There are moments when violence stops being shocking, and that is precisely when it becomes most dangerous. During a recent gathering hosted by Christians for a Free Palestine (CFP), speakers shared firsthand accounts from Palestine that did not rely on spectacle or exaggeration. Instead, they named something far more disturbing: how quickly the human nervous system adapts to brutality, how easily raised hands in surrender and the death of a seventeen-year-old can begin to feel ordinary. That realization alone should stop us in our tracks, because normalization is not neutrality. It is moral formation in the wrong direction.

One speaker described standing in Hebron, photographing two young men with their arms raised, aware that a teenager had been killed nearby the day before. What haunted them was not only the violence itself, but how their body had already adjusted to it. When fear becomes ambient, when injustice becomes background noise, the soul is being trained to accept what should never be accepted. Scripture calls this hardness of heart. Contemporary language calls it desensitization. Either way, it is a spiritual crisis.

Palestinians repeatedly described what they fear is the “Gazification” of the West Bank: the sense that tactics used in Gaza are now being applied systematically elsewhere, with the same end in mind—total control of land through unlivable conditions. In places like the Jordan Valley and Masafer Yata, armed settler violence targets not only people but the infrastructure of daily life: homes burned, water systems destroyed, animals killed, roads blocked. This is not random cruelty. It is the deliberate erasure of the possibility of remaining.

Perhaps most chilling were accounts of settlers allegedly using Israeli children to lead attacks, exploiting the fact that filming minors can carry legal consequences. If this is true, it represents a profound moral inversion—innocence weaponized to shield violence. For Christians, this should be an unmistakable warning sign. The Gospel’s concern for children is not symbolic; it is a safeguard against exactly this kind of corruption.

Alongside physical restriction runs symbolic erasure. One speaker described seeing Israeli flags every few meters along West Bank roads and realizing they had not seen a Palestinian flag publicly displayed in a long time. This evoked memories of the period before the First Intifada, when Palestinian symbols were banned entirely. What was once gained—however imperfectly—in the 1990s now feels lost. Identity itself is being squeezed out of public space.

And yet, even here, people spoke of gratitude for community. In Deheisheh refugee camp, families described how shared life and hospitality had long sustained them. But others noted, with visible grief, that the past two years have felt harder than even the Nakba—not because suffering is new, but because the fabric of community itself is fraying. Hospitality, one of the deepest human and spiritual practices, is being stripped away under relentless pressure. For Christians, this matters profoundly. Hospitality is not an optional virtue. It is sacramental. To attack it is to attack a people’s capacity to live faithfully.

The call from Palestinian Christians is not abstract. It is concrete and costly. The Kairos document urges believers to refuse normalization, to speak clearly against colonial violence, to reject Christian Zionism, and to educate their churches honestly. It also warns that solidarity will carry consequences: accusations of antisemitism, institutional pushback, strained relationships, even professional risk. This is not said to frighten, but to tell the truth. Solidarity, if it is real, will not be free.

Importantly, Palestinians are not asking others to speak over them or for them. They are asking us to bear witness—to keep naming what is happening, to resist forgetting, and to draw honest connections to systems of violence closer to home. Bearing witness is different from consuming suffering. It is a discipline of attention, memory, and refusal to look away once the headlines move on.

“Through tears, sadness, and blood, we will continue to invent the future.”

— Nikki Giovanni

That is not naïve hope. It is defiant love. Love that does not deny grief. Love that refuses normalization. Love that insists humanity still belongs to those whom the world tries to erase.

To choose love in a broken world is not to sentimentalize it. It is to stay awake. To remain unsettled. To keep saying, aloud and together, that what is happening is not normal, not acceptable, and not forgotten.

Palestine will be free.