If you were a child living in Gaza, it is quite likely you’d be among the thousands since October who have had a limb amputated and survived, in spite of the lack of anesthesia. If you were one of 52,000 pregnant women in the same place, you would be anticipating giving birth in unsanitary conditions without the assistance of medical professionals.
Just over two million people live on a stretch of land that is 22 miles long and 3.7 to 7.5 miles wide. United Nations Food Sector Security partners have tried to bring in food and water, but it is not enough for the people who are relegated to the Gaza Strip. The U.N. estimates that the population is “at imminent risk of famine,” with roughly 939,000 people at “emergency levels.” In addition, as of January 31, 26,900 Palestinians have been killed, and nearly 66,000 have been injured, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. At least 122 of the dead were journalists.
“For the U.S. to be financially backing such a thing is horrendous, the Rev. Dr. Jamal Harrison Bryant, senior pastor of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Stonecrest, Georgia, tells Word In Black.
Bryant is a part of Black Christian Faith Leaders for Cease Fire, a coalition of 1,000 Black pastors petitioning President Biden for an immediate cease-fire to Israel’s aggression in Gaza and an end to Israel’s occupation of the West Bank. They also want the release of hostages held by Hamas. In November, the group put out a full-page ad in the New York Times with their call for an end to the atrocities.
“As people of moral conscience, we seek and pray for the President and the Congress to use diplomacy and peaceful negotiations to reverse the course of a war that has the potential to escalate and draw other forces, including the United States, into another extended conflict resulting in even more deaths,” reads the petition.
“The President’s action has certainly caused some voters to withdraw their support from him, especially the millennials,” Bryant says.
Jonathan Kuttab, executive director of Friends of Sabeel North America — a trans-denominational Christian organization seeking justice and peace in the Holy Land through education, advocacy, and nonviolent action — has also joined the call for a cease-fire.
“It’s genocide. And everyone knows it. Everyone sees it,” Kuttab says. “Eleven thousand are children. Seven thousand are women. They’re civilians. Their homes have been destroyed. Sixteen cemeteries have been plowed over.”
And Kuttab also calls out the Biden administration’s role.
“Biden is the biggest obstacle,” he says. He points out how when the Israelis ran out of ammunition, Biden repeatedly circumvented Congress and gave the green light to hundreds of millions of dollars worth of ammunition and weapons. “This has to stop,” Kuttab says.
In Kuttab’s eyes, this is no longer an issue of power or politics.
“It’s a real moral question. Palestinians are reaping the penalty of Western aggression against Jews,” he says. But “Palestinians, Muslims, Christians, and Jews have lived together for 13 centuries.”
“This is 3,000 years after the kingdoms of David and Solomon. This is not a continuation of those kingdoms,” Kuttab says. “To think that is to skip over the New Testament. Christ negated racism. He had to be born in Bethlehem. He had to be born a Hebrew. Forget those kingdoms. Focus on the kingdom of God.”
Kuttab says he’s encouraged by the intersectional activism of Black Lives Matter, environmental justice, and LGBTQ groups, as well as the activism of U.S-based Jewish groups — like “Jewish Voice for Peace,” a U.S.-based activist group and “If Not Now,” a movement of American Jews working to end the nation’s “support for Israel’s apartheid system and demand equality, justice, and a thriving future for all Palestinians and Israelis,”
Bryant says democracy is not a spectator sport, and the President still has time to redeem himself. And Kuttab thinks Americans should know that Palestinian people are regular people, not barbaric — they’re part of a vital, vibrant culture.
“We need to stand together and boycott those who send weapons,” he says. “We can only be free if we work together.”