1 Hear what the Lord says:
Rise, plead your case before the mountains,
and let the hills hear your voice.
2 Hear, you mountains, the case of the Lord,
and you enduring foundations of the earth,
for the Lord has a case against his people,
and he will contend with Israel.
3 “O my people, what have I done to you?
In what have I wearied you? Answer me!
4 For I brought you up from the land of Egypt
and redeemed you from the house of slavery,
and I sent before you Moses,
Aaron, and Miriam.
8 He has told you, O mortal, what is good,
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice and to love kindness
and to walk humbly with your God? [Micah 6:1-4, 8, NRSV]
[L] So-called ‘safe zone’ in Rafah. [R] Children killed in latest Israeli bombing of refugee camp in Rafah (Sulaiman Ahmed).
Daily, as Christians, we read and reflect, “with the Bible in one hand, and a newspaper in the other”. Today, these headlines, and plenty more, jump forth from the pages: “Are They ‘Hamas’?” 12,300 children killed by Israeli forces in Gaza; Israel is carrying out a horrific ground invasion of Rafah; American- Israeli bombs incinerate women and children in Gaza’s ‘safe zone’; Israel massacres children which the Western Press says is fine.
Dehumanisation of Palestinians continues to be normalised by Western powers. And the Zionist go-to label of “anti-semitism” as a counter-offensive against any and all criticisms of their ruthless slaughter of innocent Palestinian children is over-employed.
The truth is, Israel is sick, and the United States of America is actively aggravating Israeli sickness. The American-Israeli alliance is holding the world in ransom. It has been going on for way too long. It needs to stop.
Israeli strategic assault on Gaza has now driven the innocent population to Rafah. On May 23, the IDF (Israel Defense Force) told Palestinians in Rafah to move to an area it designated as a “safe area.” This is an area the IDF had just bombed a refugee camp, setting ablaze tents housing families and the UNRWA office.
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In context, what this event is revealing to the world is that Israel is sick to the core.
Israel is not just continuing its horrendous massacres in Gaza, now in Rafah, but it does so in direct and open defiance of ICJ demand to stop its genocidal campaign against the Palestinian people. Israel’s assault on Rafah, even as the ICC issues arrest warrant for Netanyahu on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, is an “in your face” open-declaration of a ramping up of its notorious ruthlessness as though trying to make a point. 48 hours after the ICJ ruling, the IDF carried out in excess of 60 airstrikes on Rafah, and scored a horrifying massacre at a displacement camp full of women and children in tents.
At Rafah, then, the IDF has by design herded helpless Palestinian civilians – with distinct proportion of helpless, war-wearied, women and children – to designated areas for extermination. This is a clear duplicate of the utterly sick, megalomaniacal Nazis’ modus operandi of herding innocent Jews to concentration camps for mass annihilation in gas chambers. The scary truth of the matter is, a campaign to wipe out an entire people anywhere always has the fingerprints of the demonic all over it: orderly, systematic, demonic (cf. Emmanuel Katongole, Mirror to the Church: Resurrection Faith after Genocide in Rwanda, p.21). And it always goes hand in hand with lies and cold murder. It is the crime of crimes.
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Israel’s actions fall within what the great thinker, René Girard, calls ‘mimetic violence’. Israel desires to do violence to the Palestinians what Hitler did to the Jews.
The difference this time is, Israel massacres children and the Western Press says it’s fine. Meanwhile, the U.S. continues to arm Israel with weapons of mass-destruction. The over-touted one-liner American excuse is “to ensure that Israel has the military capability to defend itself.” It’s the usual, naked, U.S. circus-level joke, except that nobody is laughing. At the very least, we know what Israel, backed by the U.S., thinks of international law and the international courts. As Rafah burns, the “rules-based-order” which the U.S. allegedly champions is also up in flames in full view of a world now awakened to US-led Western hypocrisy. Across the globe, humanity’s reaction to this US-Israeli atrocity is captured in the words spoken by the Chinese President Xi Jinping on 30 May at the China-Arab States Cooperation Forum in Beijing:
[战争不能再无限继续，正义也不能永久缺, “两国方案”更不能任意动摇。]
In voicing the demands of the people of the world, Xi resonates well with the spirit of prophet Micah who demands three things from the Jews on behalf of God: to act justly, to love kindly, and to walk humbly with God.
As children (and women) are being massacred on a large scale in Israel’s attempts to snuff out the next generation of Palestinians, we recall a moving reflection published on 8 Nov 2023 by The Chris Hedges Report titled “Letter to the Children of Gaza”. When he read out the Letter on December 6, 2023 as part of a lecture on “The Genocide in Gaza” at The Sanctuary for Independent Media in North Troy, NY, many in the audience as well as online were moved to tears. He himself, usually a composed and stoic speaker, was visibly choked with emotions towards the end of the speech.
Chris Hedges is a renowned author, foreign correspondent, and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist. As a former Middle East Bureau Chief for The New York Times, he covered the news in Israel and Palestine and for seven years lived in the Gaza siege. He knows what he is talking about. His words are powerful. He presents raw truth. He sends the powerful away empty. He strips them naked and exposes their barbaric violence towards those suffering under their decades-long oppression.
The full speech on “The Genocide in Gaza” is well worth listening and we strongly recommend it. It may be viewed online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ly6lfhOxTe0&t=1004s.
His letter is reproduced below for easy reference.
Children Faces in Gaza (in The New Arab, ‘One Palestinian child is killed every 10 minutes’: Israel has turned Gaza into a graveyard for thousands of children)
Dear child. It is past midnight. I am flying at hundreds of miles an hour in the darkness, thousands of feet over the Atlantic Ocean. I am traveling to Egypt. I will go to the border of Gaza at Rafah. I go because of you.
You have never been in a plane. You have never left Gaza. You know only the densely packed streets and alleys. The concrete hovels. You know only the security barriers and fences patrolled by soldiers that surround Gaza. Planes, for you, are terrifying. Fighter jets. Attack helicopters. Drones. They circle above you. They drop missiles and bombs. Deafening explosions. The ground shakes. Buildings fall. The dead. The screams. The muffled calls for help from beneath the rubble. It does not stop. Night and day. Trapped under the piles of smashed concrete. Your playmates. Your schoolmates. Your neighbors. Gone in seconds. You see the chalky faces and limp bodies when they are dug out. I am a reporter. It is my job to see this. You are a child. You should never see this.
The stench of death. Rotting corpses under broken concrete. You hold your breath. You cover your mouth with cloth. You walk faster. Your neighborhood has become a graveyard. All that was familiar is gone. You stare in amazement. You wonder where you are.
You are afraid. Explosion after explosion. You cry. You cling to your mother or father. You cover your ears. You see the white light of the missile and wait for the blast. Why do they kill children? What did you do? Why can’t anyone protect you? Will you be wounded? Will you lose a leg or an arm? Will you go blind or be in a wheelchair? Why were you born? Was it for something good? Or was it for this? Will you grow up? Will you be happy? What will it be like without your friends? Who will die next? Your mother? Your father? Your brothers and sisters? Someone you know will be injured. Soon. Someone you know will die. Soon.
At night you lie in the dark on the cold cement floor. The phones are cut. The internet is off. You do not know what is happening. There are flashes of light. There are waves of blast concussions. There are screams. It does not stop.
When your father or mother hunts for food or water you wait. That terrible feeling in your stomach. Will they come back? Will you see them again? Will your tiny home be next? Will the bombs find you? Are these your last moments on earth?
You drink salty, dirty water. It makes you very sick. Your stomach hurts. You are hungry. The bakeries are destroyed. There is no bread. You eat one meal a day. Pasta. A cucumber. Soon this will seem like a feast.
You do not play with your soccer ball made of rags. You do not fly your kite made from old newspapers.
You have seen foreign reporters. We wear flak jackets with the word PRESS written on it. We have helmets. We have cameras. We drive jeeps. We appear after a bombing or a shooting. We sit over coffee for a long time and talk to the adults. Then we disappear. We do not usually interview children. But I have done interviews when groups of you crowded around us. Laughing. Pointing. Asking us to take your picture.
I have been bombed by jets in Gaza. I have been bombed in other wars, wars that happened before you were born. I too was very, very scared. I still have dreams about it. When I see the pictures of Gaza these wars return to me with the force of thunder and lightning. I think of you.
All of us who have been to war hate war most of all because of what it does to children.
I tried to tell your story. I tried to tell the world that when you are cruel to people, week after week, month after month, year after year, decade after decade, when you deny people freedom and dignity, when you humiliate and trap them in an open-air prison, when you kill them as if they were beasts, they become very angry. They do to others what was done to them. I told it over and over. I told it for seven years. Few listened. And now this.
There are very brave Palestinian journalists. Thirty-nine of them have been killed since this bombing began. They are heroes. So are the doctors and nurses in your hospitals. So are the U.N. workers. Eighty-nine of whom have died. So are the ambulance drivers and the medics. So are the rescue parties that lift up the slabs of concrete with their hands. So are the mothers and fathers who shield you from the bombs.
But we are not there. Not this time. We cannot get in. We are locked out.
Reporters from all over the world are going to the border crossing at Rafah. We are going because we cannot watch this slaughter and do nothing. We are going because hundreds of people are dying a day, including 160 children. We are going because this genocide must stop. We are going because we have children. Like you. Precious. Innocent. Loved. We are going because we want you to live.
I hope one day we will meet. You will be an adult. I will be an old man, although to you I am already very old. In my dream for you I will find you free and safe and happy. No one will be trying to kill you. You will fly in airplanes filled with people, not bombs. You will not be trapped in a concentration camp. You will see the world. You will grow up and have children. You will become old. You will remember this suffering, but you will know it means you must help others who suffer. This is my hope. My prayer.
We have failed you. This is the awful guilt we carry. We tried. But we did not try hard enough. We will go to Rafah. Many of us. Reporters. We will stand outside the border with Gaza in protest. We will write and film. This is what we do. It is not much. But it is something. We will tell your story again.
Maybe it will be enough to earn the right to ask for your forgiveness.
Copyright © Dr. Jeffrey & Angie Goh, June 2024. All rights reserved.
To comment, email jeffangiegoh@gmail.com.