It's So Hard To Heal
Why the October 7 attack was so painful
Caution: This post contains an honest discussion of Christian antisemitism.
The night of Monday 8 October 2023 was restless. I may have slept but if I did it was only for a few hours because I couldn't help but keep thinking about what had happened in Israel. I wasn't fully aware of what took place on the weekend. I saw the odd news story here and there but I didn't pay much attention to it. It was listening to Today on BBC Radio 4 on Monday morning where they spoke to a witness of the attack that I began to realise how awful it was. Sometimes I follow news stories and the media tends to report on stories that aren’t pleasant but losing sleep over a terrorist attack isn't something that has happened to me before. Why would I have such an unusual reaction to a news story considering it took place in a country that I have never been to and to people I don't know? I think it's because I feel a special connection to Jews and Israel. My support of Jews and Israel brings a load of complex feelings that are hard for me to understand. The purpose of my writing this is to help me understand and explain why I went from being an antisemitic Christian to a secular Zionist. My journey is long and complicated, it has required me to reflect on and confront my prejudices. It has required me to do a lot of reading and listening.
I think it’s fair to say I grew up in a pro-Israel Christian family. Jews were God's chosen people and we should stand with Israel no matter what. The return of the Jews to the nation of Israel was significant because it meant the second coming of Christ was getting closer. The Israeli state needed to expand their borders to Egypt because Israel needed to have a glorious restoration. It didn’t matter what the Palestinians or the rest of the world thought, this was God’s plan and no one could stop God. Israel and the Jews were an important piece in the game of apocalyptic Christian chess. The Jews may be stubborn and backwards due to their lack of belief in Jesus but they were God’s chosen people. At the end of the day, God was in control and the Jews couldn’t stop the end times from happening. The third temple will be built and the Antichrist will appear there but first, we need these stubborn diaspora Jews to submit to God’s will and return to their land. The state also needed to take back the land from the Palestinians. It didn’t matter what the UN said because they would eventually come under the control of the Antichrist. Looking back now I find these views to be insane and quite dangerous but it’s what I genuinely believed in my teens and early 20s.
In my mid-20s, there was this sudden shift in my mindset. I started questioning the ideas around the end times and wondered why I had to support Israel. As Christians, we were supposed to stand up for the oppressed and it seemed to me it was Israel who were the oppressors. I wasn’t familiar with the antisemitic slur ‘Christ killer’ but reading the gospels it became pretty clear that the Jews wanted him dead.
I came to think that Jews were stubborn and that everything Israel got they deserved. When I was a Christian it seemed obvious to me that Christ was the messiah and Jews were being stiff-necked for rejecting him. How could the Jews want to kill someone so loving and kind? In my mind, the crucifixion of Christ was so unjust and Jews had to pay a price for it. That’s where the Palestinians came in and why I was “pro-Palestinian”. It was my firm belief that God sent the Palestinians to punish the Jews for rejecting Christ. I liked that Palestinians were committing acts of violence against Israelis because I believed the Jews were behind the acts of violence towards Christ. I had replaced my Christian Zionism with Christian antisemitism.
To confront your prejudice you need someone to reach you in a non-threatening way and for me, it wasn’t just one but three people who reached out to me in a gentle yet persuasive way. These are people I’ve never met personally but have encountered through the books they’ve written and the words they’ve spoken. The first person was the late Rachel Held-Evans. Reading her book A Year of Biblical Womanhood was the first time I came across a Christian who treated Jews with genuine respect. She didn’t see Jews as people who needed to be converted nor did she blame them for Christ’s death. As I read the book I noticed a curiosity and willingness to learn, which I had never seen from any other Christian. Her pro-semitism continued in the last book before her tragic death where she wrote about the trauma Jews experienced during their exile in Babylon, her admiration of how Jews handle differences and how Christians could learn a lot if they took the time to listen to them. She isn’t the only Christian who I have come across that have a willingness to listen to Jews. Another two people would be Peter Enns and Jared Byas who present the podcast The Bible for Normal People. I’ve listened to episodes where they interview Jewish Bible Scholars talking about how they view the Bible such as Marc Brettler and Benjamin D. Sommer. Another podcast I should mention is Almost Heretical where in one episode Nate Hanson and Tim Ritter talk to Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg. While she didn’t say Christianity was antisemitic she expressed an uneasiness about the way Christians spoke about the Pharisees and Jews. I mention all this because first of all, it’s important to acknowledge those who have shaped your thinking and also to point out there are Christians who aren’t antisemitic. In the past when discussing Christian antisemitism I have failed to acknowledge these sorts of Christians.
When I first began to understand Christian antisemitism I was devastated. To me, Christianity had always been something that stood against prejudice and to discover that it had been used to spread hatred was hard for me to get over. I wanted Christians to show me I was wrong so for about two years I spent my time arguing with them on social media. I felt I had been deceived by the Christian message and was angry. I would get all up in Christian’s faces and tell them that their religion was antisemitic. They got defensive and tended to be dismissive of what I was saying which annoyed me even more. Looking back, their responses aren’t surprising since I was accusatory and defensiveness is a natural reaction to such accusations. I understand for many Christians their faith is personal and they don’t just admire Jesus but see him as someone they have a personal relationship with. So when you suggest that Jesus and the gospels may not be what they all cracked up to be they may feel attacked. It seems to me they were so hurt by what I was saying that they couldn’t see I was hurting too. I didn’t want to lose my faith because it would mean losing my identity and I wasn’t getting any help from them. Having said this, there were some Christians who weren’t so defensive and were willing to have an open conversation with me. While they didn’t come around to my position they were willing to hear me out and consider what I was saying. A few even conceded some of my points such as that there was a pro-Rome bias in the gospels. While such people didn’t give any answers they did make me feel I was being seen and heard.
Since I wasn’t getting any answers from Christians on social media I turned to books. Two of them gave me some answers. The first one was nuanced got me to reassess how I was approaching things. It was interesting because it was written by two Jews who were experts in the Hebrew and Christian Bible respectively. While they didn’t state that the Christian Bible is antisemitic they did point out that there are Jewish polemics throughout it, but they pointed out these polemics were all a part of a war of words between Christians and Jews at the time. They prove this point by quoting a letter from a Jew (if my memory serves me right he was a Rabbi) attacking Christians. I came away from listening to this audiobook with the view that I was only seeing one side of the argument by reading the gospels and the rest of the Christian Bible. Yes, what Christians were saying about the Jews was bad but I wasn’t seeing the whole picture. The second book I read was Zealot by Raza Aslan which wasn’t as nuanced but all the same it gave me some answers along with helping me see problems with the historicity of the gospels. At the time, one thing that bothered me was how Jesus never criticised the Romans. He had no problem calling the teachers of the law and Pharisees a brood of vipers yet all he did was praise the Romans. I asked Christians about this and they didn’t have a satisfactory explanation. Aslan argued that since those who were writing the gospels didn’t want to anger Rome they made the Jews the bad guys and presented the Romans as good people. It was something concrete I could accept. He also wrote about how Pontus Pilate is portrayed differently from non-Biblical sources. While in the gospels he’s passive and reluctant to crucify Jesus, other accounts outside the gospels portray him as a ruthless leader who had no problem killing Jews.
After consuming these books I felt incredibly lost. There was a part of me that still wanted to be a Christian. I wish I could just forget all the antisemitism and the historical inaccuracies but I couldn’t unsee what I saw. Then there was the idea of becoming an atheist and how terrifying that was. Still, Christianity had become a disturbing religion. At times being a Christian was like being married for decades to someone who I thought was faithful only to discover they had been cheating on me from our first date. It is better to go on a date with someone who happens to be honest about how they’re a serial cheater than to marry someone who hides their infidelity. I loved and hated Jesus at the same time... Then Hamas attacked Israel and that changed things.
It wasn’t the attack last year, it was the one in 2021. It might seem silly but I felt I was partly to blame for it because I was a Christian. You might call it Christian or gentile guilt… Whatever it was I felt bad that Israel was under attack and being a Christian made me feel uncomfortable. The way I saw it the antisemitic slur “Christ killer” comes straight from the gospels and that has been used to justify attacks on Jews. It was Christian antisemitism that led to the Holocaust and I followed a religion that was responsible for so much antisemitism. I went onto a humanist group and told about how I felt. They told me I didn’t need to be a Christian if I didn’t want to. They also said I wasn’t responsible for the attacks in Israel and Zionism predated the Holocaust. After several months of thinking about it, I decided to let go of Christianity. Sure, there may be positive aspects to it but that doesn’t take away the verses that have been used to persecute the Jews. Learning about Christian antisemitism had made the religion too problematic to follow and believe in. It seems to me Christians either aren’t aware of it or don’t think it’s a big deal. Only a minority recognise how serious it is and somehow can hold onto some sort of faith. I couldn’t do that. Christianity has a dark cloud of antisemitism hovering over it and when I think about the religion it doesn’t much for me to be reminded of it.
Politics has always followed my religious views. When I was a conservative Christian I was on the right and when I became a progressive Christian I shifted to the left. Strangely enough, after losing my faith I became more conservative. It’s funny because when I was a Christian I thought those unbelievers were on the left but here I was an unbeliever leaning right. I began to notice that generally those on the left were hostile to Israel and said they opposed Zionism. The way they talked about antisemitism was different to how they spoke about other prejudices. There was this dismissiveness of it like it wasn’t a big deal. They would say, “Of course, I’m not antisemitic” as if they didn’t need to think about it. It seemed like the same people who said we need to be aware of our unconscious biases against black people were unwilling to do the same thing when it came to Jews. Their dismissiveness reminded me of the Christians who were dismissive of antisemitism in the gospels. So I became disillusioned by the left and found myself becoming curious about what conservatives believed. I ended up diving into conservative podcasts and while I disagreed with some of what was said I realised those on the right weren’t as bad as the left makes out. Now I would still call myself a liberal because I’m pro-choice, antiracist, in favour of gay rights, believe in freedom of speech and tend to agree with Julia Shaw’s approach to evil. I’m also a Zionist and I see that as a liberal position as well. When I say I’m a Zionist, it means that I recognise that Europeans have persecuted Jews for centuries and that Christianity played a big role in the persecution. That it is natural for a group of people to want to be free from persecution, and the state of Israel gave Jews that freedom. Zionism isn’t colonialism, it is in part a response to antisemitism. There would be no need for the state of Israel to exist if Jews were fully accepted by the West but they weren’t and still aren’t. I’m not saying Jews wouldn’t want a homeland if there wasn’t any antisemitism, because almost every story in the Hebrew Bible is about Jews finding, keeping or wanting to return to their homeland. Still, as a secularist, religion has nothing to do with me being a Zionist, it has everything to do with being in favour of human rights.
So what of the Palestinians? I can imagine if you’re pro-Palestinian you might bristle at the thought of me mentioning Zionism and human rights in the same sentence. Still, it is how I see it and I also want to see the Palestinians have their human rights respected as well. When I came to writing this I wasn’t sure how to approach the Israel and Palestinian conflict. I was tempted to not mention it at all because I’m no expert in the conflict. There are plenty of articles out there by people who know far more about the conflict than me so would there be any point in me saying anything on the subject? Having said that, since this post was triggered by October 7 I should say something. First of all, I tend not to trust the media when it comes to their reporting on this, especially the BBC. Yes, I learnt about what happened by listening to BBC Radio 4 but soon after that, I stopped. It seems to me most journalists are either pro-Palestinian or pro-Israeli and hardly are pro-facts. If I were to place trust in any media organisations I would probably turn to Haaretz, The Times of Israel and The Jerusalem Post because their journalists live in the Middle East. This means they understand the situation better than some Western journalists who come to Israel to report the story and then leave. It should also be said these newspapers can be critical of the Israeli government (especially Haaretz) so you’re not just getting some “pro-Israeli” version of the story. Despite my lack of trust, I think it’s more than likely Israel has done some unethical things to the Palestinians because there’s no smoke without fire. I have read The Hamas Covenant and find it terrifying. It is full of provocative religious language that encourages Islamic fundamentalism and shouldn’t be welcomed by the world. The Palestinians, Muslims, Jews and Israelis who want peace should be welcomed. I don’t have much time for the religious fundamentalists who view the conflict as a way to bring in some sort of messianic age or the end of the world. I include the Christians, Muslims and Jews in that. I believe so much of this conflict has been driven by such people. You are welcome to be a religious fundamentalist if you have to, just keep your views to yourself. The final thing I will say is to recommend listening to The Yasmine Mohommed Podcast. The podcast is about people’s journeys out of religious fundamentalism. Some come to a moderate form of their religion and others become atheists or agnostics. Most guests grew up Muslim but some were Christian or followed another religion. She’s had a few Palestinians on it who have talked about their experiences of living in Gaza such as Hamza and Enas. Above I have posted the interview she had with the humanitarian activist Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib who takes a nuanced view of the conflict where he’s critical of both Hamas and the Israeli government. One thing I’ve taken away from all the interviews is that there is no freedom for Palestinians under Hamas. Before their rise to power, religion wasn’t imposed on Gazans and the society was accepting of LGBT+ people. Hamas along with other religious extremists are dangerous and I have no time for anyone who’s “pro-Palestinian” and is unwilling to criticise them.
I will end where I started on October 7. I sometimes feel I have overreacted because after all I’m not Jewish and have never been to Israel. The only connection I have is that I grew up hearing stories from the Hebrew Bible and have a good understanding of antisemitism. I have called this post “It’s So Hard To Heal” because I thought I was over how religion affected me. Before this day I had accepted that the antisemitic shadow would always darken Christianity and Christians would continue to follow their religion despite this. So there was no point in getting all worked up about it and just let them be. The same applied to antisemitism on the left. Nothing was going to change so just let it be. What October 7 did was make me revisit pain and shame. The pain I felt when I realised that Christianity had caused so much damage to the Jewish people. The shame I experienced knowing I had believed in it and had become antisemitic. Seeing people attacking Israel was seeing them attack Jewish freedom. It isn’t right to persecute a people for centuries and then criticise them for defending themselves.