Conservatism and Gaza: The Duty to Speak

A feeling comes over me when I talk with fellow conservatives about Gaza. It’s a feeling that pricks at my conscience and leaves me agitated and restless – like I’ve just been wasting precious time. And no wonder: as a Catholic, I believe one day I’ll have to give an account of every idle word. There are no words more idle than the ones we throw around in arguments that don’t begin by defining the words in question. So here’s what conservatism means – and, in light of it, what Gaza ought to mean to us conservatives.

Conservatism is, at its heart, the conservation of the Christian understanding of the human person. We are not economic units, political abstractions, or raw material for ideological experimentation. We are creatures made in the imago Dei, the image of God, called to love God and to love our neighbor. That truth is the foundation of the West’s greatest moral and political achievements – from the birth of what we now call “human rights” in medieval Christendom to the abolition of slavery in Britain and the U.S. and the defense of the unborn in today’s pro-life movement.

Christian anthropology, preserved and championed by the best traditions of conservatism, affirms the dignity of every person – friend and enemy, neighbor and stranger, born and unborn. It teaches us that political life exists not to glorify the powerful but to protect the vulnerable. To be conservative is to know that the just ordering of society flows not from abstract theory, but from reverence for what God has revealed about man.

Conservatism is not cynicism

Because we live in a fallen world, we must prudently approach and engage with power and influence, not cower from it or discard it in despair. The conservative does not idolize the state or seek to wield it mercilessly as a weapon. Nor does the conservative abandon the state. Instead, the conservative embraces the responsibility of seeking to steward it. Cultural and political institutions are means – means by which we either uphold the dignity of the human person or betray it.

To be conservative, then, is not to retreat into apathy or to march against our neighbors for the sake of partisan interests. It is to act with love – to harness what influence we have to protect the innocent and promote justice, however imperfectly, in this passing world.

And it is here, at this moral crossroads, that the conservative must speak about Gaza.

The scandal of silence

“Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” — Matthew 25:40

There is no other word for what is happening in Gaza but genocide. Entire families wiped out. Churches bombed. Infants buried under rubble. Human beings – image-bearers of God – reduced to statistics or propaganda points.

And yet the silence from the so-called moral guardians of our movement is deafening.

Too many who speak of the sanctity of life, of defending Western civilization, of the importance of faith and tradition – have turned away, offering excuses instead of outrage, abstractions instead of action. Some even cheer on the destruction as if it were a video game. Others, fearful of political backlash, say nothing at all.

But silence in the face of evil is not prudence.

It is complicity.

Perhaps the greatest disappointment is this: conservatism, once fortified by the deep moral and theological insights of the Christian tradition, has been thinned out by heresies – none more corrosive than Christian Zionism.

This ideology, masquerading as fidelity to Scripture, has distorted the Gospel into a political program, baptizing the interests of a modern state with the authority of divine revelation. It has taught millions of sincere believers to equate fidelity to God with loyalty to the geopolitical strategies of Israel. In doing so, it has disfigured our understanding of the Church, of justice, and of the vocation to love our neighbor.

Christian Zionism is not a harmless eccentricity. It is a theological error with deadly consequences. It has made many immune to compassion, blind to injustice, and pliable in the face of propaganda.

The Christian faith has the power to inoculate the believer from state-run influence campaigns, especially those laundered through right-wing media empires posing as defenders of “Judeo-Christian values.” But when so-called “conservatives” and “Christians” abandon the faith in all but name, they are left children of the wasteland – spiritually rootless, emotionally manipulated, and politically weaponized – incapable of seeing the face of Christ in the rubble of Gaza.

We were meant to form consciences.

Instead, we’ve handed them over to algorithms and cable news.

If conservatives don’t condemn genocide, their conservatism means nothing

If conservatism means anything – if it is not simply a tribal label or a vehicle for cynical rhetoric – it must mean this: we stand with the vulnerable against the machinery of death, no matter who operates it.

You cannot defend the unborn and remain silent while children are bombed in churches.

You cannot speak of human dignity and ignore the leveling of entire cities.

You cannot invoke the Prince of Peace and support total war against civilians.

If we believe what we say we believe, then we must condemn the genocide in Gaza. Not out of political convenience. Not to win a debate. But because our souls, our movement, and our civilization depend on it.

Because, again, the conservative is one who knows the vocation of the human person is to love God and love our neighbor – and our neighbor today includes the refugee, the orphan, the starving family in Rafah.

We are not called to fix the world overnight, but we are called to see, to speak, and to act. To use what influence we have – in media, in politics, in prayer, in protest – to bring about peace. Not a fake peace built on silence and fear, but a real one rooted in the truth of the human person and in justice to every image-bearer of God.

To be conservative in 2025 is to stand at a turning point. We can betray the truths we claim to defend, or we can let them lead us – even when it’s costly – into solidarity with the most vulnerable.

The path is narrow.

But it leads to life.

A final word

If we lose our courage now, we forfeit the moral foundation that gives conservatism meaning.

If we cannot see the face of Christ in the suffering child in Gaza, our politics becomes a hollow idol from here on out – and ultimately an easily collapsable one.

We are called to more. Let us not fail.

In Gaza, a child takes a quiet peek at a VPP vegetable package—curious eyes meeting a gift of hope.