For over four months I have followed mainstream news and social media accounts reporting on and discussing the conflict in Israel/Palestine. Different outlets are using different language to describe the situation. My choice to title this piece Genocide in Gaza is intentional to highlight the civilian cost leveled against the Palestinian people. My hope is to humanize victims of violence and normalize conversations that otherwise feel too complicated or too scary.

In the past few months, I’ve had to face my own biases and knowledge gaps and do the work of unlearning and re-examining narratives that weren’t always complete. I’ve had to ask: Does it matter what we say or don’t say on this topic? Is it enough to move forward loving everyone?

I have a bracelet I got at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. It has remember written in many languages, as well as the words what you do matters. My visit there made a lasting impression, especially the exhibit documenting genocide since the Holocaust.

While there is not consensus among genocide experts if Israel’s actions do in fact constitute genocide, a very high legal bar, I look to the words of Raz Segal, program director of genocide studies at Stockton University, who not only calls it a textbook case of genocide, but also points to the importance of naming it and giving a truthful reckoning. For me, an important first step is “letting the truth be heard, and all its rawness, ugliness, and messiness.”* For me, examining my language includes the work of recognizing how antisemitism is intertwined in my country’s history and how it persists today. It’s recognizing that Israel does not equal all Jews and criticizing violent systems and policies is different than perpetuating harmful stereotypes or dehumanizing a group of people.

Stories matter. How we tell them and whose perspectives we leave out. In 2018 Vice President Pence gave a speech at the Knesset, Israel’s legislature. He said,

“In the story of the Jews, we’ve always seen the story of America. It is the story of an exodus, a journey from persecution to freedom, a story that shows the power of faith and the promise of hope. My country’s very first settlers also saw themselves as pilgrims, sent by Providence, to build a new Promised Land.”

I remember the messages of manifest destiny I heard at church. Of pilgrims and the quest for religious freedom. I don’t ever remember hearing how narratives of Columbus, Lamanites and the promised land were harmful to indigenous people.

What about the stories I grew up with regarding Israel? What are the ramifications of language and theology? Of course Mormons across time and place will have experienced different lessons. End of time discussions were plenty frequent in Southern California in the 90s and 2000s. In the Old Testament institute manual one line reads, “Israel will be rebuilt and re-inhabited by the covenant people.” I remember learning that the establishment of Israel was needed for Christ to come again. I don’t remember discussing what that meant for the people already living there.

Palestinian Christian theologian Mitri Raheb invites readers to reflect critically on scripture in his book, Decolonizing Palestine: The Land, The People, The Bible. One of the passages in Raheb‘s book that challenged me was his section on Christian Zionism redefined. He moved it beyond dispensationalists and fundamentalists:

“I argue that Christian Zionism should be defined as a Christian lobby that supports the Jewish settler colonialism of Palestinian land by using biblical/theological constructs within a metanarrative, while taking global considerations into account… The emphasis is not on what people believe, but what they do based on the belief.”

He continues this idea later in the book:

For people of faith to believe that they are elected by God is one thing. To use this belief as a pretext for supremacy or entitlement to occupy other peoples’ land is not permissible. Violations of human rights in the name of “divine right” should not be tolerated.

I appreciate how Raheb distinguishes between four different usages of the word Israel:

1. The biblical and historical kingdom of Israel, distinct from 2. biblical Israel as an abstract, theological concept, describing god’s people, 3. the modern political entity of the state of Israel and 4. Ancient Israel, which he defines as “a modern construct that confuses certain aspects of the biblical story with history, thereby projecting an exclusive, ethno-national and religious state into the bible.” 

Genocide does not just happen. How we understand violence and how we talk about it has repercussions.

Let’s do the work of witnessing. Of learning. Of dismantling. Let’s talk about it.

Resources to learn more: check out this comprehensive document from Jewish Voices for Peace

*Excerpt from The Book of Forgiving: The Fourfold Path for Healing Ourselves and Our World by Desmond Tutu and Mpho Tutu. This book recounts Tutu’s work as the Chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa after apartheid.