationalize every war criminal, and try marketing the ongoing genocide into a blameless tragedy, rather than a crime.

The state of Israel, so eager for recognition, fails to recognize itself as the source initiating violence. The so-called right to defend itself masks a lawless and unconditional license for bombing without blame. Any generic impulse to condemn ‘both sides’ amounts to equivocating violent perpetrators with the resisters to violence. Between the two, there is no symmetry. The liberation theologian from Brazil, Paulo Freire writes in his Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1968):

“Never in history has violence been initiated by the oppressed. With the establishment of a relationship of oppression, violence has already begun.” (1968, page 41)

The process of history did not begin so recently in the October events. Since then, the bombing campaign in Gaza testifies to the cruel and lopsided revenge the embarrassed state of Israel will be goaded into the moment Palestinians resist injustice.

To those who seem unsympathetic to active resistance, Palestinians remain unheard and unseen, except as passive, “objects of humanitarianism” (1968, page 39). From his Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paulo Freire scrutinizes the false generosity of the apparently generous “humanitarian” who ultimately profits from the same system of war and poverty. Compared to the event of liberation, the false question of generosity dissolves into an open demand for justice. For a future which is liberating, the oppressed are the answer to a new question:

“Who are better prepared than the oppressed to understand the terrible significance of an oppressive society? Who suffer the effects of oppression more than the oppressed? Who can better understand the necessity of liberation?” (1968, page 29)

The incessant protesting which seems to intrude from outside really originates from within, from the conscience-stricken masses who are joining the movement for Palestinian liberation. A genuine solidarity with the oppressed is not an effect of outside forces, but an authentic expression of love for neighbors. From his book, Liberation Theology, the former Catholic priest Phillip Berryman argues:

“a responsible commitment within class conflict is an expression of love for neighbor. They are not “fomenting” hatred, as critics contend; class conflict already exists. Through solidarity in struggle with the poor, class division must be transcended in a new type of society.” (1987, page 26)

As a Christian theologian, Berryman interprets a gospel of liberation in Jesus Christ, whose message poses a “permanent critique” of all institutions as mere means, rather than ends for their own sake. After a permanent critique, to deify the state or idolize military force seems as unfit for the future as old wineskins for new wine. Future society inherits past ideas and institutions which are as unfit for the future as old rags for patching a new garment.

From the second chapter of Mark (verses 23–27), after Jesus breaks the Sabbath, he is confronted by the Pharisees, who are the strictest upholders of the Law (Bart D. Ehrman 2000, page 17). Jesus refutes his detractors with an exception in the Hebrew Bible, where David himself violated the Law, from which Jesus determines: “The Sabbath was made for the good of man; man was not made for the Sabbath.” When the Markan version of the gospel distinguishes means from ends, Jesus denounces those who follow orders down to the smallest detail because they forget the higher importance of justice and mercy.

Any attempt at truly reconciling with the fate of Gaza depends on the justice and mercy which are denied to the Palestinians as routinely as our own country’s poor and condemned classes. In their clamor for liberation, we fail to recognize Jesus Christ, the Palestinian suffering injustice at the hands of a corrupt administration of empire. As neighbors, all our words of recognition come too late, and we pretend to have supported the Palestinian cause all along.

Works Cited

Berryman, Phillip. Liberation Theology: The Essential Facts about the Revolutionary Movement in Latin America and Beyond. Meyer Stone Books. 1987.

Democracy Now! ““A Man of Two Faces”: Author Viet Thanh Nguyen on New Memoir, U.S. Imperialism, Vietnam & More.” October 25, 2023.

Ehrman, Bart D. The New Testament: Course Guidebook. The Teaching Company. 2000.

Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Translated by Myra Bergman Ramos. Seabury Press. 1973. Original manuscript in Portuguese 1968.

Good News for Modern Man: The New Testament in Today’s English Version. American Bible Society. 1966.