The Palestinian genocide and American complicity has been possible because of an absence of empathy towards Palestinians. Western society needs a theology of empathy in order to stop this and other genocides.
On October 7, 2023, the Palestinian governing authority Hamas launched an attack against the State of Israel, firing thousands of rockets into Israel, setting fire to civilian communities, and kidnapping and killing hundreds of people who were attending a music festival. The State of Israel responded to this attack by formally declaring war on Hamas the next day. As of the writing of this essay, over 60,000 Palestinians have been killed, Israel brazenly violated the recently established ceasefire and has resumed its genocidal bombing of Gaza.
Of the over 60,000 dead, tens of thousands of those have been children. Humanitarian groups and aid agencies have called the situation a “humanitarian disaster” and a “genocide.” [1] Indeed, some have invoked the language of “concentration camp” to describe the life-threatening conditions Palestinians experience as they are confined to the Gaza Strip. The images and daily statistics emerging are horrifying.
The Absence of Empathy
According to Brown University’s Watson Institute for Public Affairs, the United States has sent $22.76 billion to Israel since October 7, 2023.[2] What has made that funding possible? An absolute lack of empathy made it possible. This lack of empathy also enabled callous commentaries and responses by representatives of the Israeli state, the United States government,university administrators, and violent pro-Israeli responses (such as what happened at the encampment at the University of California in Los Angeles) to peaceful protesters. [3]
A current lack of empathy is part and parcel of western white maleficence.[16] When we examine the histories of white maleficence, when we use the histories of the genocide of Native Americans, enslaving Africans and Jim Crow, of lynchings and legalized discrimination, and when we examine the history of antisemitism and the rise of Naziism in Germany, we see that such oppressions and genocides required a demonization and dehumanization of the colonized and oppressed.
A current lack of empathy is part and parcel of western white maleficence. [4] When we examine the histories of white maleficence, when we use the histories of the genocide of Native Americans, enslaving Africans and Jim Crow, of lynchings and legalized discrimination, and when we examine the history of antisemitism and the rise of Naziism in Germany, we see that such oppressions and genocides required a demonization and dehumanization of the colonized and oppressed.
A simple example of this dehumanization is found in the phrase that the only “good Indian” was a dead one.[5]This same dehumanization is expressed in the epidemics of lynchings and extra-judicial executions of Black people, as well as the dispossession of Black people’s homes, properties, and so forth. [6] For such to work, systems of oppression and domination must strip the humanity away from the oppressed and re-present them as subhuman and, thus, unworthy of empathy and care. The work of dehumanizing colonized/oppressed people functions to eliminate the possibility of empathy.
The settler colonial project claims that God is “on the side” of the colonizer. This is most evident in the American notion of “Manifest Destiny” in the 19th-century and 20th-century white maleficence against integration. In settler colonial theologies, God can exist only for the colonizer. The God of western imperial Christianity is incompatible with the gods of the indigenous or the enslaved. [7] Indeed, the God of western imperial Christianity fairly commands the destruction of the gods of the Indigenous and the enslaved to the point that destroying the Indigenous and the enslaved physically and otherwise is the fulfillment of a divine command. [8]
This essay proposes a constructive theology of empathy, which is a response to the genocide and a call for humanity to embrace empathy as the ground of divine activity towards creation and as the ground of moral/ethical actions between humans. I would like to cite at length Paul Ekman’s description of compassionate empathy:
With this kind of empathy we not only understand a person’s predicament and feel with them, but are spontaneously moved to help, if needed.
Ekman calls compassionate empathy a skill, the acquired knowledge “that we’re all connected.” … In other words, reacting negatively to injustice or suffering can motivate us to work with others to make the world a better place. Just as empathy has its downsides, negative emotions like anger can have upsides…sometimes we must let ourselves get hot in order to help. [9]
I want to center Ekman’s notion of “compassionate empathy” as the basis for a theology of empathy. This essay claims that compassionate empathy as a developing skill requires that we understand that the God of liberation also responds to suffering because God also desires a better existence for God’s creation. Put simply, empathy is the ground of liberation.
Liberation Theology
We also have a moral imperative to engage theology with empathy. Here, I invoke James Cone’s initial frustration with academic theology. I will quote him at length:
My mostly neo-orthodox professors talked incessantly about the “mighty acts of God” in biblical history. But they objected to any effort to link God’s righteousness with the political struggles of the poor today, especially among the black poor fighting for justice in the United States. God’s righteousness, they repeatedly said, can never be identified with any human project. The secular and death-of-God theologians were not much better. They proclaimed God’s death with glee and published God’s obituary in Time magazine. But they ignored the theological significance of Martin King’s proclamation of God’s righteous presence in the black freedom struggle.[10]
Put simply, Cone noted that his white theologians had no empathy for Black people’s struggles and assumed that God would not either. However, Cone argued that God identifies with the oppressed, and that identification has a moral dimension. Liberation theologies present strong claims about God’s identification with humanity: if God’s nature is to side with the oppressed, then it is the moral obligation of the Christian to stand in solidarity with the oppressed. God’s identification with the oppressed means that the people of God must also identify with and work on behalf of the oppressed.
Black liberation theology focused on the Exodus event and Jesus’s “mission statement” as foundational motifs for Black liberation. A theology of empathy may turn to the Exodus event, Jesus’s mission statement in the Gospel of Luke, and the experiences of the oppressed to show that empathy motivates divine solidarity with the oppressed:
…the theme of liberation is reaffirmed by Jesus himself. The conflict with Satan and the powers of this world, the condemnation of the rich, the insistence that the kingdom of God is for the poor, and the locating of his ministry among the poor–these and other features of the career of Jesus show that his work was directed to the oppressed for the purpose of their liberation. To suggest that he was speaking of a “spiritual” liberation fails to take seriously Jesus’ thoroughly Hebrew view of human nature. Entering into the kingdom of God means that Jesus himself becomes the ultimate loyalty of humanity, for he is the kingdom. This view of existence in the world has far reaching implications for economic, political, and social institutions. They can no longer have ultimate claim on human life; human beings are liberated and thus free to rebel against all powers that threaten human life. That is what Jesus had in mind when he said:
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord (Luke 4:18-19). [11]
Cone’s explicit use of Jesus’s “mission statement” in the Gospel of Luke in relationship to a theology of liberation is specifically intended to position Jesus as intentionally identified with “the least of these.” This “spirit of the Lord” for Cone is an empathetic, divine activity that centers on connecting with the divine creation.
Palestinian and Black Solidarity
I seek to position theologies of liberation in solidarity with the plight of Palestinians. I read the oppression and genocide of Palestinians through the lenses of liberation theologies such as Black liberation theology because Palestinians have read the oppression of Black peoples through the lenses of Palestinian identity.[12]
During the Civil Rights/Black Power Movement and Black Lives Matter protests, Palestinians stood in solidarity with Black people and vice versa. [13] During the Black Lives Matter protests, Palestinians not only signaled their solidarity via social media, but they also collaborated with Black people to give them tips and instructions on how to deal with tear gas and other police tactics designed to suppress protests. [14] A piece in The Nation outlines the deep roots of solidarity between Palestinians and Black people in the United States:
During the racial justice uprisings of 2020, multiple murals of George Floyd appeared in Gaza and the West Bank. Meanwhile, in the US, Palestinian flags became a common sight at Black Lives Matter protests, and in 2021, the official BLM organization issued a statement declaring “solidarity with Palestinians” and opposition to “settler colonialism in all forms.” That year, The Washington Post wrote that BLM’s influence had “changed the US debate on the Mideast,” increasing support for Palestinians among self-identified Democrats. At its zenith earlier this year, that support, according to polls, eclipsed sympathy for Israel for the first time in more than two decades. But the bloodshed in the Israel-Gaza war has fractured the left and the Democratic Party — and revealed deep fissures within the Black community.[15]
Another factor in thinking about theological solidarity with Palestinians is Cop City — the planned “police training” facility planned to be built in Atlanta, Georgia, that has direct ties to the Israeli police state. According to the American Friends Service Committee, up to 43% of the training that will take place at Cop City will include military training for the Israeli Defense Force (IDF). [16] The protests against Cop City note that this planned facility will deepen police violence against marginalized and oppressed communities here and around the world.
Conclusion
A theology of empathy must have an ethical dimension. Centering the plight of Palestinians as a focal point for a theology of empathy presents a moral imperative. That imperative is for people to resist genocidal powers and impulses. A theology of empathy is not merely an intellectual exercise in reimagining or rethinking the nature of God and God’s relationship with humankind and creation.
It initiates an ethical demand borne of a deep connection between the empathetic individual and community and God that then naturally and organically flows outward. Christian theology and the Church must resist allegiances to state power.
In the Spring of 2024, students and professors took a “risk of faith” and protested the genocide of Palestinians. Both the Biden and Trump administrations claimed that pro-Palestinian protests, writing, and advocacy are “anti-Semitic” and “supporting Hamas.” Under that pretext, academics and students across the United States are experiencing retribution from their home institutions for standing in solidarity with students who protested on behalf of Palestinians.
For example, Northwestern University professor Steven Thrasher is “under investigation” because of his solidarity with pro-Palestinian students as well as his writings on behalf of Palestinians. A Palestinian medical student at Emory Medical School was suspended after she objected to working alongside IDF soldiers.
This essay is an effort to join those voices, to stand in solidarity with Palestinians. We need a theology of empathy to counter genocide and apartheid. If liberation theology is right in its claims that God stands on the side of the oppressed, and if liberation theology is right in its assertions that the work of Jesus was to stand with and for the oppressed and the marginalized, and if liberation theology is right in its claims that the Church is to be the expression of a divine connection to its creation, then it seems only logical to assert that empathy is part of that connection.
Empathy, as part of theology, requires a connection to that which we may call God so that such connection moves us to engage in what Cone called a “risk of faith” and stand with them in whatever fashion we can muster.
Image Credit: “This lie cannot live” by Neil Ward, licensed under CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Notes:
[1] https://www.unrwa.org/resources/reports/unrwa-situation-report-164-situation-gaza-strip-and-west-bank-including-east-jerusalem
[2] “Costs of War,” https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/
[3] Michael C. Rea, “Empathy isn’t a sin. It’s a risk,” https://religionnews.com/2025/03/12/empathy-isnt-a-sin-its-a-risk/
[4] A special note: I am no longer using the term “white supremacy,” as there is nothing “supreme” at work. Whiteness as a technology of violence, dispossession, and oppression is nothing but maleficent.
[5] Wolfgang Meider, “The Only Good Indian Is a Dead Indian”: History and Meaning of a Proverbial
Stereotype,” in The Journal of American Folklore , Winter, 1993, Vol. 106, No. 419 (Winter,
1993), pp. 38-60.
[6] As of the writing of this essay, yet another Black person was murdered by police. The case of Sonya Massey’s murder by police officer Sean Grayson attracted national attention. https://edition.cnn.com/2024/07/24/us/sean-grayson-illinois-police-officer-shooting-sonya-massey/index.html
[7] Dana Lloyd and Jan Pranger, “Decolonization at the Intersection of Political Theology and Settler Colonial Studies,” Political Theology 2023, vol 24. No. 7, 611-613.
[8] Patrick Wolfe, “Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native,” in The Journal of Genocide Research, (2006), 8(4),December, 387–409ISSN 1462-3528 print; ISSN 1469-9494 online/06=040387-23 # 2006 Research Network in Genocide StudiesDOI: 10.1080=14623520601056240
[9] Daniel Goldman, “Hot to Help: When Can Empathy Move Us To Action?” https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/hot_to_help
[10] James H. Cone, Risks of Faith: The Emergence of a Black Theology of Liberation, 1968-1998 (Boston: Beacon Press, 1999), xvi.
[11] James Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2007), 2-3.
[12] https://apnews.com/article/black-palestinian-solidarity-support-blm-protest-966a5eb8f0fb5b34beced29c4dda7331
[13] Michael R. Fischbach, Black Power and Palestine: Transnational Communities of Color (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2019), 11, 30-35.
[14] https://apnews.com/article/black-palestinian-solidarity-support-blm-protest-966a5eb8f0fb5b34beced29c4dda7331
[15] https://www.thenation.com/article/society/black-lives-matter-israel-palestine/
[16] Akira Rose, “5 Things You Need to Know About Cop City,” https://afsc.org/news/5-things-you-need-know-about-cop-city
