The final stages of malnutrition and death.

That’s where Gazans are now. Suffering needlessly at the hands of the Israeli military and government, supported by the US as always, dying a horrible and prohibited - as starvation is not an allowable tool of war, even - death.

Dying, too, is our belief in our governments. Long gone is the belief that those in power can or even want to do the right thing. More governments, including our own, driven by racism, power-grabbing, money, anti-muslim hate, and sheer greed. 

For months, years, many have pled, bargained, protested, and barricaded, trying to get the government to change its actions. All for naught.

For this wasn’t pre-ordained, these horrors, but perhaps pre-destined. This was always the plan, those in power never saw Gazans, Palestinians, as fully human. And it is easy to kill what is not seen as human.

G-d knows, we’ve learned that lesson well. 

We vilify and we kill. More than 56,000 (far more, as this count is more than a week old), disappeared here in the US, in plain sight. Cruelly, violently, and without accountability, because those taken (so far) are almost entirely brown-skinned. Who the white men in power find, still, to be less than fully human.

We’re just beginning here in the US. One does not allocate those billions of dollars to ICE without intending to detain and kill large numbers in this country. None of us are safe. They will eventually come for us all who do not meet the white, Christian nationalist criteria of “worthiness.”

I have often quoted my colleague, Rev. Julian Jamaica Soto, that “all of us need all of us to survive.” This remains so. 

There is no excuse, no valid one, for failing to speak out, to scream, about this horror happening in Gaza, in the US, and elsewhere right now. This isn’t anti-zionism, it isn’t antisemitism, this isn’t about Hamas, or immigration, or crimes, or anything else; this is about the right for people to exist, wherever they are, without being persecuted and killed for their very existence.

What’s happening in Gaza will haunt me, will haunt us, for the rest of our lives. What’s happening here, in our own country, will ultimately do the same.

SPEAK OUT. Fight back. Risk your own safety. For even if you don’t care about Gaza — and I hope with all my heart you do – one day this will be us. And wouldn’t you want someone fighting for your very existence?