On Monday 20 October, the White House scrambled to hold together the Gaza peace deal as American officials said they were increasingly concerned that Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, could dismantle the U.S.-brokered agreement.[1]  Israel launched airstrikes on southern Gaza early Sunday morning, accusing Hamas of carrying out “a blatant violation of the ceasefire agreement” with attacks on its forces in the Rafah area.[2]

Peace treaties are often celebrated as milestones of diplomacy, yet they are fragile—vulnerable to betrayal, misinterpretation, and manipulation. When peace collapses, the question “who broke it first?” becomes a weaponized narrative, used to justify retaliation or consolidate power. Beneath this lies a deeper pattern: scapegoating.

So, who breached the peace treaty in Gaza first?  Who fired the first shots?  Israel or Hamas?

Let me put this bluntly…

If you are still pointing fingers as to who breached the peace treaty first —who fired the first shot, who retaliated harder— you may need to revisit the meaning of the cross you claim to confess.

If you’re still playing the blame game, if you’re still searching for a scapegoat amid the bodies, the bombings, the killings, the hostages, and all the horrors that defy reason, then you’ve missed the essence of following the One who became the ultimate Scapegoat, Jesus our Redeemer.  As the One who took the blame, He does not permit His followers to assign blame and divide the world into righteous victims and irredeemable enemies. He came to earth to nail every system of blame and retribution to the cross—and in doing so, He dismantled it.  We are consecrated, called, and commissioned to nothing less[3].

If you still feel Israel simply had no choice but to hit back and hit back hard at Hamas after the brutal events that took place on 7 October 2023, there is something lacking in your understanding of forgiving your enemies and praying for those who persecute you.  Your thinking is untransformed.  And if you believe Hamas must be punished, eradicated, and erased, then your Christ begins to resemble the god of your enemy—no different than the god invoked by Hamas to justify its own violence.  Without realising it, you have created your god in the image of your enemy.

And if you justify Hamas’s attack as the inevitable result of decades of occupation, discrimination, and despair—if you proclaim that Israel is the sole guilty party and Hamas had no other option—you are no different and no closer to peacemaking than those you condemn.  You are equally guilty of scapegoating people that Christ came to redeem.

The cross does not side with retaliation, nor does it seek scapegoating and sanctify revenge. It stands outside the equation of retribution. It absorbs violence, unmasks scapegoating, and offers a third way—costly, transformative, and utterly disruptive.

To follow Jesus is to refuse the easy narratives. It is to weep with every mother, to mourn every child lost, and to resist every system that demands blood for blood.

The sin of both these arguments is the suffering of the innocent.   According to the Bible, the terrible harm that is currently inflicted on the innocent is as detestable to the Lord as acquitting the guilty.[4]

Scapegoating is a sin.  It nullifies the cross.  It disqualifies the LORD who laid on him the iniquity of us all.

THE SEARCH FOR A SCAPEGOAT

The reality of the world that we live in is that in order to make sense of conflicts, there needs to be a scapegoat. Instead of finding redemptive answers, we engage in the blame game. We search for the guilty—not through truth-seeking, but through the lens of our own confirmation biases. It is inconceivable that my enemy might be right and my allies wrong.  It is equally unthinkable that both parties might have a share in the conflict.  To the best of our abilities, we stick with our allies and place the full blame on those whom we have predetermined to be our enemy.

And so, we cling to our chosen side, assigning full blame to those we’ve already decided are the enemy.  The scapegoat has been identified and is ready to be slaughtered.

When we argue over who is to blame, we lose the capacity to mourn. We become so invested in proving guilt that we forget to weep for the innocent. And this, Scripture tells us, is detestable before the Lord. The God of the cross does not ask us to choose sides in a war of vengeance. He calls us to mourn, to repent, and to stand with the wounded—without needing to justify their suffering.

Until we lay down our scapegoats, we will never be free to love our enemies, or to see the image of God in those we’ve been taught to fear.

A SCAPEGOAT THEOLOGY

Scapegoating is the ancient and ongoing act of blaming a person or group for the evils that plague a community. The term itself comes from Leviticus 16, which describes the Day of Atonement rituals.

Here’s a brief summary of the key moment:

• Two goats were chosen: one for the Lord (to be sacrificed) and one for Azazel (the scapegoat).
• The high priest would lay his hands on the head of the scapegoat, confessing over it all the sins of the people, symbolically transferring their guilt.
• The scapegoat was then sent into the wilderness, carrying away the iniquities of the community (Leviticus 16:10, 21–22).

This powerful image of substitution and removal of sin has echoed through centuries of theology, liturgy, and even language, where “scapegoat” now means someone who bears blame for others. This act was meant to cleanse the community, to externalize guilt and restore holiness.

How glorious to know that Christ became the ultimate scapegoat.  But He did more.  He didn’t just carry sin into the wilderness—He carried it to the cross. He became both the Lamb who was slain and the scapegoat who was cast out. Rejected, pierced, and burdened with the iniquity of us all.  As Isaiah prophesied:  “He was despised and rejected by men… and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.” — Isaiah 53:3,6

In Christ, the scapegoat is no longer a symbol—it is a Saviour.

But today, we’ve twisted that sacred symbol into a theology of convenience. In the West, many Christians have embraced a distorted scapegoat theology—one that justifies unbiblical actions as long as someone else can carry the blame. We no longer seek redemption; we seek condemnation.

The cross of Christ does not permit this. Jesus became the scapegoat—not to perpetuate blame, but to end it. He bore the sins of all, not to justify violence, but to interrupt it. To follow him is to reject scapegoat theology and embrace the costly path of truth, repentance, and reconciliation.

A SCAPEGOAT PHILOSOPHY

René Girard (1923–2015) was a French-American literary critic, historian, and philosopher of social science whose work profoundly shaped fields as diverse as anthropology, theology, psychology, and cultural studies.

One of Girard’s groundbreaking theories was: MIMETIC DESIRE AND THE SCAPEGOAT MECHANISM

Girard’s central insight was that human beings imitate each other’s desires—a concept he called mimetic desire. This imitation leads to rivalry, conflict, and eventually violence. To resolve this tension, societies unconsciously select a scapegoat—an innocent victim blamed for the community’s disorder. The scapegoat is expelled or killed, and peace is temporarily restored.

René Girard’s theory of the scapegoat mechanism offers a piercing lens through which to understand the context of Gaza.  In Gaza, both Israelis and Palestinians have long desired land, security, dignity, and recognition. These shared desires, rather than fostering empathy, have fuelled competition and resentment. Mimetic rivalry becomes a breeding ground for cycles of violence.

To resolve this chaos, societies unconsciously select a scapegoat—an individual or group blamed for the disorder. Often innocent, the scapegoat is perceived as guilty by the majority. By punishing or expelling the scapegoat, the community experiences a temporary sense of peace and unity.

In Gaza:

• Israel often frames Hamas—and by extension, Gaza—as the source and scapegoat of chaos, casting its military response as necessary purification.
• Hamas and its supporters frame Israel as the oppressor, justifying attacks as resistance against a scapegoated regime.

In both cases, the scapegoat absorbs collective guilt, allowing each side to feel righteous while avoiding self-examination. Civilians—especially children—become the tragic collateral of this mechanism.  Sadly, the peace that follows is illusory, built on the lie that the scapegoat was truly guilty.

JESUS: THE SCAPEGOAT WHO REFUSED TO RETALIATE

The cross exposes the scapegoat mechanism. Jesus, innocent yet condemned, absorbs the violence of empire and religion without returning it. He becomes the scapegoat—not to perpetuate blame, but to dismantle it. As Isaiah prophesied, “He was pierced for our transgressions… like a lamb led to the slaughter.” His silence in the face of accusation reveals the injustice of scapegoating and offers a new way: reconciliation through truth, not triumph.

CHRISTIANITY: THE REVELATION AND REVERSAL

If the One we follow embraced the role of scapegoat and refused to retaliate, then we have no option but to do the same.  Christianity should unashamedly and uniquely reveal and subvert the scapegoat mechanism:

The cross unmasks the scapegoat mechanism and offers a new path: reconciliation through truth and forgiveness, not violence.  If we, as Christians, proclaim any other message, we are traitors to the Gospel of Christ

THE CROSS: UNMASKING THE SCAPEGOAT LOGIC

The cross of Christ exposes and dismantles the scapegoat mechanism. Jesus, the innocent victim, is crucified by a coalition of religious and political powers—each convinced they are preserving peace. But the Gospels reveal his innocence, and in doing so, reveal the lie at the heart of scapegoating.

Applied to Gaza, the cross becomes a radical interruption:

• It challenges Christians to refuse simplistic blame and to see the image of God in every victim—Israeli or Palestinian.
• It calls believers to lament violence, not justify it.
• It demands a theology that resists tribalism and embraces costly peacemaking.

The cross does not side with retaliation. It does not sanctify despair. It stands outside the equation of revenge and absorbs violence without returning it.

A PROPHETIC CALL

The toxic practice of scapegoating warns us that:

• Every time we justify violence by blaming “them,” we reenact the crucifixion.
• Every time we refuse to mourn all victims, we participate in the lie.
• Every time we defend our side without repentance, we perpetuate the cycle.

True peace will not come through scapegoating. It will come through truth-telling, mourning, and the kind of reconciliation that only the cross makes possible.

CONCLUSION: FROM BLAME TO BLESSING

To write peace, we must unwrite the scapegoat. Jesus does not merely expose the injustice of blame—he transforms it. In him, the scapegoat becomes the reconciler. This is the invitation: to move from accusation to advocacy, from false peace to prophetic peacemaking.

It’s not about WHO’S right, it’s about WHAT’S right. In this regard, the Bible is quite clear.  The blame game – who is right and who is wrong -replaced the heart of a God who weeps for the innocent. God didn’t stop weeping after the attack on Israel and he didn’t only start weeping when the first bomb fell in Gaza. He never stopped weeping and he kept on weeping.

As followers of Christ, we are assigned to find redemptive solutions for ALL involved and refrain from playing the blame game

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/20/us/politics/trump-gaza-israel-netanyahu.html

[2] https://www.nbcnews.com/world/middle-east/israel-strikes-gaza-hamas-breaching-ceasefire-rcna238423

[3] 2Corinthians 5:18 – 19 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.

[4] Proverbs 17:15  Acquitting the guilty and condemning the innocent— the LORD detests them both.