Book Club On Palestine: A Conversation with Dr Munther Isaac, author of Christ in the Rubble
The recording of our online launch meeting hosting Dr Munther Isaac on 23rd April 2025
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The new Book Club on Palestine series features Christ in the Rubble by Rev. Dr Munther Isaac. It has become a BCOP tradition to invite authors to attend launch meetings. Last Wednesday we had the privilege of hearing Dr Isaac introduce his book with authenticity, clarity and passion. Having lived his entire life under Israel’s settler-colonial regime, Isaac speaks with profound authority from his lived experience as a Pastor, as father of two young boys, and as a respected leader both within his community, and internationally.
Please watch the video of our meeting, and feel free to share it as widely as you wish. The wider the reach, the better.
To feel confident in our activism, we have to be well-informed. The Book Club on Palestine (BCOP) is a forum to learn, and become better grounded in knowledge. The BCOP is a welcoming, safe, and supportive community, where people are in the presence of others with whom they share human values, and concerns. It is an international forum that crosses artificial state, religion, gender, race, and ethnicity barriers that have plagued our species for thousands of years, and that have unnecessarily separated us from one another.
Israel, and the Western world with its state and corporate media, have transformed what should be a clear-cut issue of supporting victims of settler-colonialism, genocide and injustice into a toxic, emotive ‘controversy’. Isaac addresses this problem directly in both his talk and book. Why has supporting Palestinians become so problematic? Why have we, once again, reached a point where basic human solidarity is framed as ‘controversial’, and in supposedly democratic countries such as Germany, even criminalised—potentially landing supporters in prison?
Throughout his book, Isaac laments the silence of so many Churches regarding Palestine. Why does a religion rooted in love and compassion turn away from the suffering of a whole people; ignoring undeniable crimes against humanity that violate International Law? That International Law should be miles ahead of a religion that calls for love, inclusion and world peace testifies to the failings of human organisations, not the religion itself. Churches and followers often betray their own teachings, distorting even the simplest message to “love one another”. This betrayal stems from the psychology of both leaders and followers who remake their religion in their own image, twisting its teachings to serve interests far removed from compassion and justice. Whose needs are being met when Churches choose a cowardly path and either ignore injustice and mass murder, or support perpetrators instead of their victims?
There is nothing inherently problematic, controversial, or ‘sensitive’ about supporting Palestinians, or any people subjected to crimes against humanity. Yet Israel has manipulated this issue, transforming support for Palestinians into a question of loyalty to a state that falsely claims to represent all Jewish people worldwide. People must understand that Israel’s idea of Jewishness is fundamentally racial. It is based on the discredited notion that Jewish identity exists in the blood—that Jewish blood is inherently different from the blood of other humans. Humanity is one species and our DNA is, in fact, incredibly narrow in comparison to other life forms, including wheat... We don’t have to reach too far back in our collective history to realise that we are all genetically related. The idea that race confers specific traits on people is a particularly toxic myth. Though thoroughly debunked, it is still used to justify tribalism and hatred of ‘others’. Racists live in fear and operate from a very primitive version of human psychology.
Western democracies should have condemned Israel for its racial definition of citizenship, particularly when it enacted the Jewish Nation Law (July 2018), which explicitly establishes Israel as a state only for Jews. This condemnation should have come not only because such racial exclusivity contradicts democratic principles, but also because this law fuels Israel’s settler-colonial project and the systematic erasure of Palestinians. Israel’s racially-defined Jewish identity conveniently underpins its strategic argument that criticism of Israeli state policy constitutes antisemitism. While Israel persistently portrays itself as the ‘Middle East’s only democracy’, it operates on principles of ethnic supremacy that contradict the democratic values it claims to champion.
It is bitterly ironic, though not surprising, that the same principle used historically against Jews by European antisemites—culminating in Nazi ideology—is now deployed by Israel against Palestinians. This pattern is unsurprising because humans commonly reenact their trauma upon others. Although most people can (and should) recover from trauma, the vast majority do not. Israeli society has elevated Jewish trauma to a god status and worships it. Although very few Israelis alive today have directly experienced antisemitism, the vast majority of Israeli Jews nevertheless carry a deeply ingrained victim mentality. Israel transmits Jewish trauma through the generations via its education system and countless formal and informal social mechanisms. The military serves as a powerful indoctrination machine, systematically conditioning eighteen-year-old recruits throughout their compulsory service.
Each generation is deliberately re-traumatised to ensure a steady supply of soldiers who will enforce settler-colonialism and advance Israel’s goal of eliminating Palestinian presence from historic Palestine. While individuals remain responsible for their actions, this systematic indoctrination profoundly shapes their choices. Anyone who has engaged with a Jewish Israeli who is still embedded in this trauma/victimhood worldview will recognise their distorted and often surreal perception of reality.
Racialism and tribalism are not merely fictitious and absurd – they have no legitimate place in any society that considers itself ‘progressive’. I have explored these themes in several of my Substack essays.
Supporting the Palestinian people is a simple, and straightforward act of standing shoulder to shoulder with our fellow human beings, when they are subjected to injustice, oppression, intimidation, dehumanisation, abuse, and murder. There is nothing special about the Palestinian people that singles them out for the horrific genocide they have been facing for seventy-six years. There was nothing special about the Indigenous people of the Americas, Aboriginal Australians or any other group that has ever been subjected to colonialism and genocide.
Psychopathic regimes all through history have scapegoated people. In the case of settler-colonialism, indigenous people’s only ‘crime’ is having lived where they did. Just as every settler-colonialist and colonialist regime in human history has always done, Israel would have you believe that the Palestinians are monsters. It is impossible to destroy people without first dehumanising them. Psychopaths are incapable of seeing others as human beings. But most people are not psychopaths. To enable ordinary, otherwise peaceful individuals to commit atrocities, you must convince them they face a non-human, existential threat—even when the alleged ‘threat’ includes small children, or newborn babies in hospital incubators.
The Palestinians only ‘crime’ is that they are. Munther Isaac’s voice is therefore crucial. Anyone who has even slightly bought Israel’s propaganda, needs to hear him speak and read his books. They will inevitably recognise that Palestinians aren’t inherently destined for victimhood—they are people just like us. We each must ask ourselves what we would do if someone came for us. In a world like ours, where anyone can suddenly be labeled a criminal or a terrorist, none of us can afford complacency. Laws that protect us can change, and reason does not prevail when you deal with psychopathic regimes and their armies of indoctrinated, mindless followers and enforcers.
Studying together in the Book Club on Palestine is an act of resistance against propaganda. It enables us to dispel the fog of confusion and emotionality that Israel and its allies have so successfully been able to spread in order to disable opposition, and isolate the Palestinian people. Israel has not invented anything new. What Israel is doing is routinely done by all perpetrators of abuse, and by abusive systems.
As M. Scott Peck says, “Love is as love does”. Love is something we do. If we keep our empathy hidden and feel too frightened or uncertain to act when others need our help, we aren’t loving them. Love in this sense is a verb, not a noun. As M. Scott Peck also notes, “Love is an act of will—namely, both an intention and an action. Will also implies choice. We do not have to love. We choose to love.” Or we can choose not to. Either way, it remains a choice. When we abandon those needing help, we actively choose not to love them— a responsibility we cannot escape. I am passionate about helping activists find confidence to increase their effectiveness, and am grateful to participate in the Book Club on Palestine.
No meaningful positive change in human history has ever originated from the mainstream. Throughout our history, the mainstream has been dragged— reluctantly and resistantly—into doing the right thing by determined minorities grounded in truth and justice. Without committed activists, women would still lack voting rights and slavery would remain legal, to cite just two obvious examples.
If you wish to register for the current Book Club on Palestine series, please use this link. Zoom will ask you to register and sign in, if you wish to attend a meeting. You do not have to have Zoom installed on your device to use it. You can choose to use it on the web.
You can also opt to receive updates from the BCOP, or you can follow the Book Club on Palestine on social media. You are welcome to attend one, or more meetings and you will always be welcome. Needless to say I highly recommend Christ in the Rubble. It is incredibly well written, direct and clear. Naturally, because of its subject, it is also emotionally demanding.
If you have any questions or problems with registration, please email the Book Club on Palestine at: bcop0081@gmail.com.
The Book Club on Palestine meetings are recorded. You can find past recordings under ‘videos’ on the Book Club for Palestine YouTube channel. It can take a few days for recordings to be posted on YouTube.
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Thank you so much for reading my work!
I was very eager to join the BCOP in studying this book but was too busy last week.
We are genetically related not only to one another—the most distantly related people today are at the outside 100th cousins—but also to every other living thing on the planet. Our DNA is clearly of a common origin with that of an insect, a plant, a bacterium.
«Race» is a pernicious invention of society, not a biological reality. Definitions of racial groups vary across and within racist societies: plenty of people from Brazil who are not considered black there have been surprised to be called black in the US. Racial categories are most prominent in societies such as the US, Brazil, South Africa, and the Zionist entity that are highly stratified through a colour-coding scheme.
Judaism does indeed set Jewish identity up as a racial category. By traditional standards, Jews are those whose mother was Jewish when they were born or who converted to Judaism through a formal process. Very few people convert, so in practice Jewish identity is about maternal origins, which is to say that it is racial.
There no such thing as Jewish blood, Black blood, white blood, or any other similar kind of blood. Anyone who believes the contrary is simply not dealing well with reality.
I too am privileged to be part of the book club. As ever your words inspire me to continue to strive to be a better human. “Isaac laments the silence”, this statement brings me to tears as I lament ❤️🕊️