Jewish Resistance and Palestinian Resistance

As a Palestinian Christian, I participated as one of five panelists in a discussion regarding the documentary Four Winters, which portrays Jewish resistance during the Holocaust. Below are my remarks:

Today I want to speak about two struggles that history often treats very differently: Jewish resistance to Nazism, and Palestinian resistance to occupation. At their core, they come from the same human place —the refusal to surrender dignity when faced with annihilation.

When Jews resisted the Nazis, the Nazis called them terrorists. If they were caught, they were tortured, imprisoned, and executed. Yet today, those same fighters are remembered as heroes. Palestinians who resist Israeli occupation are also called terrorists. Many have been killed by Israeli forces. Others have died in detention through torture, starvation, or assassination.

In both cases, the powerful label resistance as criminal in order to justify crushing it. Both systems have also used starvation as a weapon. The Nazis deliberately used hunger to weaken and destroy Jewish communities. And after October 7, 2023, Israeli leaders publicly announced that Gaza would be denied food, water, medicine, and fuel.

For two long years, Gaza has endured what I call two winters of starvation. Starvation is not an accident. It is a policy.
There is also a striking double standard. Jews who fought the Nazis are celebrated today as courageous heroes. Palestinians, however, are not even allowed to express sympathy for resistance. When they do, they can be arrested, fined, or worse.

In Gaza, even suspected sympathy for Hamas can result in airstrikes that destroy entire homes — killing parents, children, and even unborn babies. This is not justice. It is collective punishment. Some people say Jewish resistance failed, so it must have been futile. But failure does not mean a cause was wrong. The Nazis were stronger. That does not make them righteous. Power and morality are not the same thing.

In the same way, Palestinian resistance may fail —but that does not make the Palestinian struggle illegitimate. When Jewish resistance fighters killed one Nazi, the Gestapo often retaliated by killing five or ten innocent Jews who had nothing to do with it. That brutal reality did not make Jewish resistance immoral. It exposed the cruelty of the system they were fighting.

Today, people question whether Hamas’s October 7 attack benefited or harmed Palestinians—a topic likely to be debated by historians for years. The real issue now is whether we assess both Jewish and Palestinian resistance by the same moral standards. But the deeper question is this: Was it wrong for Jews to resist the Nazis? If the answer is no, then why is Palestinian resistance automatically denied moral standing?

I speak as a Christian pacifist. I do not endorse or celebrate violence. But I also refuse to condemn people who resist when their lives, their land, and their future are being erased. To understand resistance is not to glorify killing. It is to recognize the human cry for dignity when every peaceful door has been slammed shut.

About the Author

Rev. Dr. Alex Awad was born and raised in Jerusalem. After graduation from St. George’s High School, he studied in Europe and then moved to the United States. He finished a BA degree at Lee University and an MA in Education at North Georgia University. He received an MA in Missions and Evangelism from Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky.

For 26 years Rev. Awad with his wife Brenda served as missionaries with the General Board of Global Ministries of the United Methodist Church in Israel/Palestine. He was the pastor of an international church in East Jerusalem and taught courses at Bethlehem Bible College, where he served as a faculty member, dean of students, and board member.

Rev. Awad has written Through the Eyes of the Victims and Palestinian Memories; both books reveal the realities of life under Israeli military occupation. He has published numerous articles that call for justice for both Palestinians and Israelis.