It has been said that “the wheels of justice grind slowly”. Having just recently returned from Washington, DC where I joined the Stones Cry Out Delegation, I would argue that there the “wheels of justice” are jammed, especially in regard to justice for Palestinians. Here’s what I learned from the offices of some moderate/progressive Democrats. The word ‘ceasefire’ is now finally being uttered with calls not, however, for a permanent ceasefire, but only a temporary one of six weeks. Humanitarian aid has now become a focus of utmost urgency, as it should be. But if the Biden Administration were serious about the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, rather than the theatrics of building a floating pontoon dock, they would immediately restore funding for UNRWA and just as immediately they would suspend U.S. military funding and weapons for Israel. Talk of the latter seems to be off the table, even though continued funding makes the U.S. fully complicit in ‘plausible’ genocide. 

To provide the devastated, starving, wounded Gazan population food and aid, so desperately needed, with one hand, while continuing to fund Israel’s bombing raids and lethal assaults with the other is the height or, more accurately, the depth of hypocrisy. As the Stones Cry Out delegates reported (see stories that follow), again and again the Palestinians they met called out U.S. hypocrisy. The world sees this hypocrisy, and increasingly now, the U.S. citizenry does as well. Polls show that the majority in the U.S. support a sustained ceasefire and want to see an end to this war. As the Stones Cry Out delegates wrote in their report, “This is a U.S. war; the weapons are U.S. made. The money is U.S. money.” The U.S. government bears responsibility and has leverage to stop this carnage. It must do so.

But right now, our own government is tragically out of plumb, and also out of step with the grassroots. Protests are happening all around the country (and the globe) with people in the lead, calling for a ceasefire, not just temporary but permanent. Activists are clear-sighted and are going further, using the language of genocide, of apartheid, and in some cases, holocaust (see Susan Abulhawa’s article and Democracy Now interview in Breaking the Stories) to describe the horror Israel is inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza and also, with less intensity, in the West Bank. As Omar Haramy, director of Sabeel, told the Stones Cry Out delegation, “This is a slow-moving death machine.” Max Blumenthal, commentator and author, of Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel, among other books, recently described Gaza as “the moral issue of our time.” He went on to state, “this is the Holocaust of our time, this is the Trail of Tears of our time, this is the Middle Passage of our time.” 

I left Washington, DC troubled in my soul, seriously doubting that morality will prevail there in the halls of government where money speaks, and morality not so much. Continued grassroots mobilization, the dogged advocacy of peace activists, and the prophetic witness of people of faith are required to unjam the wheels of justice. Like the importuning widow in Luke’s Gospel story, we must be persistent, pestering, pestering, and pestering some more, crying out for justice and freedom for Palestinians and a durable peace for all.

For the sake of the Gospel, for the sake of Palestinian lives, and for the sake of our nation's soul, the church has to be bold in this Kairos time and address this moral issue of the day with this clarion call to our government: stop U.S. complicity in Israel's genocide of Palestinians; suspend U.S. military funding to Israel and the supply chain of weapons. We must shout from the roof tops: Palestinian lives matter; they deserve their dignity, human rights, and freedom. May we be courageous and unceasing in our witness – these times require nothing less -- until the day when, to paraphrase a quote of President Eisenhower, our government gets out of the way and lets the people, especially in Palestine, have justice, until the day when genuine peace prevails for Palestinians and Israelis both.