(Forward Note: I wrote most of this in my notes app on my phone about a month ago to vent my feelings about the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Sadly, it is still as relevant now as it was then. I spend my free time holding space for the stories of those lost to these horrors. I embroider stitches on a bag. One stitch for 10 Palestinian lives confirmed lost. There are so many stitches to go, and the number climbs every day. The denial of this genocide gets worse and worse, and the atrocities more and more horrific in ways I could have never imagined. I like posts on Instagram of protests in Tokyo I am too far away to attend. I sign petitions. I feel like it's not enough, but there is little else I can do. I've run out of tears to cry. But I hope I never run out of righteous anger.)
It ended when a group of people were sealed inside by a military so many times stronger than them in a surveillance state, an open air prison, with nowhere to go. For where could they go? There is nowhere safe in Gaza.
There is no justification for women weeping over the bodies of their loved ones, losing all of their family members in an instant to a bomb strike, for mothers now childless and forced to carry their baby's cold bodies away from their ruined lives, for women giving birth with no healthcare, or unable to feed their starving families.
There is no justification for men slaughtered on their way to get flour and food to feed their families, for men run over by tanks in the street until they are an unrecognizable bloody pulp in the ground, for men who are rounded up like cattle, stripped, and killed with their hands tied behind their backs, their corpses thrown into a grave and left to rot, desecrated and disrespected even in death. For men carrying their own children’s limbs in plastic bags, or writing of their joy of reuniting all of their loved one's body parts in death for a full burial. For men released from the "custody" of Israel's army, with eyes so haunted and minds so torn you can practically witness their torment simply by looking into their eyes.
And beside all of this runs a current, strong and true. The American Christian is complacent, if not participating in, this cruelty. The American Christian has abandoned the least of these, abandoned the Palestinian Christians, abandoned those who need us most.
There is no hope for the American Christian who cannot stand up for the least of these. Who when they saw him hungry and naked and calling for help, walked by like the righteous leaders walking past the man lying beaten and left for dead on the road. Who pretended there was no genocide, or that it is somehow an appropriate response for any of these atrocities to happen to those who are not living within the state of Israel.
Now is the time for righteous anger, for flipping tables, for laments and screams for immediate and radical change.
But even then, I wonder, will it be enough? Our hands are so bloody, our souls so corrupt and devoid of compassion, love, and righteousness. Can we ever make amends for such depravity? For such cruelty? I am not sure we can.
I will never be able to unsee what I have seen. The dead and dying, their screams, their cries. They haunt me behind my eyelids when I sleep. They echo in my mind when I wake. As I eat, I think of the Palestinian who cannot due to forced famine and withheld aid. As I walk down the street, I think of the Palestinian who cannot walk without fear of being bombed or gunned down simply for existing in their own home. As I fear for my own mental health and growing PTSD from the atrocities I witness on my phone, I think of the Palestinian who may never survive long enough to even begin to think about breathing in peace again. And even if they do survive, what will be left? A desecrated land where all is scorched earth and trauma? Forced displacement to countries that stood by idly while their people suffered and bled and lost everything? Or worse, who funded that suffering and provided the tools of their demise?
I should have never seen these things, but I have. Palestinians should have never had to video tape their trauma live for the world to see, but they have. And it has been met with indifference and sometimes even disbelief.
This is no war. No conflict. It is long past time to scream it with our lungs. Free Palestine. Condemn genocide. Condemn apartheid. Condemn it everywhere too. Not just Palestine, but Congo, and Sudan, and the Uyghurs in China, and anywhere and everywhere. None of us are free until all of us are free. You have no excuse to remain silent.
For God loves the Palestinian too. Go loved the least of these, the downtrodden, the last who shall be made first. And the Lord will remember what we have done to the least of these. Or rather, what we have not done in our sins of omission.
I used to wonder what if would have been like to be alive during the Holocaust. I don’t wonder that anymore. And I don’t know what else I can say than that.
It ended when the border’s only exit was capped at an unreasonable price, in some form of capitalistic hellscape where one can’t be a refugee or seek asylum even if they wanted to, unless their pockets are bottomless or a person in the Western world takes pity on them and sends them funds.
There is no justification for the horrors we have seen. For the babies beheaded and charred in Raffah, or dying in incubators in a failing hospital system, or hanging over a bombed wall, their tiny bodies dangling in pieces and almost unrecognizable, or left to die next to their family members in a car while they call for help.
There is no justification for the horrors we have seen. For the babies beheaded and charred in Raffah, or dying in incubators in a failing hospital system, or hanging over a bombed wall, their tiny bodies dangling in pieces and almost unrecognizable, or left to die next to their family members in a car while they call for help.
There is no justification for women weeping over the bodies of their loved ones, losing all of their family members in an instant to a bomb strike, for mothers now childless and forced to carry their baby's cold bodies away from their ruined lives, for women giving birth with no healthcare, or unable to feed their starving families.
There is no justification for men slaughtered on their way to get flour and food to feed their families, for men run over by tanks in the street until they are an unrecognizable bloody pulp in the ground, for men who are rounded up like cattle, stripped, and killed with their hands tied behind their backs, their corpses thrown into a grave and left to rot, desecrated and disrespected even in death. For men carrying their own children’s limbs in plastic bags, or writing of their joy of reuniting all of their loved one's body parts in death for a full burial. For men released from the "custody" of Israel's army, with eyes so haunted and minds so torn you can practically witness their torment simply by looking into their eyes.
There is no justification for the destruction of infrastructure. For the bombing of houses, stores, hospitals, schools, universities, roads, and water infrastructure. For the withholding of aid, and the use of an aid pier to break international law and cause even more death and destruction.
There is no justification for the erasure of Palestinian culture, the vilification of a traditional handicraft like the Keffiyeh, or of simple words like “Intifada” (revolution), or the destruction of ancient mosques and churches as old as Jesus himself, for the burning of ancient olive trees, the bulldozing of farms and homes, the selling of Palestinian land in American Synagogues.
There is no justification for the cruelty spewed by Israelis live on television, or on social media, where everyone can see. Calls to burn every Palestine child, calls to consider each Palestinian a terrorist or a future one, calls to steal or destroy all Palestinian land until only Israel remains, yelling racial slurs and calling for the death of all Arabs. Actions so vile they cannot be unseen. Soldiers desecrating Palestinian homes, filming adult content on the ruins of people's lives, on their graves, stealing women’s underwear from their bombed homes. For illegal settlers celebrating over the bombed ruins of Gaza and planning new Suburbs in the ashes, or Israelis blocking aid trucks and brutally beating truck drivers.
There is no justification for the erasure of Palestinian culture, the vilification of a traditional handicraft like the Keffiyeh, or of simple words like “Intifada” (revolution), or the destruction of ancient mosques and churches as old as Jesus himself, for the burning of ancient olive trees, the bulldozing of farms and homes, the selling of Palestinian land in American Synagogues.
There is no justification for the cruelty spewed by Israelis live on television, or on social media, where everyone can see. Calls to burn every Palestine child, calls to consider each Palestinian a terrorist or a future one, calls to steal or destroy all Palestinian land until only Israel remains, yelling racial slurs and calling for the death of all Arabs. Actions so vile they cannot be unseen. Soldiers desecrating Palestinian homes, filming adult content on the ruins of people's lives, on their graves, stealing women’s underwear from their bombed homes. For illegal settlers celebrating over the bombed ruins of Gaza and planning new Suburbs in the ashes, or Israelis blocking aid trucks and brutally beating truck drivers.
And beside all of this runs a current, strong and true. The American Christian is complacent, if not participating in, this cruelty. The American Christian has abandoned the least of these, abandoned the Palestinian Christians, abandoned those who need us most.
There is no hope for the American Christian who cannot stand up for the least of these. Who when they saw him hungry and naked and calling for help, walked by like the righteous leaders walking past the man lying beaten and left for dead on the road. Who pretended there was no genocide, or that it is somehow an appropriate response for any of these atrocities to happen to those who are not living within the state of Israel.
Now is the time for righteous anger, for flipping tables, for laments and screams for immediate and radical change.
But even then, I wonder, will it be enough? Our hands are so bloody, our souls so corrupt and devoid of compassion, love, and righteousness. Can we ever make amends for such depravity? For such cruelty? I am not sure we can.
I will never be able to unsee what I have seen. The dead and dying, their screams, their cries. They haunt me behind my eyelids when I sleep. They echo in my mind when I wake. As I eat, I think of the Palestinian who cannot due to forced famine and withheld aid. As I walk down the street, I think of the Palestinian who cannot walk without fear of being bombed or gunned down simply for existing in their own home. As I fear for my own mental health and growing PTSD from the atrocities I witness on my phone, I think of the Palestinian who may never survive long enough to even begin to think about breathing in peace again. And even if they do survive, what will be left? A desecrated land where all is scorched earth and trauma? Forced displacement to countries that stood by idly while their people suffered and bled and lost everything? Or worse, who funded that suffering and provided the tools of their demise?
I should have never seen these things, but I have. Palestinians should have never had to video tape their trauma live for the world to see, but they have. And it has been met with indifference and sometimes even disbelief.
This is no war. No conflict. It is long past time to scream it with our lungs. Free Palestine. Condemn genocide. Condemn apartheid. Condemn it everywhere too. Not just Palestine, but Congo, and Sudan, and the Uyghurs in China, and anywhere and everywhere. None of us are free until all of us are free. You have no excuse to remain silent.
For God loves the Palestinian too. Go loved the least of these, the downtrodden, the last who shall be made first. And the Lord will remember what we have done to the least of these. Or rather, what we have not done in our sins of omission.
I used to wonder what if would have been like to be alive during the Holocaust. I don’t wonder that anymore. And I don’t know what else I can say than that.
Ceasefire now.
