Post by Fr David Neuhaus SJ | 7 August 2026
Conquest or leaven – Why?
Recently I was asked yet again why I regularly use the images of conquest and leaven in speaking about the situation in Palestine/Israel and the vocation of Christians in the midst of the ongoing conflict there. My friend and collaborator, Rob Riedlinger, publisher of the South African version of the book, was the one who identified these terms as particularly significant after he had read through the collection of articles I had put together. We then titled the collection that has just been released by Orbis Press, “Conquest or Leaven”.
Conquest is the conventional way of the world to construct empires – the kingdoms of this world. External force is applied to resistant elements in order to force them to give way. Victory is gained by domination and the elimination of opposition. Holding on to power and constantly making use of it is the guarantee of victory. The system that is put into place, be it discrimination, occupation, ethnic cleansing or genocide, distinguishes clearly between victor and vanquished. This model of kingdom has dominated the history of the world. It must be admitted at the outset that conquest has often been the way followed by Christendom too, at least from the time that Christianity became the religion of empire in the fourth century. The vanquished were those Christians who refused orthodox discourse, as well as Jews, later Muslims, and all others who did not accept Christian faith.
Today, conquest characterizes Israel’s domination of Palestine, manifested in the regime of discrimination imposed on the Palestinian citizens of Israel, in the brutal military occupation that ravages the Palestinian territories conquered by Israel during the 1967 War, and in the devastating genocide that has unfolded in the Gaza Strip since October 2023. Dreams and ideologies of conquest, as well as exercises in conquest also dominate many forms of Palestinian imagination and resistance to Israeli force. These reached a peak in the horrific massacres in southern Israel on October 7, 2023.
However, Jesus of Nazareth suggests a different model: the one evoked by a kingdom that is like leaven. In one of his parables, Jesus taught, “The kingdom of heaven is like leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened” (Matthew 13:33). Unlike conquest, leaven suggests transformation through integration. The leaven, barely visible, becomes one with the elements into which it is kneaded. The change produced is gradual and organic, brought about through the symbiotic relationship between the leaven and the other elements in the mix. The distinction between the leaven and the rest dissolves and transformation spreads as the leaven is absorbed into the dough. The Church in Palestine/Israel is called to be this leaven. In her institutions, schools, hospitals, homes for the elderly and the handicapped, social assistance, and reconstruction projects, the Church serves society as a whole, foreseeing a kingdom in which all are respected and in which all participate.
Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Pierbattista Pizzaballa, wrote in his pastoral letter, “They returned to Jerusalem with great joy,” published in April 2026, “Christians in the Holy Land are not a third party, nor a neutral buffer between Israelis and Palestinians, nor a separate body from their non-Christian brethren. They are, rather, salt, light, and leaven within the societies to which they rightfully belong. Predominantly Palestinian or Jordanian citizens, Christian Arabs, but also Cypriots and Israelis, Christians share the history, language, wounds, and aspirations of their peoples. They are not called to enclose themselves in a protected enclave, nor to flee, but to live their vocation to the full: to be part and parcel of society, sharing its fortunes, and helping to ferment it from within with a vision of humanity – and society – rooted in the Gospel. They do not offer the world an abstract utopia, but the seed – fragile, concrete, sometimes almost invisible – of a possible city. A city that rises from below, in the dough of daily life shared with their Muslim and Jewish fellow citizens, and that shows how coexistence, forgiveness, and reconciliation are possible. For everyone.”
Christians, though few in number, are called to integrate into, permeate, and transform society. By taking their rightful place in the midst of their fellow compatriots, whether Palestinians or Israelis, their neighbours and friends, whether Muslims or Jews. They seek neither isolation nor separation. Instead, they are called to be at one with, and serve, intercede for, and act. As they do so, they promote the values of equality, justice and peace, values of the kingdom of heaven. Barely visible, they represent the living, irreversible process that takes time, hard work, and infinite perseverance and resilience. Strengthened by their faith, they endure without giving in to despair. At Christmas in 2024, the Justice and Peace Commission of the Catholic Church in the Holy Land, boldly proclaimed, “The experience of Easter obliges us to proclaim: The Risen Lord has triumphed over death and evil and we are witnesses to this. (…) The resurrection is not our response to violence; it is our very identity as Christians, called to preach hope when hope seems impossible, to witness to life when our day-to-day reality seems to promise only death. This hope, in our smallness, in mustard seeds, leaven in bread, translates into our stubborn insistence on continuing to imagine a better common future and then setting out the work of living it now.”
In his 2007 letter for Lent, then Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem Michel Sabbah explained what it meant to be this leaven. “The vocation to be leaven in the dough of Jesus’ own land requires that we stay in this land, even though life in other lands might be easier. The vocation to be leaven is a vocation to live the commandment of love in order to forgive, while at the same time demanding all the rights that have been lost, and in order to transform life into a sharing of goods and sacrifices. This sharing can make all of us, with all of our differences in religion and nationality, true builders of the new society that must arise in this Holy Land for all of us, Jews, Druze, Muslims and Christians.”