The Christians who many Christians forgot

On Saturday 29 March, at the eighth Human Rights Festival at Constitutional Hill, I asked for signatures from those old enough to vote. 

The petition called on parliament to push the executive to uphold South Africa’s international obligations and to stop trade with a state committing crimes against humanity.

An older woman called me over to say she had not signed. When I reached her, she asked: “What am I signing?” I explained. She shook her head. “No. I am with Israel.”

I stopped what I was doing and sat next to her, trying to understand. “I am Christian and stand with the children of Israel,” she said.

My attempts to draw parallels between apartheid Israel and apartheid South Africa — including references to the infamous “Stop Nonsense” razor wire fence used by police during apartheid and seen again at Marikana when mineworkers were massacred for demanding a living wage — did not move her.

“God promised them that land …”

I tried to explain the history of Palestine: that Judaism was the original religion; that, after Jesus of Nazareth died on the cross and, as many Christians believe, rose three days later, some inhabitants became Christian while others remained Jewish. Later, when Islam emerged, some residents converted to Islam. It was possible, I told her, for one family to include a Jew, a Christian and a Muslim.

I told her that, in 1911, in Mandatory Palestine, two Christian cousins, Issa El-Issa and Yousef El-Issa, founded *Falastin*, an anti-Zionist publication that became one of the most influential newspapers until its closure in 1967. This happened at roughly the same time that black South Africans, fearing the Land Act after the 1910 Union, began organising what would become the African National Congress.

She did not shift her position.

Nor did she when I described a Friday in Tunis, as I waited to board a flotilla to Gaza, where I broke bread with Jews, Christians, Muslims, agnostics and atheists at a Shabbat hosted by South African Jews for a Free Palestine. As Jo Bluen prepared to light a candle, a Palestinian man, Sharif — whose family had been exiled to Germany after being removed from their land in 1948 — took the light from her.

“What is happening?” Jo asked.

“My grandfather told me that in Jaffa, every Shabbat, it was the duty of Muslim neighbours to light the candles so Jewish neighbours would not break religious rules,”
he said.

I also told her of the Muslim family in Jerusalem entrusted with the keys to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, because Christian denominations could not agree on who should hold them.

Still, she was unmoved. “I stand with Israel,” she repeated.

I walked away, upset, realising this was not a battle I would win.

She reminded me of Ugandan justice Julia Sebutinde, who, in her dissenting opinion at the International Court of Justice, said: “The Lord is counting on me to stand on the side of Israel” — even when an Israeli judge agreed with the majority that Israel was committing war crimes.

Perhaps this has been one of the most heartbreaking aspects of this genocide: the extent to which it has been reduced to a religious issue.

Some Christians frame it as a conflict between Jews and Muslims. Others adopt a single-issue stance shaped by their own views about Muslims. Muslims, meanwhile, thank me for joining the flotilla and supporting the ummah.

In both cases, I find this troubling.

I want to tell Christians that a wall has been built in Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus — not unlike those proposed elsewhere in the world, including in Cape Town, ostensibly for different reasons but ultimately to divide people. Churches in Gaza have been destroyed, just as mosques have been destroyed, because those who worship in them are Palestinian.

I want to remind them that Jesus — after whom their religion is named — consistently prioritised humanity, compassion and liberation over the dictates of an unjust, colonising Roman empire.

As it was then, it is now. Palestine is a case of settler colonialism, much like apartheid South Africa, where religion was also weaponised. Afrikaners were told that the God of the Dutch Reformed Church was white, despite efforts by Reverend Allan Boesak to challenge this distortion.

I want to tell Muslims that compassion should not be limited to the ummah. Palestinians do not need charity; they need an end to apartheid and the return of their land.

It is inconsistent to speak for Palestine while abusing workers at the Oriental Plaza and then wonder why broader solidarity is lacking.

I want to remind Jews this Passover that Zionism is not Judaism and that anti-Zionism is not
antisemitism. Theodor Herzl, one of Zionism’s founders, was an atheist — not a religious authority.

South Africa’s liberation was supported by many Jews of conscience. To align with Zionism, or to ignore the suffering in Gaza and the forced displacements in the West Bank, dishonours that legacy. 

It echoes figures such as John Vorster, a Nazi sympathiser, whom Yitzhak Rabin nonetheless welcomed to Israel in 1976.

After that visit, the apartheid government’s yearbook noted that Israel and South Africa shared a position in “a predominantly hostile world inhabited by dark peoples”.

Members of the Global Sumud Flotilla are currently en route to Cuba, which remains under a United States blockade. Their mission reflects a simple truth: humanity is interconnected and it should matter more than profit.

Later in April, another flotilla will attempt to break the siege of Gaza, now in its 19th year. It will include South Africans of different races and faiths, as before.

One hopes it will be the last — that it will contribute to liberation and that people of all faiths will choose humanity over profit.

As Passover and Easter are observed, I am reminded of the words attributed to Jesus in Matthew 22:37-39: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind … Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.”

Those on the flotilla understand that their neighbour is anyone who suffers injustice.

May all who claim faith understand this too.