“Gaza has become a killing field,” according to a delegation of 23 American Christians, pastors and laypeople just returned from a fact-finding mission to the region.
“Israel’s response against the Palestinian people is disproportionate by orders of magnitude. The atrocities perpetrated by the IDF on Gaza by land, sea and air are broadcast before our eyes, on our phones, in real time,” the group said in a joint statement. “We watch in horror. Entire families die in their beds under Israel’s bombs. Apartment blocks, schools, hospitals, churches and mosques, markets are leveled. Relief and food convoys are denied entry at the Egypt border.”
These scenes are not just images on TV broadcasts, they are realities verified by the American delegation from eyewitness accounts, they said in issuing an urgent appeal for a better path forward.
“Mass starvation is rampant,” they reported. “Lethal infections and diarrhea, lack of clean water and medicines will kill thousands more in the coming weeks and months. The U.N. representatives on the ground, no strangers to tragedy, call this ‘the worst humanitarian crisis’ they have ever seen. We conclude it is nothing less than an attempt to wipe Palestinian history, tradition and culture from human memory, the very definition of ‘genocide.’”
The group at the besieged Tent of Nations farm outside Bethlehem, with owner, Daoud Nassar, where they encountered settlers dressed as Israeli military walking through the farm.
The travel group included at least two Baptists: Ashlee Wiest-Laird, pastor of First Baptist Church, Jamaica Plain, Mass., and Leo Seyij Allen of Atlanta. Other participants and signatories to the letter were Susan Brooksbank, Chris DeBlaay, Diane Dulin, Christy Close Erskine, Jack Erskine, Stephanie Gilstrom, Margaret Griffith, Jennifer Hosler, Sarah Klokowski, Janet Lahr Lewis, Peter Martin, John Paarlberg, Joanne Quinn, Gary Ruschke, Gabriele Schroeder, Mary Segall, Brenda Smith, Linda Tomala, Josh Vis, Scott Wright and Michael Spath.
Some of the group have visited Israel and Palestine often in the past, a few have lived and worked in the region, and a few were visiting for the first time. All describe themselves as “activists” in the current cause “to bear witness to this abomination.”
“It is our faith, our shared faith, our shared humanity, that compelled us to be here, in the land where our faith was born.”
“It is our faith, our shared faith, our shared humanity, that compelled us to be here, in the land where our faith was born,” they said. “But it is also as U.S. citizens that we’ve come, knowing that U.S. tax dollars, our tax dollars, are funding this crisis. Our government, the administration and Congress, bipartisan, supports these war crimes.”
The group does not support Hamas and condemns its Oct. 7 surprise attack on Israel.
“The world condemns Hamas,” they noted. “As followers of Jesus, we embrace nonviolence and so grieve for all who have died, including the victims of the Hamas attack.
However, the world has a double standard in the region, they contend, constantly overlooking Israel’s aggressions while focusing only on the aggressions of Hamas and other pro-Palestinian groups.
“As our Palestinian friends reminded us, the violence did not begin on Oct. 7; it must be understood in the broader context of at least 17 years of Israel’s inhuman strangulation of Gaza by land, air and sea, 76 years of a continuing Nakba (since 1948), and over a century since the rise of Zionism,” they wrote.
Through meetings with Palestinian leaders — clergy, laypeople, civil rights lawyers, NGO leaders, and the director of UNRWA — the group asked each person what they would say to policy makers in Washington and to American churches and communities in the United States.
The group at Nelson Mandela Square in Ramallah.
The answers they heard always began with a call for nonviolent resistance, the letter explains. “They feel abandoned, forsaken by the world, to face the genocide of their people alone. Our visit and solidarity comfort them and gives them courage to carry on.”
The current Israeli military occupation of Gaza has only added fuel to the fire in the region, they observed. “Palestinians are incredulous. There is palpable anger, righteous anger, even from clergy, from activists devoted to nonviolence. They want no more high and mighty lectures from the West about values, democracy, equality and human rights.”
“They want no more high and mighty lectures from the West about values, democracy, equality and human rights.”
And the current situation must be viewed in light of 76 years of Israeli oppression of the Palestinian people, they said. This includes illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank, harsh economic and police-state tactics that limit Palestinian livelihood and the apparent worldwide support for a violent form of Zionism that threatens the existence of the Palestinian people.
“While there is genocide in Gaza, ethnic cleansing is exponentially increasing in the West Bank, under the radar,” the group said. “There are 700-plus checkpoints in the West Bank, an area roughly the size of Delaware, Joe Biden’s home state. Restricting freedom of movement is a tool of torment to make daily life unbearable for Palestinians. IDF teenagers with machine guns man these checkpoints and kill Palestinians with impunity.”
Also, “children as young as 5 years old are arrested, abused, tortured and held in prisons without trial for months or years. Night raids into Palestinian homes occur every night. They are tried in military, not civil, courts. Confessions are extracted by torture.”
And as frequently documented, Israel’s demolition of Palestinian homes continues unabated, they said. “We visited a man whose home was demolished two weeks earlier. His crime: He was a spokesman for Palestinians in Silwan, a Palestinian neighborhood in East Jerusalem. We sat under a tarp in his yard amidst the rubble. Israel is ethnically cleansing, stealing, and Judaizing his neighborhood, Silwan, on the hills below the Old City of Jerusalem. … Israel uses home demolitions as a potent weapon used for ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.”
A major point of moving forward, they said is this: “The racist, settler colonial project that is Zionism must be rejected out of hand, dismantled, and a system of government based on equity, human dignity, and full civil, political, and human rights created.”
While all eyes are fixed on Gaza, “and rightly so — there is a slow massacre, a slow genocide, taking place in the West Bank.”
Americans have the power to make a change in this situation, the group said. “This is a U.S. war. We are party to genocide. We give Israel a free pass. Israel continues to violate international law with impunity. The slaughter could not happen without the backing of the U.S. government. Our tax dollars provide billions in aid to Israel, weapons and full cover for Israel’s crimes. The fighter jets, bombs, tanks, chemical weapons are U.S. made. The U.S. vetoes UN cease-fire resolutions.”
As a first step toward a better solution, the American delegation calls for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza and for the release of political prisoners and hostages on both sides.
“Nonviolent resistance can only succeed if people of good conscience take bold and decisive action in support of the cause,” the letter says. “The Palestinian people cry out, ‘Hear our call. Take up our cross with us.’”
The group has a message to American churches: “You are complicit in Israel’s genocide of Gaza. Following Jesus, listening to Jesus’ gospel message, loving your neighbor, even your enemy — that is our call. It is morally derelict that some Christians insist on undying loyalty to Israel. Scripture is not to be manipulated to crush one of God’s peoples for the gain of another.”