Mitri Raheb’s timely book, Decolonizing Palestine, examines the theological and historical drivers of Israeli colonization of the West Bank: Christian Zionism, land theology, and the theology of election.  His ultimate goal is to foster a paradigm shift in how Christians think about the state of Israel, and thus “this book is an urgent call to decolonize Christian theology regarding the Palestinian land and its people” (141).

Raheb is himself a Palestinian Christian who was a child at the time of the Six Days War in 1967 when Israel first occupied Gaza and the West Bank, including his then and current home of Bethlehem.  The state of Israel thereby completed its control of historical Israel and quickly embarked on a program of establishing colonies in the West Bank that has waxed and waned throughout the last 57 years.  Many in the West have defended or turned a blind eye to this colonial project because of the seeming biblical justification that God gave that land to the Israelites/Jews.  That view of the Bible, Raheb argues, is a gross misunderstanding.

Settler colonialism is examined in the first chapter.  It has in recent decades been identified and distinguished from other forms of colonization by not just dominating the colony in question, but attempting to replace the native people and even eradicate them.  Raheb summarizes Israel’s history and argues that its actions fit this definition.

The second chapter attempts to reconceive Christian Zionism based on behavior rather than beliefs in order to unify disparate versions.  Mainline liberal Protestants and evangelicals have very different underlying hermeneutical keys, Holocaust guilt and American exceptionalism, respectively, but both support a Jewish right to the land.

The final two chapters are more directly theological, dealing with what Raheb considers grave misunderstandings of the biblical notions of God giving land to the Israelites and of election.  Regarding the former, in chapter three, he makes the important distinction between the Israelites of the Bible and the Israelis of today; however one interprets the Bible, its Israelites are not the Jews of today, let alone modern Israel, which is a secular state with 25% non-Jewish citizens.  Nor are today’s Palestinians the heirs of the Philistines, despite the name derivation.

But further, Raheb attempts to creatively re-interpret the Bible as completely non-historical with no claim that God ever intended for the Israelites to have any particular land.  The book of Joshua especially comes under fire as pure settler colonialism that is irredeemable, a book of straw, we might say, that should be excised from the canon.  Joshua admittedly contains some of the hardest passages to make sense of, but a Christian theologian absolutely cannot reject parts of Revelation.  Unfortunately, Raheb’s hubris deepens as he argues that all hermeneutics are political, so therefore we must interpret with political goals in mind (91, 114, 123), explicit eisegesis.  Walter Brueggemann receives extended critique as an example of how naïve even the best biblical scholars can be.

Raheb’s treatment of election theology is better, for there he at least tries to interpret the Bible coherently instead of dismissing the parts that do not fit his politics or have been misused at times.  He argues that while the Old Testament focuses on God’s choosing of the Israelites, that is only because it is their story, but we also have definite indications that God has chosen others as well who thus have their own stories (117ff; Amos 9:7).  However, Raheb fails to acknowledge the unique place of the Torah, that God has revealed Himself to Israel in a way that He has not done for others.  But the uniqueness of Israel is compatible with the ultimate inclusivity of all, because God’s call was always to be shared with others, which Christ fulfills: one body, many parts.

Raheb is right to criticize some of Israel’s colonizing practices as well as those who would say simply that Palestine is a Jewish homeland by God’s eternal decree.  But the former requires more detailed factual and ethical analysis than he provides, and the latter requires far better Biblical interpretation, specifically of covenant fulfillment, unpopular as that is in Jewish-Christian relations today.  Unfortunately for such an important issue, the book contains too much propaganda to be persuasive.