New York City, United States – A metallic streak passed Khader Khalilia’s ear. The bullet, so close he could hear it, crashed into a painting of Romeo and Juliet hanging on the wall behind him.
As more gunfire rang out, Khalilia and her family fell to the floor of their home in Beit Jala, near Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank. Khalilia draped her body over her younger brother Elios to protect him. They were caught in the crossfire between the Israeli army and a Palestinian resistance group.
“I was swearing and praying at the same time,” Khalilia says, recalling that afternoon in 2003, when he was 23 and still a university student. “Then I thought, ‘If we survive one day, I will serve you, Lord.’”
It was a vow he would keep. Last year, Pastor Khalilia celebrated his first decade leading Redeemer-St. John Lutheran Church in Dyker Heights, a neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York.
But over the past nine months, Israel’s war on Gaza has exposed Khalilia’s identity as a Palestinian pastor. He is one of the few Palestinian religious leaders in New York and, to his knowledge, the only one leading a Christian church.
This visibility has forced Khalilia to become a sort of ambassador, dispelling misconceptions and educating New Yorkers about what it means to be Palestinian.
Some of the people he meets see his very identity – as a Palestinian Christian – as a contradiction: they think all Palestinians are Muslims.
“When I tell them I’m a Palestinian-American, Lutheran Christian pastor, they get very confused. But actually, it’s not confusing,” Khalilia said.
An inherent part of his life and work is dislodging hurtful ideas about the Palestinian people, an Arab ethnic group that spans several religions, including Christianity, Islam and the Druze faith.
Khalilia is sometimes asked, “When did you convert to Christianity?” Her answer is always the same.
“I always tell them, ‘On the day of Pentecost, 2,000 years ago.’ Two thousand years ago, Jesus was born in Bethlehem, Palestine.” Christianity, as he points out, has its roots in his home country.