Israeli forces bomb Al-Yazi residential buildings and commercial shops near Qashqar Mosque in Gaza City on May 30. The photographer, Yousef Zaanoun, was injured in the attack. The photos on these pages are from ActiveStills, a photojournalism collective to which Mennonite Central Committee has seconded personnel in the past. Used with permission. Photo: Yousef Zaanoun
This year, as Anabaptists commemorate 500 years of witness, I write from Palestine amid the genocide of our people. We are currently wrestling with how the Church can bear witness. For us, martyrdom is not a relic of the past but a daily reality.
As we watch the skies over Gaza rain death and the soil of our land drink blood, our people ask, How do we remain faithful?
We ask not as detached theologians, but as family members who have received death threats, as descendants of the Nakba and as members of a community struggling to live the Gospel under settler colonialism. In this context, we have turned again to the language of martyrdom, not as glorification of death, but as a reclaiming of our call to witness.
The Greek word martyria and its Arabic counterpart shaheed mean “witness,” often in the context of a courtroom. Who is on trial? Who testifies? What is truth? In Palestine, these questions are not theoretical. Like Christ in the Gospels, Palestinians are daily placed on trial—physically, legally, morally—by systems of empire. And like Christ, we are often condemned before we are heard.
Yet we also recognize the power of witness. In Scripture, the call to follow Jesus is a call to testify to the reign of God—“You will be my witnesses,” Jesus says in Acts 1:8—not only in belief, but in suffering, resistance and hope. This is a communal calling, something we do together, bound not by blood but by baptism, not by security but shared courage.
In this, we find deep resonance with the Anabaptist tradition. Your forebears were imprisoned, tortured and drowned for refusing to align with imperial Christianity. They refused to bear the sword and chose instead to bear the cross. They disrupted systems of religious and political violence not with might, but with integrity. That story echoes in ours.
Palestinian families fleeing from the northern Gaza Strip arrive in Gaza City on May 16 after heavy shelling the night before. Photo: Yousef Zaanoun
Today in Palestine, we see another temptation that must be named: the theology of survival. Faced with immense pressure, displacement, migration and shrinking numbers. Many Christians in our land have made preservation their priority. The question becomes not “How can we witness to Christ?” but “How can we ensure our institutions endure?”
Understandably, churches worry about disappearing. But if our mission is only to exist, we risk becoming what Christ warned against, salt that loses its flavour.
We see this with some Church leaders who fail to witness to the realities in Palestine due to fear for their institutional life. Martyrdom reminds us that the Church is not a building nor an institution; it is a body which is called to suffer with the suffering, and to speak with the silenced.
In our tradition, martyrdom is not limited to death. It begins with the decision to speak when silence would be easier, to stay when exile beckons, to love when hatred surrounds. It is visible in young people who protest for justice and pay by losing their jobs, in aid workers who enter bombarded cities knowing they may not return, in Palestinian Muslims and Christians who remain steadfast to their families under sniper fire.
These are the martyrs of today.
And yet, martyrdom must remain communal. Too often, the Church elevates individual heroes such as Oscar Romero, Martin Luther King Jr. or Dietrich Bonhoeffer, while ignoring the movements that shaped them. Martyrdom is not about fame; it is about fidelity. Veronica, who wiped Jesus’s face; Simon of Cyrene, who carried his cross—these are also martyrs. They remind us that to witness is not to stand alone but to stand with.
As we reflect on this moment, a Palestinian concept—muthenna—challenges us. It suggests, Without you, I am meaningless. In martyrdom, we find such a relationship with each other, with those who have gone before and those yet to come. It is a communion across time, grounded in suffering love.
Ismail Al-Adra and his grandmother Reda Al-Adra assess damage after Israeli settlers cut over 100 of their olive trees the night before in the Huwara area, east of the city of Yatta, West Bank, on May 24. Photo: Mosab Shawer
This is the kind of Church we long for.
To the Anabaptist community, we offer this: Your history is one of costly discipleship. Do not lose it. The temptation to seek safety, numbers and influence is strong. But remember: resurrection does not follow control. It follows the cross.
Gaza is not only a tragedy; it is a kairos moment, a time in which the God of life calls the Church to respond. Palestinian theology insists that theology must come not from abstraction, but from the cries of the oppressed. The final words of Hind Rajab, the five-year-old killed in Gaza in January, are a form of witness: “I am so scared, please come.” Are we listening?
The Church cannot be a guardian of relics and graves. It must be built on its martyrs, as theologian Jon Sobrino wrote. This is not to glorify death but to testify to the power of life. In the face of empire, we are all on trial. Will we bear witness?
Samuel Munayer is a Palestinian theologian living in Jerusalem. He is the co-author of the forthcoming book, The Cross and the Olive Tree: Cultivating Palestinian Theology Amid Gaza (Orbis Books, September 2025).
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