IT is more than nine months since Israel launched its genocidal war on the Palestinians in Gaza.  Till now, around 39,000 people have been killed, including a large number of women and children, in the brutal bombardment and air strikes.  Hospitals, schools and residential buildings – nothing has been spared by the Israeli armed forces. In the occupied West Bank, the Israeli armed forces are conducting daily raids and over 550 Palestinians have been killed. The Israeli government has stepped up establishment of illegal settlements and encroaching on lands and olive groves of Palestinians in the West Bank.

Against this Israeli aggression, millions of people have been joining the mass protests around the world.  Significantly, they include a large number of Jews who are demanding that Israel stop this barbarous war and not act in the name of Jewish people. Thus they are demarcating themselves from the Zionists and extremists in Israel.

In India, it is the Left parties that have been conducting protests against the war and in solidarity with the Palestinian people.  This is quite natural since the struggle of the Palestinian people is for national liberation against colonial occupation and imperialism.  The Palestinian struggle for nationhood is the only national liberation struggle left over from the 20th century.  The Palestinian struggle is not a religious issue – one between Jews and Muslims.  This is how Israel would like to depict the resistance of the Palestinian people against the occupation of Palestinian lands by Israel.  Israel is a colonial-settler State, which has expanded its 1967 boundaries by occupying the West Bank, Gaza strip and East Jerusalem.

Unfortunately, in India, because of the influence of the Hindutva ideology and the Modi government’s full backing for Israel, the struggle of the Palestinian people is depicted as the fight of Muslims against a Jewish State. This understanding that it is a sectarian religious conflict has percolated into all religious communities.

In Kerala, during the Lok Sabha election campaign, we saw the adverse effects of viewing a liberation struggle through a religious prism.  Much before the elections, from October 2023, when Israel launched its barbarous attack on Gaza, the CPI(M) and the LDF had begun a campaign opposing the war and for expressing solidarity with the Palestinian people.  The call of the Left parties at the all-India level was carried out with full vigor in Kerala.  When the elections were announced, this campaign became part of the overall election campaign of the LDF.

After the election results, criticism against the campaign in solidarity with Palestine has been raised from various quarters.  The common theme being that this was a “Muslim issue” and the CPI(M) had sought to garner Muslim votes by raising this issue.  The BJP  propagated this campaign of the CPI(M) and the LDF as a type of appeasement of Muslims.  Even the president of the Indian Union Muslim League, Syed Shihab Thangal, in an interview accused the CPI(M) of raising a “Muslim issue” like Palestine to try and hoodwink the Muslim masses. A section of the Christian church was influenced by this dominant view that Muslim extremists are threatening a Jewish State. 

We have to draw conclusions from this whole episode. First of all, it shows how communal sentiments are rising in all religious communities in Kerala – whether it be Hindus, Muslims or Christians.  It is necessary to reiterate that the Israel-Palestine conflict is not a religious one.  It is a struggle of the oppressed Palestinian people against a 75-year old occupation of their lands.

The Christian community in Kerala should be made aware of what has happened to Palestinian Christians in the occupied lands.  Christians, who constituted 12 per cent of the Arab Palestinian population in 1948 when the State of Israel was formed, has since then dwindled to just 2 per cent of the total Palestinian population in the occupied West Bank, Gaza strip and East Jerusalem. When the Israeli State and the armed gangs started driving out the Palestinians from the newly-founded State of Israel, many Palestinian Christians were also deprived of their houses and lands. This process continued with the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.  As a result, 10 per cent of the Palestinian refugees around the world are Christians. 

According to the Census conducted in 2017 by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, only 47,000 Palestinian Christians were living in Palestine. Of this, 98 per cent live in the occupied West Bank and in the Gaza strip, they are a tiny 1100 people.

The Israeli State and its security forces have established a regime of oppression which involves seizure of lands, building of an apartheid wall and severing community and spiritual bonds which mark the composite Palestine nation.  Bethlehem, the town where (it is believed) Jesus was born, is situated in the occupied West Bank.  Here, seventy years ago, Christians constituted 80 per cent of the population. But the Israeli States’ construction of the apartheid wall started in 2001 cut off Bethlehem from Jerusalem.  Bethlehem is encircled by the wall and land owned by both Palestinian Muslims and Christians have been annexed to build Jewish settlements.  As a result, Christians have been driven away from the city and today they constitute just 12 per cent of the town’s population, i.e., 11,000 people.

The Christians living in Bethlehem cannot visit Jerusalem a few miles away.  Even during Easter, they have to apply for permits, which many do not get, to visit the Church of Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem where Jesus was reported to have been buried.

The Israeli State and the Zionist extremist forces have never distinguished between Muslim and Christian Palestinians.  They both faced the brunt of the occupation. The churches and the Christian community in Palestine, they are the oldest living links with the first Christian communities.  A bulk of the Christians belong to the Eastern orthodox churches followed by Roman Catholic churches and later entrants, the protestant churches. 

The Palestinian Christians and all their church leaders together brought out a remarkable declaration called the Kairos Palestine Document on December 11, 2009, which was signed by thousands of Palestinian Christians and endorsed by Patriarchs and Archbishops of thirteen churches based in Jerusalem.  It is a powerful call for the end of the Israeli occupation and restoration of peace. 

The Kairos document states: “We also declare that the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land is a sin against God and humanity because it deprives Palestinians of their basic human rights bestowed by God”.

It has been in the interest of the Israeli State to facilitate the migration of Christians out of Palestine. This serves Israel’s purpose to present Palestine as a religious issue wherein the conflict is between Jews and Muslims. This feeds into the Islamophobia prevailing in the western world. 

The reality of Israel becoming a Jewish State which suppresses all other religious communities is something which has been documented by many scholars and writers.  For instance, William Dalrymple, the well-known author, in his book ‘From the Holy Mountain’, which is a travelogue through the holy sites of ancient Christianity has narrated how the Zionists have gone about obliterating ancient Christian monasteries and monuments in Jerusalem.  In their quest to rewrite history and establish that only Judaism is at the heart of Jerusalem, the Israeli authorities are excavating sites to retrieve Jewish religious places while obliterating ancient Christian monasteries that were excavated.

In the ongoing horrific war on Gaza, the Israeli’s have not spared even the tiny community of Christians in Gaza. Two incidents bring this out. A 12th century church, the Church of Saint Porphyrius was bombed, killing more than a dozen Christians and Muslim families taking shelter there. Later, in the Holy Family Church where Christian families were sheltering, a mother and daughter were killed by sniper fire of Israeli soldiers. This cold-blooded killing drew the condemnation of the Pope.

It is surprising that all these events are kept hidden from the Christian community in Kerala who are told day in and day out that Islamic fundamentalists are waging war against Israel.  Much of this propaganda emanates from certain churches in America where rightwing evangelists have become the ardent supporters of the Zionists.

Very few people know that the Hamas rose as a force because it was initially propped up by the Israeli authorities, who wanted to use it as a counterweight against the secular PLO.  Since then we have seen a spiral of Islamist extremism and its counterpart Jewish rightwing extremism that now controls the Netanyahu government. 

It is, therefore, vitally necessary to counter the viewing of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through communal lenses.  The people of Palestine – whether Muslim or Christian – have suffered the longest period of occupation in contemporary times. This is because Israel became the outpost of US imperialism for fighting against Arab secular nationalist forces and with the changes in the world situation, especially after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the forces of religious identitarianism took centerstage.  The monarchies and sheikhdoms in Arab countries, who became allies of the United States, betrayed the interests of the Palestinian people.

It is by recognising all these adverse factors that we should admire the courage and fortitude of the Palestinian people who have never given up their resistance to the occupation.  The people of Kerala, irrespective of whichever religious community they belong to, can and must be mobilised on the side of justice and freedom for the Palestinian people.