By Carlos Mendoza-Álvarez
Israeli missiles, drones, and snipers are ravaging Gaza and the West Bank today, aiming to complete the total destruction of the Palestinian people.
It's been 77 years now Nakba or catastrophe, which began in 1948 with the creation of the State of Israel and the expulsion of the Palestinian people from their territory. The Israeli army gives biblical names to this new artillery of annihilation, conceived by the human mind but executed with precision by artificial intelligence. A recent example was the "Gideon's Chariots" operation announced by President Netanyahu to attack the terrorist group Hamas, implemented in 2025 by the Israeli army. This name recalls the battle of a Hebrew peasant who gathered 300 men to wage war on the Midianites in the name of God to occupy a territory "promised by God" as the ideology of the time. This story from more than three thousand years ago, recounted in the Book of Judges (6-7), is now evoked by Israeli power to justify the ongoing genocide.
As an expression of this control of the imagination of the Jewish people today, we can see the videos circulating on social networks, showing Israeli soldiers and settlers playing at killing Palestinian children as if it were a video game. millennialsPerhaps those actors of today's horror grew up from childhood in that artificial world of wars where the victor lives in the aseptic space of a digital screen. To top it all off, today's horror takes on a festive, "messianic" appearance, as it is a "holy war," accompanied by Hebrew choirs and traditional Jewish dances of those who mock the filth that represents the enemy. This people must be annihilated to liberate the land of Israel (Eretz Yisrael) from their invaders. The Bible already told this story when a people enslaved in Egypt created the story of the divine promise that would give them “a land flowing with milk and honey” (Exodus 3:17), interpreting a symbolic message as a mandate to conquer territory.
A similar version of military colonialism with a religious ideological cloak gave birth to the United States in modern times. English settlers fleeing religious wars and famine arrived in the lands of the Powhatan and Massachusetts people on the East Coast with "messianic" rhetoric, seeking to seize those lands with God's supposed blessing. The speeches of the Founding Fathers are inspired by biblical quotations, as are Trump's current incendiary speeches, especially after the 2024 attack, when the White House resident openly claims to have been sent by God to "save the free world." Bolsonaro expressed this same religious delirium in Brazil a few years ago to justify a racist regime with hate speech.
And so the supposed divine fire that inspires the Zionist state, the US government, and many of today's populist leaders launches "flames of fire" to annihilate anyone who opposes its divine mission, which, in reality, masks today's colonialism in its most brutal and cynical form.
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But the Bible tells others Stories of God's fire. Over thousands of years, the Hebrew people first and the early Christian community later discerned between the warring fire of false gods and the divine fire of the Eternal One, which prophets and poets, healers and apostles received, addressing the people in the name of God, healing their wounds, and announcing nonviolent messianic hope amidst the horror.
This divine fire is a flame that does not destroy, but rather builds from within, an experience initiated by the prophets of Israel, from Elijah to Jeremiah. This inner fire is like a spark that shares in the flame of the Eternal, where women and men in trance, illuminated by this divine light, announce new things for an oppressed and hopeless people. This fire is not military, but divine. It enables those who receive it to see and act with boldness, creative imagination, and loving compassion.
A fire different from that of the drones becomes light, splendor and strength, as in the story of Jesus the Galilean, who "transfigures" himself on the mountain to reveal his deepest being, preparing to go to Jerusalem at a critical moment of his mission, the center of religious power of his time, to bear witness there, in the heart of the empire, to the glory (קבֹד kabod) of your Abba. Glory is not power, but life.
That divine fire inspired Jesus and his community to weave a liberating and loving closeness with the invisible people of his time: the poor, women, strangers, and the sick. It also enabled them to denounce the corruption taking place, especially the perversion of the religion of the Temple and, later, of the Pharisees who called themselves teachers of the Torah.
A fire another world that, after the atrocious execution of Jesus on a Roman cross with the complicity of the angry mob and some religious authorities, settled on the head of the community terrified by the fear of suffering the same mockery as his RabbiAfter a time of mourning and fear, that fire opened their minds and hearts to understand what was happening. The crucified One was back, alive. otherwiseHe had awakened and was following his steps, babbling another message with his disciples and apostles, performing signs of new life in the midst of new communities, both within and beyond the borders of the Hebrew people. These communities in the diaspora recognized him as the crucified Messiah by rereading the Hebrew Scriptures and breaking bread in his memory, symbolic acts to continue the work of divine redemption in the hearts of suffering and hopeful peoples.
This divine fire is not exclusive to any nation, nor is it a monopoly of any sacred institution, whether secular or religious. Nor does it justify wars of conquest and colonization. Much less is it a destructive fire that annihilates other nations.
That fire is harvest retireThis is the powerful symbolism of the fifty-day cycle of the Hebrew and Christian calendar. The Hebrew Jubilee Year, which every fifty years forgives debts, lets the land rest, and frees the captives to make way for God's glory. Fifty days after Jesus' Passover, the Christian community celebrates God's loving abundance, which does not launch drones or missiles to destroy his enemies, but communicates flames of divine fire to "raise the humble of the earth from the mire," as Hannah and Mary sang in both Testaments (1 Samuel 2:10 and Luke 1:52).
Divine fire recreates the face of the earth from the survivors of the horror story, who interweave life with memory, dignity, and mutual care, amidst the death that surrounds them.
Blessed feast of Pentecost.
Mexico City
June 7, 2025
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