Beyond October 7: Justice and Reconciliation

An interview with Dr. Salim Munayer, founder of Musalaha and Palestinian Christian reconciliation pioneer

Speaking from his home in Jerusalem to Bishop Justin Duckworth of Wellington, Dr. Salim J Munayer's voice carries the weight of personal experience and professional expertise. As the founder of Musalaha, a faith-based reconciliation organization, he has spent over three decades facilitating dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians. But his story begins much earlier, in the ancient city of Lyd.

Generational Roots in the Land

"I'm Palestinian Christian, an Israeli citizen," Salim begins, describing his birthplace of Lyd (Lydda), known biblically as the city where Peter healed Ananias and today situated next to Ben Gurion Airport. More significantly for Christian history, it's the burial place of Saint George, whose mother was from Lyd and who returned to his mother's hometown where he was ultimately martyred.

"My family is a Christian family for many generations. We have historical records going back to the 12th, 13th century," he explains.

This deep rootedness in the land makes the events of 1948 particularly poignant. During the Arab-Israeli War, Lyd was conquered by Jewish forces, and what he describes as "one of the big massacres" known as the Nakba or Catastrophe occurred against Palestinians. Most residents were forced to march from Lyd to Ramallah in July heat, a journey that cost many lives from thirst and exhaustion. Only 200 Christians, including Salim’s family, found refuge in the church and were allowed to remain, confined behind barbed wire and struggling on basic necessities for a full year.

"What's happening in Gaza today is reenacting what happened between 1947 to 1949 when 600 Palestinian villages were totally demolished from earth to erase all the people, culture, indigeneity and identity."

A Journey to Reconciliation

Growing up in this mixed city of Jews, Palestinian Christians, and Muslims, Salim attended both Arab and Jewish schools. His spiritual journey led him from Orthodox Christianity, which he found liturgically beautiful but lacking in practical biblical teaching, to a transformative encounter with Jesus through a bible study led by Jewish believers in the 1970s.

"I found Jesus talking about occupation, about discrimination, hatred, racism, the hypocrisy of religious leaders," he recalls. This Jesus of the second temple period, "dealing with the Empire, dealing with occupation, spoke to me quite a bit."

After theological training at Fuller Seminary in the United States, he returned to teach at Bethlehem Bible College and in Tel Aviv. When the first intifada began in 1988-89, his Jewish and Palestinian students began asking what the "other side" thought about the situation. His attempts to bring them together initially failed.

"They met and it was a disaster," he admits. This failure drove him to deeper study of reconciliation, leading to the founding of Musalaha in the early 1990s.

Desert Encounters and Six Stages

The breakthrough came through an unexpected method: taking Israelis and Palestinians into the desert on camels. "In the desert, you're equal. In the desert, it's not us and them. In the desert, the other becomes a human being, and your enemy becomes the source of your survival," he explains.

This desert spirituality, he notes, is fundamental to all Abrahamic faiths. God took "slave minded people into the desert to transform them," and Jesus himself went to the desert for spiritual preparation.

Through this work, Musalaha developed a six-stage model of reconciliation, moving beyond the initial "Hallelujah stage" or "kumbaya stage" to address the fundamental power imbalances that characterize the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Salim is clear that this is not a typical ethnic conflict but rather "a product of Western civilization, that Israel is the forefront of Western civilization as a settler colonial into our area."

The Challenge of Christian Zionism

He believes one of the most painful aspects of the current situation is the role of Christian Zionism in perpetuating injustice. He traces this movement to 19th-century Britain, emerging from post-Enlightenment ideological crisis and an obsession with end times.

Christian Zionism, he argues, makes several fundamental theological errors:

·         interpreting scripture literally and futuristically rather than contextually;

·         believing God has two separate peoples (Jews and the church) rather than one people grafted together in Christ; and

·         treating "Israel" as a political entity rather than understanding it as Jacob and his descendants defined by faithfulness to covenant, not DNA.

"The centrality of what God is doing in history is Jesus and not a political state," he emphasizes. He sees Christian Zionism as essentially a "crusade, military, militant mindset" that focuses on political states rather than the Kingdom of God.

Perhaps most challenging for Western Christians is Salim’s observation that "by default, they are Christian Zionist" because they "mistakenly equate biblical Israel with the modern state of Israel" and "mistakenly equate Jesus the Jew with the Jewish today."

Palestinian Christianity: A Living Heritage

Salim explains that Palestinian Christians come from three historical groups: Jewish believers who remained in the land from Jesus's time, Arabs who lived there continuously, and various peoples who travelled through this geographical bridge between continents. DNA studies, he notes, show Palestinian Christians have "85% Canaanite Jewish people that lived in this land."

This challenges the assumption that Palestinian Christians are Muslim converts. "Many times we joke when we encounter a Christian coming from overseas visiting the holy sites, they ask us a question, when have you been converted to Christianity? They assume that we are coming from a Muslim background."

Beyond October 7: The Larger Pattern

When discussing October 7, he insists on broader context and traces escalating violence to the current Israeli government's policies, noting that conditions had been deteriorating in the West Bank since 2021, with daily settler attacks and military harassment.

Gaza, he explains, had already been declared by the UN as having "unliveable conditions" due to the siege. The attack by Hamas, while surprising in its success, emerged from this context of desperation and marginalization.

Crucially, Salim points out that similar oppression occurs in the West Bank, which is not under Hamas control. "In the West Bank there is no Hamas control, there's no attack," yet Palestinians there face ongoing displacement, house demolitions, and violence from settlers and military forces.

A Demographic Reality

Behind the current escalation, Salim identifies a fundamental demographic challenge for Israel: "West of the Jordan River, we have 50% Israeli Jews and 50% Palestinian." With higher Palestinian birth rates and Israel's rejection of a two-state solution, the government faces what it sees as an existential question about maintaining Jewish majority rule.

"If people are not leaving the land, don't want to leave the land, and you want to have a fully Jewish state, majority Jewish state, if people don't move from the land... you are resorting into what we see today in Gaza: genocide."

A Call to Christian Response

For Christians watching from New Zealand and beyond, Salim’s message is uncompromising. "Christianity is very simple: love of God, love of neighbour, love of enemy. The test of our Christianity is to bless our enemies."

He calls for concrete action, helping refugees, writing, demonstrating (non-violently), and pressuring political powers. Drawing on the prophet Amos, he argues that worship without justice is rejected by God.

"We are living in a time, and maybe for some of us, it's too late, because we were quiet about the genocide... what your children and grandchildren will say when they ask you, where have you been with the genocide of Gaza?"

Continuing the Work

Despite the current crisis, Musalaha continues its reconciliation work. The organization's curriculum is being digitized with help from young people in New Zealand, making their 35 years of experience available to communities worldwide facing similar challenges.

Salim’s journey from survivor of ethnic cleansing to reconciliation pioneer offers no easy answers, but it does provide a clear challenge: Christians cannot claim to follow Jesus while remaining indifferent to systematic oppression and violence against any people created in God's image.

Dr. Salim Munayer is founder and director of Musalaha, adjunct professor at Fuller Theological Seminary and The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and sits on the board of Bethlehem Bible College. More information about Musalaha's work can be found at musalaha.org.