Introduction

In an article, “Ms. Rachel is Simply Prophetic,” published by Sojourners on October 14, 2026, the Rev. Gerlyn Henry, the senior priest of the Anglican Church of the Holy Wisdom in Toronto:

• Asserts Israel has committed a genocide in Gaza without providing any evidence.
• Ignores Hamas child abuse while falsely suggesting Israel renders children invisible.
• Employs rhetoric that has been used to advance antisemitic conspiracy theories.
• Ignores how anti-Jewish tropes have informed critiques of the Jewish State.
• Mischaracterizes Ms. Rachel as operating in the prophetic tradition.
• Omits that Ms. Rachel does not practice what she teaches.

Asserts Israel Has Committed a Genocide in Gaza Without Providing Any Evidence

Despite serving as a priest in a religious tradition that recognizes the severity associated with violating the biblical prohibition on bearing false witness, Rev. Henry apparently sees no problem in falsely accusing Israel of having committed a genocide: “How did we get to a point where—for years—we idly stood by and watched a genocide in Palestine livestreamed on our devices?”

Rev. Henry not only fails to provide any evidence to substantiate the incendiary charge that the Jewish State has engaged in genocide, but also ignores evidence to the contrary, like Gaza’s Palestinian population increase from 2,226,544 in 2023 to 2,411,790 in 2026, Israel’s repeated issuing of evacuation notices to residents of Gaza while alerting them of impending military actions, enabling millions of tons of humanitarian assistance to enter Gaza, and deploying multiple field hospitals to treat the wounded.

Ignores Hamas Child Abuse While Falsely Suggesting Israel Renders Children Invisible

In praising Ms. Rachel for spotlighting on her show a three-year-old Gazan girl, Rev. Henry falsely accuses Israel of violently attempting to render Gazan children invisible: “She [Ms. Rachel] took a child who state violence had tried to make invisible and placed her center stage, forcing millions of people to look at the human cost of the genocide in Gaza.”

In leveling this charge, Rev. Henry declines to note how Israel’s military has not only routinely attempted to target terrorists and spare innocent civilians from harm, but also facilitated large-scale vaccination of children in Gaza, helping to ensure 1,107,541 vaccinations for children throughout Gaza during the second polio vaccination campaign there.

In her article, Rev. Henry declines to inform her readers how Hamas—an internationally designated terrorist organization responsible for precipitating the current war through raping, murdering, and abducting Israelis and non-Israelis on October 7, 2023—has not only strategically used civilians as human shields, including children and schools, but also indoctrinated children to hate and murder Jews. In fact, the terrorist organization is not mentioned a single time in her article.

Employs Rhetoric Used to Advance Antisemitic Conspiracy Theories

Rev. Henry also employs terminology used to advance antisemitic conspiracy theories. For example, she asks: “Why are we so hyper-focused on limiting the freedom of trans folks and immigrants when the actual source of our troubles is the Epstein class?” In blaming the “Epstein class” for the troubles she identifies, Rev. Henry ignores how legitimate outrage directed at Jeffrey Epstein and those associated with him has veered “into conspiratorial accusations” and “straightforward antisemitism.”

Tel Aviv University Institute for National Security Studies Researcher Ofir Dayan has noted how a variety of antisemitic conspiracy theories involving Epstein “erupted” after Epstein was arrested and especially following the Department of Justice release of over three million pages of Epstein documents. Likewise, the antisemitism watchdog group The Nexus Project observed a significant increase in Epstein-related antisemitism circulating on social media after the documents’ release.

Rev. Henry decries those who have described Ms. Rachel as “antisemitic,” refraining from providing her readers with any of the reasons this term has been applied to her while unfairly casting those who have employed the descriptor as opposed to advocacy for children. Instead of addressing their legitimate concerns, Ms. Rachel has absurdly dismissed her critics as hateful people opposed to treating children equally and not “[w]anting kids to live.”

In addition, Rev. Henry fails to inform her readers that Ms. Rachel liked a comment on social media that stated: “Free America from the Jews” before issuing an apology. However, when an anti-Israel account insinuated her critics planted the comment to frame her in a negative light, Ms. Rachel replied: “ooooooooooohhhhh.” Ms. Rachel’s reply and other actions Ms. Rachel has taken raise questions about the sincerity of her apology.

Ignores How Anti-Jewish Tropes Have Informed Critiques of the Jewish State

Despite the explosion of global antisemitism following the atrocities of October 7, Rev. Henry has claimed: “We are advanced in rooting out our anti-Judaism in our rhetoric […] it’s almost innate for us to know that that is wrong,” seemingly ignoring how scholars, like Saint Joseph’s University Institute for Jewish-Catholic Relations Director and Associate Professor of Jewish Studies Adam L. Gregerman and Harvard University Albert A. List Professor of Jewish Studies Jon D. Levenson, have noted how contemporary Christians have recycled older anti-Jewish tropes in critiquing the Jewish State.

Rev. Henry has justified Palestinian violence against Israelis as “resistance to their [Palestinian] living conditions,” neglecting to explore how antisemitism might inform such behavior among Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, 97% of whom reportedly hold anti-Jewish views. She has prayed for “these walls of hatred, both physical and emotional,” to be “br[oken] down,” suggesting Israel’s separation barrier and checkpoints were erected due to Israeli hate of Palestinians rather than to prevent Palestinian attacks against Israelis, like the homicide bombing campaign during the Second Intifada.

She has inaccurately suggested an equivalence between antisemitism and Islamophobia despite the ontological-logical, empirical, semantic, historical, and moral problems with drawing such an equivalence identified by the Washington Institute Education Initiative Stefanie and Douglas Kahn Program Director and Senior Fellow, Pepperdine University faculty member, and Middle East historian Scott Abramson.

Rev. Henry has approvingly referenced Dar al-Kalima University President Dr. Mitri Raheb, who has falsely claimed that European Jews are not descended from Jews, but rather Khazar descendants who converted to Judaism. This claim—frequently made by antisemites attempting to deny the attachment of modern Jews to their ancestral homeland—has been rejected by archaeologists, geneticists, historians, and linguists.

She has indicated she believes that “Jesus was a Palestinian Jew” while comparing Israel to imperial Rome and “forces of evil.” In calling Jesus a “Palestinian Jew,” Rev. Henry ahistorically suggests that Jesus, who was born and died in Judea, lived in a territory identified as “Palestine” a century before it was designated “Syria-Palestina” by imperial Rome to de-Judaize the area and punish Jews who resisted Rome during the Bar Kochba Revolt in 132-135 CE. In drawing a parallel between imperial Rome and Israel, Rev. Henry distorts history while using the figure of Jesus to express opposition to Jews. As Boston University William Goodwin Aurelio Professor of Scripture Emerita, Hebrew University Department of Comparative Religions Distinguished Visiting Professor Emerita, and New Testament scholar Paula Fredriksen has observed:

Calling Jesus a “Palestinian” or even a “Palestinian Jew” is all about modern politics. Besides being historically false, the claim is inflammatory. For two millennia, Jews have been blamed for Jesus’ execution by the Romans; casting him as a Palestinian just stokes the fires of hate, using Jesus against Jews once again. It is, further, an act of cultural and political appropriation — and a clever rhetorical move. It rips Jesus out of his Jewish context. And it rips 1^st-century Jews — and 21^st-century Israeli Jews — out of their ancestral homeland, turning them into interlopers. This is polemic masquerading as history.

By falsely suggesting the territory was called “Palestine” earlier than it was, Rev. Henry creates the false impression that Jews are, indeed, interlopers in the land. Moreover, in comparing the Jewish State to “forces of evil” and casting the State of Israel in the villainous role of imperial Rome, Rev. Henry demonizes the nation-state of the Jewish people while failing to heed the wise words of Shalom Hartman Institute of North America President and ancient Judaism and rabbinics scholar Yehuda Kurtzer, who stated: “Christians bear the responsibility to exhibit the humility of not casting as protagonists and antagonists the real human beings between the river and the sea.”

Mischaracterizes Ms. Rachel as Operating in the Prophetic Tradition

In her article, Rev. Henry favorably compares Ms. Rachel to a contemporary prophet: “Ms. Rachel is an example of a modern prophet. Many people think of prophets as those who are able to predict the future. But prophets should instead be understood as people who speak truth to power and, in doing so, change the course of the future.” Similarly, Rev. Henry states: “Ms. Rachel, along with the biblical prophets, Jesus, and other early childhood educators, reminds us that one of our best tools to fight injustice is teaching people how to say things that may seem basic but are actually prophetic.”

However, in contradistinction to the prophets of the Bible who spoke truth to power, combined solidarity with the people of Israel and legitimate critique, and condemned the practice of human sacrifice, Rev. Henry and Ms. Rachel have spread falsehoods about the State of Israel, misrepresented supporters of the Jewish State, and declined to condemn Hamas’ strategy of sacrificing innocent Palestinian civilians to pressure and delegitimize the nation-state of the Jewish people. In fact, Ms. Rachel introduced to her toddler viewers Motaz Azaiza, a Hamas supporter who admitted to intentionally concealing his video footage recording Gazan residents spitting and hitting Israeli hostages.

Rev. Henry claims to value the prophetic tradition, but she admitted to “considering […] deeply [drop[ping] Israel from [the] liturgy]” and notably omitted from her account of the history of the people of Israel the expectation of the eventual restoration of the people of Israel to the land of Israel found throughout the prophetic corpus in stating: “The history of a small nomadic people being called and loved by God into, like, liberation and out of slavery, that is profound and that is a really important part of our history and that is rooted in justice and jubilee and mercy and forgiveness.” Despite her approving reference to the jubilee, Rev. Henry fails to mention that this biblical institution that the figure of Jesus references in Luke 4 involved “a just distribution and governance of Israel’s land” (For the Nation: Jesus, the Restoration of Israel and Articulating a Christian Ethic of Territorial Governance, p. 165).

While she has proclaimed her support for “liberation,” Rev. Henry has expressed opposition to Zionism, the national liberation movement of the Jewish people. In describing anti-Zionism as “not a departure from the Christian faith, but a fundamental demand of the gospel,” Rev. Henry ignores how the figure of Jesus appears to have anticipated the future resumption of Jewish sovereignty over the land before his return (e.g., Luke 13:35; 19:38; 21:24; Acts 1:8) while omitting from her article what Rev. Dr. Gerald R. McDermott, priest-in-residence at Holy Cross Anglican Church in Crozet, has identified as Christian Zionism’s “deep roots in Anglican history.”

Rev. Henry professes concern with an alleged “departure from the Christian faith,” but ignores what the historian of religion Paul Charles Merkley has described as Palestinian contextual theology’s “repudiation of the doctrine of God’s election of the Jews—the keystone of Christian theory of history since the mid-second century, when the Church formally denounced as heresy the doctrines of Marcion, which proposed the rejection of all Jewish Scripture” (Christian Attitudes towards the State of Israel, pp. 76-77).

She also fails to mention the ubiquity among Palestinians of what Rabbi Dr. Eugene Korn, the former Academic Director of The Center for Jewish-Christian Understanding and Cooperation in Israel, has identified as “pre-Second Vatican Council forms [of theology]” and “hard supersessionisms that deny the validity of Judaism today, reject any connection between the covenanted Jews of the Bible and today’s Jews, and deny any de jure Jewish rights to The Land” (Catholic-Jewish Engagements on Israel: Holy Land, Political Territory, or Theological Promise?, pp. 171-172).

Even a critic of the State of Israel, like the Palestinian Lutheran clergyman Munther Banayout Isaac, has acknowledged Palestinian Christian departure from Orthodox Christian belief and practice: “I believe Palestinian Christians have become Marcionites both in practice and belief. Whether it is a Palestinian liberation theology or a spiritualization of the OT [Old Testament], the church has fallen prey to misreading or rejecting parts of the OT” (The Land Cries Out: Theology of the Land in the Israeli-Palestinian Context, pp. 218-219).

In her article, Rev. Henry asserts that Christians are called to “expose[s] systemic harm” as part of their prophetic witness. However, Rev. Henry in her article declines to call out the systemic problem of antisemitism in major American institutions. For example, the need to address campus antisemitism through “systemic change” was recognized by Harvard University’s Presidential Task Force on Combating Antisemitism and Anti-Israel Bias in its April 2025 Final Report.

Omits that Ms. Rachel Does Not Practice What She Teaches

Rev. Henry claims that Ms. Rachel’s empathy expresses “the belief that every child, regardless of border or nationality, is sacred,” a point Rev. Henry underscores when she mentions how Ms. Rachel “emphasizes that the Bible tells us to love all our neighbors: [The Bible] doesn’t say, ‘Love every neighbor, except.’”

However, Ms. Rachel’s actions seem to indicate that she does not practice what she teaches. On October 7—the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust—Ms. Rachel declined to post anything on social media about the Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad atrocities of October 7, but she did manage to post about having messy hair.

An analysis of Ms. Rachel’s 683 Instagram posts by the actor and podcast host Jonah Platt found that Ms. Rachel echoed anti-Zionist falsehoods and did not use the term “hostages” for 451 days following Oct. 7 despite hundreds of Israelis hostages being held in Hamas captivity during this period of time.

Rev. Henry claims: “Ms. Rachel embodies the scandalous empathy of Jesus,” but the New Testament never explicitly identifies the kind of empathy Rev. Henry describes as “scandalous,” but rather Christ crucified. Since 1 Corinthians 1:23 describes this as a scandal to Jews, Rev. Henry’s pairing of “scandalous” with “empathy” erroneously suggests Jews historically found Jesus’ empathy scandalous.

While Rev. Henry claims to support such empathy, her support for anti-Zionism and the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement aimed at delegitimizing the Jewish State as well as her association of the Jewish State with “forces of evil” suggest she thinks the kind of “scandalous empathy” she promotes should not be extended to Israelis and Zionists. As Vanderbilt University sociologist Shaul Kelner has observed:

Antizionists establish themselves as a moral community by defining “Zionism” as a polluted category and then practicing rituals of distancing and exclusion. This is the latent meaning encoded in the act of signing one’s name to a boycott campaign or holding a referendum on an institutional boycott. These are behaviors by which antizionists construct themselves as a moral community in contradistinction to a polluting Other. (A polluting Other that, we need not add, just happens to be Jewish.)

By failing to extend such “scandalous empathy” to Israelis and Zionists while demonizing the Jewish State, Rev. Henry fails to embody the kind of “scandalous empathy” for which she advocates.

Conclusion

As the above analysis has shown, Rev. Henry in her Sojourners article states that Israel has engaged in a genocide in Gaza without providing any evidence to substantiate this incendiary charge, neglects to mention how Hamas abuses children while falsely suggesting the Jewish State wants to make children invisible, uses terminology that has been employed to advance antisemitic conspiracy theories, fails to address how anti-Jewish tropes have informed critiques of the State of Israel, inaccurately describes Ms. Rachel as behaving like a prophet, and does not mention that Ms. Rachel does not practice what she teaches. In doing so, Rev. Henry has effectively misled her readers by urging them to treat the falsehoods and misrepresentations of a propagandist as prophetic truth.