Review: Liberation and Palestine

The ongoing suffering, violence and death suffered by the Palestinian people has captured my heart over the past several years, as I have observed the inner spiritual strength of the victims from different religions. The creative engagement of Palestinian Christians with oppression is a testimony to grace and an example of an authentic Christian response to structural dehumanization.

This creative resistance and faith by the people of Palestine—present since their experienced nakba, or “catastrophe,” of 1948, the year the nation of Israel was created—has birthed an Indigenous liberation theology that attempts to interpret and respond to the ongoing violence, death and destruction with the hope and love lived and taught by Jesus. The new book The Cross and the Olive Tree: Cultivating Palestinian Theology Amid Gaza, edited by the Palestinian theologians (and brothers) John and Samuel Munayer, is a compilation of seven essays that treats this relevant theology as sharing commonality with Latin American liberation theology. It can teach us much about a faith-based, justice response to the situation in the Middle East today—but also about how to respond faithfully to the challenges that we face in the U.S. context. 

The essay authors are members of the new generation of liberation theologians who are trying to provide to the people a faith-based meaning to the present reality, particularly the massive human and physical destruction in Gaza. They were preceded and mentored by the earlier generation of renowned theologians such as Naim Ateek, a Palestinian Anglican priest and founder of the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center in Jerusalem, and Mitri Raheb, founder and president of Dar Al-Kalima University in Bethlehem, whose work arose in the late 1980s.

In the book’s foreword, Naim Ateek and Cedar Duaybis provide an excellent, honest overview:

In spite of our skepticism, questions, and confusion, we were able, by the grace of God, to articulate a Palestinian theology of liberation toward the end of the 1980s. This theology helped many of us to renew, deepen, and revitalize our faith rather than abandon it. It deepened our love and faith in God, but it also energized our commitment to work for truth and justice. Furthermore, by using the hermeneutic of Christ, we were able to critique the powers of injustice, falsehood, deceit and domination, and begin to advocate for a just peace based on biblical truths, United Nations resolutions, and international law.

Moreover, Ateek and Duaybis write, “Palestinian liberation theology helped us to address our own fears and prejudices, as well as confront and challenge the evils of ethnic supremacy, racism and bigotry as we lived first under military law and then under the illegal Israeli occupation.”

The narrative and theology presented by various authors have been informed by the North American and Latin American experience of oppression and corresponding liberation theologies. The Jesuit theologian Jon Sobrino is quoted, and there are references to St. Oscar Romero.

One essay writer, the theology doctoral student Marah Sarji of Nazareth, derives her reflections from comparing the lives and practices of Mayan women in Guatemala during the genocide they endured in the 1980s military dictatorship to the women of present-day Palestine and Gaza, who have asked where God can be found in a genocide. She discovers Christ in the practices and ethics of care of these suffering women. 

The mystique of the olive tree is integral to Palestinian culture and spirituality. “Olive trees are not just plants. They are spiritual entities,” the authors write. Quoting the interfaith leader Geries Khoury, they note that Palestine is like an olive tree, “rooted in drought and stone yet it endures. It lives for generations, growing steadfastly. Even when its branches are cut, new life emerges.” 

In their essay on “Palestinian Theology of Martyrdom,” referring to the Salvadoran experience of the Jesuit theologian Jon Sobrino, John and Samuel Munayer point to how Sobrino “sought to redefine martyrdom by broadening its scope beyond the traditional understanding of dying for the faith as an explicit doctrinal confession. In his view, martyrdom must include those who give their lives in the pursuit of justice, dignity and the defense of the oppressed, even if they are not explicitly killed for their religious beliefs.” Thus, martyrdom becomes “a radical transformative engagement in the world, where faith and action are inseparable.” 

Any observer of the situation in Palestine can see the determination of doctors, nurses, ambulance drivers, journalists and food providers who have shown solidarity with others as Gaza has been bombarded and its homes and hospitals destroyed; their actions showed the reality of “martyrs of everyday life.” And martyrs of different faith traditions. 

A similar perspective can be found in Pope Leo XIV’s recent encyclical “Magnifica Humanitas,” where he cites heroic and well-known church martyrs but also refers to the “unrecognized” everyday people who witness surrender and generous self-giving for Christ and his people: 

Alongside these public signs, there is a more hidden but decisive story. We see it in religious communities that choose to serve in poor and dangerous places. We also see it in the martyrs of fraternity and justice, such as Saint Maximilian Mary Kolbe, Saint Oscar Romero and Blessed Enrique Angelelli; and in those witnesses who embodied the hope of the Gospel as well as human dignity amidst harsh, often inhumane conditions, such as Venerable Francis-Xavier Nguyen Van Thuan.

Further, Pope Leo writes, “it is visible in the ‘martyrs of everyday life’ who care for, educate, accompany and comfort without fanfare, such as parents, nurses, doctors, volunteers and those who remain alongside an elderly person or an outcast. Their testimony demonstrates that goodness does not advance automatically, but requires the perseverance, memory and interior conversion necessary to begin anew, even after defeat.”

Those who are expressing solidarity with the suffering and oppression of Palestinian peoples, be they students or adults, and Jewish, Christian or Muslim or of no religion, often endure slander and harassment, including labeling by many as terrorists. They are also living a kind of everyday martyrdom. 

This new expression of martyrdom is also being lived out by many unrecognized people of faith who stand up to violence and cruelty, not just in Gaza or in the examples Pope Leo mentions but also here in the United States. The multitudes who are taking to the streets to pray and peacefully protest ICE atrocities in front of immigration courts and inhumane detention centers often endure physical violence, verbal abuse and incarceration. 

The injustices practiced by oppressive oligarchies and military regimes in Latin America gave rise to Latin American liberation theology, one with its own martyrs and intellectual tradition. So too has the experience of Palestinians in their own land given rise to an Indigenous Christian liberation theology. Here in our country, we face entrenched materialism, disregard for human dignity from womb to tomb, racism, discrimination and anti-immigrant sentiment. Perhaps the time is ripe for a unique U.S. liberation theology?

This article appears in November 2026.