Palestine: Our Litmus Test
- Natalie Kendel
- Apr 10
- 9 min read
I doubt that I'm the only one who has had a growing certainty since Oct 7th 2023, that Palestine has become a litmus test of our time. That the issue of the Palestinian Genocide, the oppression they suffer, and the call for their liberation has become some type of standard, a wake up call, a warning - and particularly - a test for Christians worldwide.
In chemistry, a litmus test is a way of testing whether something is acidic or alkaline. But we use this term now figuratively as well: to refer to a test in which a single factor is decisive; an indicator which is used to determine the quality of something. A litmus test in society, politics, or a community can be the quality-control, and the canary in the mine. If it dies and fails, you know there is danger and you must get out.
It may seem reductionistic and even naive to call the Palestinian genocide and the illegal occupation of Palestine a mass litmus test, especially considering there are so many large, significant events happening elsewhere on the planet. The mass slaughter and slavery pits in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the violence and oppression in Kashmir, the UAE-funded crisis in Sudan, the Western-fuelled starvation in Yemen. But to ignore or disqualify the issue of Palestine as a legitimate control factor demonstrates a severe lack of discernment - both of the times we live in, and the global and moral implications of our response to Palestine.
Those who treat the horrors of what's happening in Palestine like an unfortunate crisis, a war, or a fatuous squabble between siblings who just can't seem to learn how to share, have not only swallowed an untruthful narrative, but are actively fuelling the lying-campaign which is Zionist ideology and propaganda. But for anyone who has been listening and staying informed, they know that the existence of the European colonial project known as "Israel", the land-theft, mass incarceration in Gaza concentration camp, the oppression, systematic rape, torture, ethnic-cleansing, and mass-murder of the Palestinians, represents a large web of issues. They know that this heinous injustice did not pop up out of nowhere, and it was not permitted to flourish in a vacuum. No, the oppression and annihilating of Palestinians is part of a web of issues. A web of sins. Each string in this web represents a sin - an evil - which lies deep in the heart of Western, white society and empire.
To say that the Palestinian Holocaust is the face of white, Western sins is not a stretch or an exaggeration. It is white colonialism which created and drives the terrorist entity called "Israel". It is white supremacist empire, and the mission to secure and expand white imperial interests in the region, which financially and militarily is running the show (and has been since the conception of the the Zionist colonial project and the Balfour Declaration). It is racism and Islamohatred which permits the dehumanisation of the Palestinians to Western audiences. It is European and American greeds that keeps Western governments sending weapons to Palestine's oppressors. It is the bastardised white feminism and American Evangelicalism which use their belief systems to pervert language, narrative, and understanding among its followers.
Now the question becomes: Why have so many Western Christians failed to respond correctly to the Palestinian genocide?
The answer is quite simple. And devastating.
It's because this group, and the people who populate them, have failed to confront, challenge, and oppose their own sins. Namely, the sins of racism, colonialism, white supremacy, Western white imperialism, Islamohatred, capitalism, Adultism, misogyny, and the idolatry of Western power and Western empire.
I know that, were many Western Christians to be told this, there would be outcry and emphatic denial.
"How can we be racists? Jesus loves all the little children of the world - even the red, yellow, and black ones! We can't be racist!"
"We follow Jesus and we believe in his kingdom, not in the empires of this world. We're pacifists! We just want peace! We don't even believe in military force. How can we be supporting this war! We just want everyone to stop fighting!"
And therein the truth is revealed, and through their very denial their ignorance and guilt about this matter is laid bare.
The very fact that many Western Christians can't even see their own racism, let alone how it connects to what's being permitted to happen in Palestine, is testimony enough of the massive underlying and systemic problem in many churches.
The white, Western sin of staying silent in matters of injustice and oppression is age-old and persistent. Claiming the defence of "pacifism", while failing to understand the heart of non-violent resistant, is nothing new. White guilt and white shame being an inhibitor of people having the humility to admit and reckon with their own internalised racism persists and persists. In place of the radical unlearning and relearning which is desperately needed, many white, Western people - and often particularly those who identify as "Christians" - claim to inhabit a moral safe-house which they think makes them exempt from such crimes.
But the truth is, the way we as individuals and faith communities respond to Palestine is the canary in the coal mine. Rather, it is hundreds of thousands of dead canaries. It is the warning flag, the red alarm going off, the voice of the prophet, the warning of God. It is the litmus test. Palestine reveals our true hearts. It is the test of our faith, the unveiling of our values. It is the evidence of where our spiritual health really is. It is the proof of our sins. Our sins being our racism, apathy, our imperialism, our colonialism. And how they have embedded themselves, like a virus, so deeply into our theology and religious identity that we can no longer tell them apart from ourselves or the way we interpret scripture.
The wrong response to Palestine is the reaping of what Western Christianity has long sowed. It is the chickens coming home to roost, and they're bringing with them a plague on all our houses.
The wrong response to Palestine is a direct consequence of white, Western churches failing to challenge and uproot their own racism. It is the direct consequence of their failure to uproot their white supremacist ideology. From their theology, from their biblical interpretation, from their hierarchical structures of power, from their view of other people, and relationship to social justice.
Slavery, racism, imperialism, colonialism - these are the sins of Western society, and Christianity. And the fact that so many Western Christians believe these sins to be in the past, committed by generations past, and having nothing to do with them or what they're responsible for in the present, is to fail to see the blood on their own hands. Is to fail to see how their hands are presently pushing on the wheel of this evil empire, and greasing its wheels with twisted scripture and faulty theology.
By refusing, failing, or not seeing the need to uproot these sins from their theology and their communities, Western Christianity has failed to flee the deadly coal mine, failed to hear the warning prophets, failed to respond to the alarm bells. It is sitting comfortably in its seats of power, arrogance, privilege, apathy, comfort, self-delusion, while it rots from the inside out. And, though their Jesus longs - aches! - to heal them of their sickness and liberate them from their lies, they refuse to be healed. "For I am not ill!" they insist.
So many Christians I personally know are currently defending their own apathy, distancing, or having a foot in both camps, amid declarations of peace-loving and pacifism. But this is, in fact, behaviour which has its own terminology: it's a little something called "moral posturing" or "moral cowardice".
Moral posturing refers to when people use the language of moral conviction (like pacifism) to avoid hard choices or to protect themselves from discomfort. In that case, it’s less about true belief and more about self-protection disguised as principle. “Moral cowardice” is a sister phrase that describes someone avoiding difficult or risky action, especially when justice or protection is needed.
Similarly, there is nothing new about the phenomenon of "false or performative pacifism". This custom term describes the performance of pacifism without the actual ethical weight behind it. Someone might say, “I’m a pacifist,” when really they’re afraid to stand up or act, especially in the face of injustice — which true pacifists often do very bravely, just through nonviolent means.
Under these terms, we also find the sub-term, "appeasement disguised as pacifism". This happens when someone just wants to keep the peace at any cost, even if it means enabling harm. That’s not real pacifism — it’s conflict avoidance masquerading as principle, and it always, without fail, serves the oppressor, not the victims of injustice.
The way which your and my church has responded to Palestine is the litmus test of that church's spiritual state.
If your church's response is apathy, it is evidence of a cold love, hard hearts, and a false religion. If the response is taking both sides (or "no sides") and merely calling for "peace" or "ceasefire", it is evidence of a complete blindness as to what true peace is: peace without justice cannot exist; evidence of a failure to stand for the oppressed and a failure to seek justice. If the response is supporting "Israel", this is evidence of the malignant and idolatrous worship of white imperialism and colonialism. The failure to unlearn and weed out the racism from our own theologies and faith-teaching is now being stripped and laid bare for all to see. Palestine has revealed the true heart of things. Palestine has revealed the true heart of people. Palestine has revealed the true state of churches.
I deeply believe that Jesus, the Messiah, is returning soon. I also deeply believe that Palestine is one of our times' litmus tests.
I believe that it won't be long until Jesus' return, when he is coming back to the Earth - for everyone to see. I believe that he is bringing liberation for all the oppressed, that he will bring justice, and that he will enact good judgement. I believe that he brings liberation. I believe that he will break all empire. I believe that the suffering of the Palestinians will soon come to an end, that Jesus will gather all of them to himself, to give them the comfort and healing they so desperately need. I believe that all those Palestinian children, whose bones litter the ground of Gaza, the West Bank, and Al-Aqsa, will rise; that the hundreds of thousands slaughtered will be resurrected to life again by the Lord of Life.
I believe that the Palestinians, along with the stolen, enslaved people of Africa, the women and children abused by the "church", the Herero and Nama people, the stolen generations of Aboriginals, the dispossessed Māori, Native Americans, the Chinese victims of the "Opium Wars", the Jews who suffered at the hands of Christian antisemitism, the Roma people - will stand with Jesus on the last day. Palestinian children will be our judges. We will be judged for what we did, and for what we didn't do. There will be a reckoning, and the victims of white, Western, "Christian" sins will be vindicated.
To understand and discern these times, is to understand and discern the litmus test that is Palestine, and what its results tells us about the state of our hearts. How all the sins of the white West are found flowering in this great injustice. And how the way we respond to this test is a loud and clear indicator as to where we are in relation to God's will and his kingdom.
Sadly, tragically, alarmingly, much of Western Christianity has been weighed and found wanting. The Western world has been proven to be rotten at its core, and many churches reflect that same rottenness. And instead of feeling horrified by this discovery, responding with humility and a willingness to unlearn, repent, and find forgiveness from their Saviour, they have dug their heels in, hunkered down, and are heaping burning coals upon their own heads. They've done everything from twist scripture, turn a blind eye, contort the truth, and invent a defence system to make themselves look innocent.
To all those Christians and Westerners, who are still supporting "Israel", remaining silent, or "both-side"-ing this Holocaust, all I can say, with an aching heart, is:
"Wake up.
WAKE UP!
WAKE UP!
Please wake up, before it is too late!
Your souls hang in the balance!
There's something very, very wrong here!
There's is a cancer eating at your core!
"The canary is dead.
The prophets have spoken.
The alarm bell is ringing.
Please wake up!"
__________________________________________________
Sources:
"Imperialism, Colonialism and Human Rights: The Litmus Test of Palestine" SOAS University of London, w/ Francesca Albanese
Angela Davis: ‘Palestine is a moral litmus test for the world’
Researcher Nimer Sultany publishes an article titled: “The Question of Palestine as a Litmus Test: On Human Rights and Root Causes.”
International Journal of Transitional Justice on Palestine
Jerusalem Declaration on Christian Zionism: This declaration, signed by leaders from various Palestinian Christian denominations, rejects Christian Zionism as a "false teaching that corrupts the biblical message of love, justice, and reconciliation."
La Grange Declarations
"A Sin against Humanity and God: the Genocide of the Palestinian People and the Churches’ Silence": Authors Michel Andraos and Jane Barter argue that the silence of Western churches on the plight of Palestinians reflects a deeper complicity rooted in colonial and imperial ideologies.
"Christianity in Africa: The Cost of Loyalty to Zionism": Marthie Momberg
"Christian Zionism, Islamophobia, and Imperial Peace": Andrea Smith
"Echoes of Slavery, Racial Segregation and Jim Crow: American Dispensationalism and Christian Zionist Bible-Reading": David M. Crump
'It Is Important to Call a Genocide a Genocide,’ Consider Suspending Israel’s Credential as UN Member State, Experts Tell Palestinian Rights Committee
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