When I look at Gaza, I am struck by the devastation. I was struck by it even very early in the war. The scope of the devastation is astonishing, and the only thing more astonishing is that this has become normalized. There is no other place like this in the world. The people are trapped. They cannot leave, and they are starved, shot, sniped, bombed, with houses destroyed… This grieves the heart of Jesus.

A Jordanian friend has told me that people in the Middle East think of Israel-Palestine as an ethnic issue, that it is not about religion. There have always been Arab Jews. The issue is the white Jews of European descent thinking about nationality as blood and soil, which comes from European Romanticism at the turn of the 18th century. It’s a hold-out of colonial thinking and, what’s more, this blood-and-soil nationalism also drove Nazi Germany, which built its identity on blue eyes and blond hair–the “Arian” race. Just like they hated “die Juden” Israelis hate Palestinians.