It is ungodly and unchristianly to support the brutality and genocide being perpetrated against Palestinians in Gaza. Legal minds might argue whether or not the wanton killing of tens of thousands of innocent children, women and the aged in Gaza meets the legal threshold of being described as genocide, but people of good conscience know what genocide looks like when innocent people are being killed on an orgy of collective punishment and retribution.
Yes, I am a Christian, but I would rather be an agnostic than worship any God or religion that supports the crudity and inhumanity taking place in Gaza and the West Bank. That was the reason I walked out of my old church in Miami with my family in 2004 during the Israelis-Hezbollah war in Lebanon when women and children were being slaughtered by Israelis bombing. At the height of the war, my pastor stood on the pulpit to justify the killing of Muslims and Palestinian refugees in Lebanon as part of the fulfillment of biblical end-time prophesies. I totally lost it.
I stood up in the middle rot the sermon and was about to yell obscenities at him. My wife’s pleading and covering my mouth was what saved the day. That moment, I knew I couldn’t serve the God that my pastor pretended that p be serving. I stood up in rage with my petrified wife I tow, went to the children wings where my children were worshipping, took them up and drove off of the parking lot never to return. That church was our family church for nine years. It was the church where my children were baptized. My children have never forgotten that experience and have now become activists and advocates on behalf of Palestinians. Sadly, that is experience has shaped their attitude toward church and religion in general even though we immediately found another church where they were raised in the Christian faith. Sadly, some misguided Nigerian pastors and so-called Christians who have not read their Bible where it spoke about Christ drinking water from the Samaritan woman in the well, blindly support the Israelis on the basis of some misguided biblical injunction.
I have a firsthand experience seeing face to face the worst form of apartheid in Palestine when I spent the summer of 2020 as a visiting professor at the Palestine Polytechnic University in Hebron. I saw Israelis soldiers with guns watching over every move of the Palestinians, taking their land and demolishing their homes and farmland. I witnessed the economic strangulation of Palestinians by the Israeli authority in a two-tier economy where the Palestinians are living like refugees in their homeland, deny the right of free movement and access to the holy Al-Aqsa Mosque in East Jerusalem. I was with a professor friend of mine who had taken me and my wife to the holy Ibrahimi Mosque in Old City Hebron. My good friend during that visit wanted to show my wife and I the house where he took his fresh breath and where he spent his youthful formative years and where his family ran a shop in the Old Hebron market. Of course, we were all excited to see where this great friend of ours and gentle soul grew up. To my and my wife utter shock, as we attempted to cross the security post erected by gun-trotting teenage Israeli soldiers, my wife and I were asked to show our passports. As naturalized African immigrants with US passports, the Israelis soldiers respectfully ushered us in. He bluntly refused our Palestinian Professor friend access to cross the line of divide in his own town and place of birth. It was the first time in my entire life when being black gave us special privilege. Of course, I wasn’t fooled for a second that the teenager soldier would have sent my black butt back without the U.S. passport. We all have read about the second-class status of black Ethiopian Jews in Israel. Of course, have been a victim of racism and racial discrimination ourselves, my wife and I insisted we weren’t going to cross the security line without our Palestinian brother and friend. We also insisted on crossing that line and visiting the site. The soldiers ultimately gave in to our demand giving us just 5-10 minutes. We could sense being watched by the soldiers at the gate and Israelis soldiers at the ubiquitous watchtowers that sits atop of the site, and which dots the landscape of occupied West Bank.
I would never forget the tears I shed with young brilliant Palestinian students in a school in Nablus where I had gone with a U.S. Embassy staff to teach these teenagers about entrepreneurship. Some of these teen Palestinians were dual U.S.-Palestinian citizens. They spoke of being trapped in a hopeless enclave with no access to basic Google map, unable to partake in the global digital economy, unable to order and have anything delivered via the online marketplace. They spoke about the constant harassment and imprisonment by the occupying Israeli military.
I remember being accompanied by two armored SUV and a contingent of almost 8 heavily armed contract private security company who stood guard even at the door of the school bathroom when I went to ease myself. Mind you, this was an empty high school campus on vacation. There were just about 20 students who were bused in to receive me and the US Embassy staff from Jerusalem plus about three officials of the school. We were ushered into the town by a police rider with siren. I felt totally scandalized by this unnecessary militarization of an innocuous visit to young Palestinians and the sense of siege it created on these young souls and their community. Imagine leaving on a daily basis under such a siege. Well, that is the daily existence of Palestinians in the West Bank.
That siege does not spare anyone in the West Bank. During my Fulbright stint at the PPU, I was privileged to participate in their commencement ceremony. The special guest of honor for the occasion was the Prime Minister. The entire program was delayed for hours. It was later that we were informed that the PM motorcade was held up by Israeli security checkpoint just outside of Ramallah, the seat of power for the Palestinian Authority.
Let me be crystal clear that I condemned in the strongest term, the barbarity slighter of innocent Israeli on October 7th by Hamas. I have spoken many Palestinian friends, who in spite the daily dehumanization, also condemn in the strongest language imaginable the October 7th and who dissociate themselves from its vengeful killing as not representing them. So, this notion that anyone who condemns the post October 7th carnage being perpetrated by the IDF is being anti-Semitic and supportive of the Hamas is only attempting to impose a silence. I have agonized for several months about penning this post. The charge of anti-Semitism has been strategically deployed to silence opponents of the carnage being committed by the Israeli military. There are in fact many Jews who have come out publicly condemn the IDF. For months I had wanted to reach out to my Palestinian colleagues, but I have held back knowing that their phones are probably under constant surveillance.
I wept like a baby for weeks after watching on TV the agony of Israeli parents mourning the slaughter of their children at the music festival plus the score held as hostages. Yes, all people of good conscience must condemn the cycle of violence, revenge and retribution in the breath-taking beautiful, Holy Land. Yes, the inhumane, repressive apartheid system erected by the Israelis is a recipe for violent backlash. You cannot deny a people access to a place of peace and refuge without expecting a backlash. The reality is that violence begets violence, revenge and retribution beget revenge and retribution. The whole world must shout with one voice “Enough already”. What’s happening in Gaza and the entire Occupied Palestine is a blight on humanity. Our collective silence and the acquiescence and tacit support by some people based on misguided religious ground is beyond ab outrage. The code of silence and acquiescence must end.
We just saw scores of hungry Gazans mowed down this morning while trying to get donated food to feed their children. Yes, making peace between two peoples who have been raised for generations to virulently hate and despise one another is a hard nut to crack. Yet, peace and a viable homeland and country for the Palestinians side by side with their Israelis neighbors is the only viable way out. The alternative is the cycle of the human carnage and desolation we are all horrifiedly and powerlessly watching in Gaza. The whole world must speak with one irresistible voice. Ceasefire Now, today, not tomorrow!!!!
