*** The Stones Cry Out delegation was in Washington DC, from September 23-25. We met with congressional staff persons, raised our voices at the US Capitol, demonstrated with a “die-in” in front of the Democratic National Committee headquarters (led by Eli McCarthy of Christians for Ceasefire), and heard from many voices, including: Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Cori Bush; Josh Paul and Lily Greenberg Call (both resigned from the Biden Administration because of its supplying weapons to Israel); Miko Peled, Josh Ruebner, Medea Benjamin (CODEPINK), Laila El-Haddad (The Gaza Mom), Ariel Gold (Fellowship of Reconciliation), and Don Wagner. The following are an edited version of my comments. Michael Spath
Day 354 … Let that sink in.
76 years and longer … Let that sink in.
A war not only on Gaza.
A war not only on the Palestinian people.
A war on the traditions, culture, on the very idea of Palestine itself, an attempt to wipe Palestine from human memory.
The very definition of genocide.
Nothing and no one in Gaza and the Occupied Palestinian Territories in the West Bank have been safe from Israeli forces – schools, hospitals, churches, mosques, private homes, farmland … health care professionals, journalists, humanitarian aid workers, UN relief workers, teachers, children. All victims of a murderous Zionist genocidal project.
The Stones Cry Out began this past February when 23 clergy and church leaders from 12 Christian denominations traveled to Palestine and heard firsthand from Jewish, Christian, and Muslim religious, political, and NGO leaders about the impact of Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the West Bank. We returned then to Washington DC for congressional meetings, direct action, and an interfaith gathering.
This summer, we held a series of 14 webinars, co-sponsored by 16 Palestinian and US organizations – among them, Sam Bahour, Rev. Munther Isaac, Dr. Mads Gilbert, Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb and Rev. Allison Tanner (Apartheid Free Communities), Ali Abunimah, Huwaida Arraf, Jonathan Kuttab, Mark Braverman, and more – and now we’re here. (All of those webinars are available at our Indiana Center for Middle East Peace YouTube Channel – https://www.youtube.com/@inCMEP).
Each of our Scriptures and faith traditions emphasize human freedom and dignity and fundamental human rights and responsibility, and this codified among nations in international law, and the United Nations’ Fourth Geneva Convention, the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Last week, Israel dropped at least 4 U.S. made 2000-lb bombs on 20 tents in Al-Mawasi Khan Younis, which was a “designated safe zone.” Last week, even after 530,000 children in Gaza received polio vaccines, the UN was unable to complete the 3rd phase of the polio vaccine because Israeli forces held up the UN convoy at gunpoint. Last week, Israel’s Land Registration Committee delayed once again the court case brought by the Tent of Nations for the re-registration of their land. Last week, a leaked Israeli Foreign Ministry cable revealed Israel was lobbying U.S. members of Congress to pressure South Africa to drop its genocide case against Israel at the UN’s top court. Last week, Israel shut down the West Bank offices of Al-Jazeera. Last week, Israel sabotaged and exploded handheld pagers and walkie-talkies in Lebanon murdering scores and wounding thousands, followed that by bombing cities in southern Lebanon massacring hundreds and hundreds more, all in p reparation for a ground assault, attempting to draw the United States into a regional war [since then?mnM./, with US-made bombs to murder Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasralleh, and also levelling an entire neighborhood in southern Lebanon). This week, the US planned to send additional military to the Middle East. And as of last week, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health, more than 42,000 Palestinians killed, almost 100,000 wounded, 60% of the casualties women and children, leaving more than 20,000 orphaned. And all this, not to mention the long-term, lasting trauma on those who survive.
It used to be when one spoke of “genocide,” people would recoil in horror, the worst possible thing one people could visit upon another. But now thanks to Israel’s propaganda machine, the complicit corporate-owned media in our country, and the criminal US government’s providing of tens of billions of dollars of weapons, cover in the UN, and restriction of free speech on college campuses and in communities, “genocide” has become normalized and Palestinians become invisible, dehumanized, and fodder in Israel’s 76-year+-long colonizing, ethnic cleansing, genocidal project.
All this talk about ceasefire, as if that’s our goal, like the “two-state solution,” a stalling tactic by those not serious about solving the underlying problem. Our goal is the end of a 76-year-long settler-colonial ethnic cleansing project visited upon Palestinians, and a free Palestine from the river to the sea.
Our humanity is being tested.
Our morality is being tested.
Our faith is being tested.
Our government is failing the test. The Biden-Harris administration is not only complicit but criminally complicit as an active participant in Israel’s massacre of Palestinians. The Vice-President says “she is working around the clock to get a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza,” all the while their administration is providing carte-blanche the 2000-pound bombs in the Zionist genocide in Palestine. As our friend, Ali Abunimah, recently put it: “What could be worse than genocide?” Our vote cannot be taken for granted. We want, we expect, we demand the cessation of supplying weapons to Israel as just the first step toward a free Palestine. Then we’ll know the administration is serious.
Our media is failing the test.
Our churches and religious institutions are failing the test. A few churches have made statements, passed BDS resolutions, but much more, much more than words, we need to see so much more from our churches.
Where will we be on the Day of Reckoning?
We come together acutely aware of our own US settler-colonial history, a tragic and horrible model for Israel’s 76-year history of ethnic cleansing..
We come together to challenge the US government, and to all political candidates no matter which party, that complicity and participation in genocide is a deal-breaker, that our voices will be heard here in DC and at the ballot box. No more political calculus, genocide is a moral evil that we will not tolerate as US citizens, as global citizens, and as human beings.
We come together to raise our voices and affirm the humanity and dignity of the Palestinian people and their rights as a people, and we recommit ourselves to stand with them in their resistance to Israel’s attempt (with US help) to cleanse them from their indigenous lands.
We come together here in the nation’s capital – Christians, Jews, Muslims, people of good will – to plant one more seed of justice and peace that will multiply and multiply, and to recommit ourselves to the struggle for liberation and freedom in a land that each of our traditions calls “holy.”
As Bethlehem’s Mazin Qumsiyeh ends his newsletters, “Stay human and keep Palestine alive!”