Conquest or Leaven: Reflections of a Catholic Priest in Palestine/Israel
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed herein are those of the author and do not represent the official position of St Michael’s.
David Neuhaus, SJ
The following is an adaptation of a speech given by David Neuhaus, SJ presenting his book “Conquest or Leaven: Reflections of a Catholic Priest in Palestine/Israel”, followed by questions and answers at St Michael’s church, Rondebosch on 30 October 2026.
Conquest or Leaven: Reflections of a Catholic Priest in Palestine/Israel
When reflecting upon my journey and my book, Conquest or Leaven, I find it helpful to structure my thoughts around three main pillars: first, the book itself and the meaning behind its title; second, my personal story as a necessary backdrop; and third, the motivation for writing these reflections, which grew intensely out of my months spent in the region through 2023.
1. Conquest or Leaven: Understanding the Title
What exactly does Conquest or Leaven refer to? For both the title and the powerful cover illustration, I am deeply indebted to my publisher, Rob Reedlinger from Durban.
At the bottom of the book cover, you see a military tank rolling over bread. That represents conquest. Conquest is what happens when an entity encounters resistance and crushes it—this is the tragic way of the world. We as Catholics have lived through a sobering period of becoming conscious of how we as Christians too have adopted conquest, particularly since the fourth century when Christianity became a religion of empire, rolling over peoples, civilizations, and cultures. Conquest is crushing. In the context of this book, it describes what is happening in Palestine/Israel today, with Israel acting as an empire that has been crushing Palestine and the Palestinian community for decades, culminating in the genocide we have witnessed.
Now, leaven. After publishing the book, I realized that many people today do not even know what leaven is. Most readers familiar with the New Testament will remember the parable where Jesus says, "The kingdom of heaven is like a woman who kneads the leaven into the dough". On the upper image of the cover, you see a Palestinian woman wearing a traditional embroidered dress making bread.
Why use that image? Because Christians in general, and Christians living in Palestine/Israel too, are called to be leaven—called to be kneaded into the dough of society. We are kneaded in so that we can bring into the midst of the dough that which we believe, most importantly in our civic discourse: three words that I repeat ad nauseum—equality, justice, and peace. These are precisely the three things lacking when conquest operates through inequality, injustice, and violence.
Christians kneaded into the dough become like leaven (yeast) in the midst of society: hardly visible, but carrying those values into the very heart of where we live through our schools, our hospitals, our social welfare presence, and our full participation in society. Our Latin Patriarch, Pierbattista Pizzaballa, stated very clearly in his pastoral letter that we as Christians are not in the middle as neutral mediators; we are part and parcel of the societies in which we live, at their service.
When I opened the website of the Latin Patriarchate a few weeks ago, I wept looking at a photographic essay documenting the opening of the school year at the Latin Patriarchate school in Gaza City. That sounds banal elsewhere, but in Gaza City, it is a miracle. Looking through those sixty or seventy photographs of children, parents, and teachers taking up their mission to teach Arabic, mathematics, and biology—especially after witnessing three years of catastrophic destruction—you understand what that means. That school is a leaven in the dough, especially when we remember that 98.5% of the children in that school are Muslim, at a time when very few Christians remain in Gaza. This is the service of a church called to be leaven: not separate, not mediating, but living right in the midst of catastrophe and bearing witness to the human values of equality, justice, and peace.
2. Who Am I? A Personal Backdrop
To understand my perspective, I must refer to the roots of my family—an uprooted family of Jewish German refugees. Thank God we became refugees, because whoever stayed behind in Germany did not survive the war. Tens of relatives were murdered by the Nazis, leaving my family profoundly traumatized. They were not particularly religious Jews; they were very, very German, and their sense of betrayal was enormous.
When I was a boy, I found a box at home and shook it; inside were medals. I opened it and ran to my grandmother, asking, "What's this?" and she told me with brimming pride, "These are the medals that your great-grandfather and his brothers won fighting on the Russian front for Germany during the First World War." When I was a boy, my grandfather would lock himself in a room on Shabbat Saturday afternoons to do something very un-Jewish: he would put on records of Wagner operas and listen to them. They were profoundly German, and that identity was ripped out of their entrails with incredible violence.
I was born in South Africa in 1962 to those who escaped. My parents were acutely aware of the Nazi period, having it in their backyard intellectually all the time. Consequently, I was the only kid at my wonderful Jewish school in Johannesburg, King David, who did not have a black domestic servant at home, because my mother insisted she would not employ someone whose wage she could not pay equally. I grew up loud, opinionated, and outspoken.
By age 15, receiving a Zionist education that taught our true homeland was "over there" alongside a growing friction with the status quo in South Africa, my parents decided to send me off to Jerusalem before I got into too much trouble or faced military conscription. Two unexpected things happened there that overturned my life.
First, I met Jesus. Going to Jerusalem kicking and screaming with zero interest in religion, I met Mother Barbara, a 91-year-old paralyzed Russian Orthodox nun who simply enchanted me because she was radiant with joy. Despite her tragic family history following the Russian revolution and her complete paralysis, she was the happiest person I had ever met. When I asked why, after much hesitation, she spoke of being deeply in love with Jesus.
Second, I befriended a young man named Osama working in a Catholic convent. When he learned my family was back in Johannesburg, he insisted, "A person can't live without a family. You come with me," taking me home to his parents, Abu Usama and Um Usama. That introduction opened three profound doors for me:
The Palestinian People: Discovering their story and their ongoing Nakba (catastrophe)—not beginning in 2023, 1967, or 1948, but rooted in the 1917 British declaration making the land a Jewish homeland, introducing a settler-colonial dynamic of replacing the indigenous population rather than integrating migrants.
Arab Civilization and the Historical Integration Model: Encountering the glory of Arab civilization, including Christian Arab culture and the magnificent, often-forgotten tradition of Jewish-Arab symbiosis. History demonstrates that for centuries and centuries, Jews found refuge and flourished within the Muslim world—particularly under the Ottoman Empire—integrating and enculturating deeply into Arab society. One of the greatest names in Jewish thought, Moses Maimonides, lived and wrote his greatest philosophical masterpiece, The Guide for the Perplexed (Dalil al-Ha'irin), entirely in Arabic in the 12th century. This centuries-old tradition of Jewish-Arab coexistence proves that contemporary antagonism between Jew and Arab is a modern aberration; integration and shared cultural life remain the historically natural, correct model for the region.
Islam: Deepening my understanding of Islam, sitting every Friday with my lifelong friend Usama to read the Quran. To illustrate how deeply enculturated I became: on a visit to Egypt, I visited the oldest mosque in Cairo on a boiling hot day. Finding the entrance booth empty and the attendant sprawled under a tree, I greeted him with Salaam alaykum, to which he replied Alaykum assalaam. When I asked to pay the entrance fee, he remarked that Muslims don't pay. I replied that I was a Christian, at which he got up, opened the booth, and recited Bismillah ar-rahman ar-rahim ("In the name of God, the merciful and the compassionate"), prompting me to automatically continue with Al-hamdu lillahi rabbi l-alamin ("Praise be to the master of the worlds"). He slammed the booth door shut and told me to go pray.
After completing a PhD in political science at Hebrew University in 1991, I entered the Society of Jesus, spending eight years in formation across the United States, Egypt, France, and Rome. My biblical studies in Rome came at the request of our prophetic Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem from 1987 to 2008, Michel Sabbah, who asked for someone to teach scripture. This became a mission: to teach the Bible to Palestinian Christians amidst interpretations that use the Bible to justify conquest: taking their homeland from them and giving it to another, supposedly chosen and preferred by God.
Miraculously, my dialogue with my Jewish family and friends remains entirely intact. At first, my mother asked how I could join Christians after what they did to us. I promised to wait ten years to make sure that this was the way. My parents accepted the dawning reality, and saw that I was finding meaning and happiness. Today, I regularly attend synagogue and celebrate Jewish festivals alongside my active participation in Muslim-Christian dialogue. I have been changed, and hope to continue changing, through ongoing encounters with Jews and Muslims in Palestine and Israel.
3. What is Inside the Book?
Conquest or Leaven brings together articles and reflections exploring various dimensions of the conflict:
History and Population Groups: It examines specific population groups that represent potential cracks in the ideological wall of conflict. Particular attention is given to four groups:
Ultra-Orthodox Jews: Who have never felt comfortable with Zionism because they see it as secular and a religious betrayal.
Jewish Arabs: Refusing the false dichotomy between being Jewish and Arab, and tracing the deep-rooted civilization of Jews who lived profoundly in countries like Iraq, Morocco, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, and Egypt (who make up about half of Israel's population today).
Ex-Soviet Citizens: Hundreds of thousands imported after the collapse of the Soviet Union claiming to be Jewish—though we know hundreds of thousands are non-Jewish—who chose to come to a rich Western country and join the establishment of conquest, though at least some are starting to ask questions.
Palestinian Citizens of Israel: Who are in the news right now because in the recent elections they secured 19 seats in the Knesset, and whose internal knowledge of Jewish Israeli society makes them a potential catalyst for change.
Biblical Exegesis: It features a chapter grappling with one of the most difficult parts of the Bible: the Book of Joshua. The text seems to depict God desiring genocide and was famously loved by David Ben-Gurion as a blueprint. Taking that text on as a Christian—recognizing the profound linguistic and theological links with Jesus (whose name in Greek is literally the Hebrew name Joshua). I propose an alternative Christian reading of that story rather than weaponizing it for displacement.
Anti-Semitism: The opening chapter addresses the critical link between anti-Semitism and the struggle for a free Palestine, arguing that to truly free Palestine, we must fight against anti-Semitism, given that European anti-Semitism and the late 19th-to-20th-century flow of Jewish migration was what originally provoked the displacement.
The Interplay of Ideologies and Theological Wall-Building: The book explores how ideological walls are built on the lie that "it has always been like this," how interreligious dialogue can either serve empire or become a revolutionary force for transformation, and how theological frameworks are weaponized.
Solidarity: The final chapter, "We Refuse to Pass You By," draws upon the Good Samaritan (and Martin Luther King Jr.'s interpretation) to articulate a spirituality of active solidarity—being seized in our guts (splankhne, in Greek, which serves as the root for the term in Greek for being filled with compassion) with the Palestinian people rather than staying quiet or being complicit.
Summary of Discussion Themes
On the Way Forward: There is no easy political way forward right now; the situation is deeply blocked. The greatest lie of empire is that "it has always been like this and always will be." Our task as a church community is to offer an alternative language and imagination anchored in equality, justice, and peace.
On Christian Zionism and Biblical Literalism: Just as the Church historically used scripture to justify slavery or silence women, it has been abused to justify conquest. We need communal, contextual Bible reading that exposes our blind spots and ensures the Word remains good news for everyone, rather than relying on isolated proof-texts.
On Countering Christian Zionism in South Africa: A wealth of new theological literature—from young Palestinian theologians, Mitri Raheb, Munther Isaac, John and Samuel Munayer, and other scholars—provides the resources needed to ensure our discourse accurately challenges Christian Zionist narratives.
On Traveling to Palestine/Israel: Journeys of solidarity remain powerful when undertaken thoughtfully, choosing ethical guides, conscious lodging, and recognizing the reality of Palestine/Israel.
On October 7th, Jewish Suffering, and the Historical Genesis of the Conflict:
As Catholics, we fully affirm that Jewish people are God's chosen people and God does not repent of the covenant and promises made (Romans 11:29), and we acknowledge the horrific, painful history of European Christian anti-Semitism that led up to the Holocaust.
We must recognize that what happened on October 7, 2023—the murder of close to 1,200 Israelis and others, and the kidnapping of over 250 people—was brutal, horrific, and indefensible.
At the same time, nothing started on October 7th. The historical genesis of the crisis cannot be reduced to a vacuum or the excuse that "it has always been like this." It traces back structurally to November 2, 1917—the Balfour Declaration—when the British declared the land a homeland for the Jewish people, sparking a Zionist movement of settler-colonial replacement rather than integration with the indigenous population. The Nakba (catastrophe) of the Palestinian people is an ongoing tragedy. Palestinian resistance to it, both peaceful and armed, has been crushed mercilessly for decades.
Therefore, while we acknowledge the immense suffering and historical trauma of the Jewish people, we cannot use past Jewish suffering to justify the enormous, systemic suffering that Israeli policy and empire are inflicting on Palestinians today and in the past. True moral clarity requires holding these truths together: condemning atrocities like October 7th unequivocally, honoring Jewish historical trauma, naming the root injustices of 1917 onward, and standing against the crushing machinery of modern conquest. The fight against antisemitism and the fight for a free Palestine are part and parcel of the same struggle!
Conquest or Leaven: Reflections of a Catholic Priest in Palestine/Israel by Fr. David Neuhaus SJ is available for order online through the Catholic Bookshop or by searching for the title on Amazon.
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