From the Liveblog of
Saturday, February 17, 2024
Leading US Black church: Stop support of Israel’s ‘mass genocide’ in Gaza
A leading American Black church has accused Israel of “mass genocide” in the Gaza Strip and urged Washington to pull all support and aid it provides to the country.
In a statement Thursday, the Council of Bishops of the American Methodist Episcopal Church (AME) said the Jewish state has “trapped 1.6 million desperate Palestinians in the southern Gaza city called Rafah. Most of them are women and children. They have denied them access to food, water, shelter, and health care. After this torture, they plan to murder them.”
It goes on to say the US “will have likely paid for the weapons they use,” before urging the government to “immediately withdraw all funding and other support from Israel.”
It claims Israel has shown “a willful disregard for the human dignity of Palestinians” for decades.
“Since October 7, 2023, in retaliation for the brutal murder of 1,139 Israeli citizens by Hamas, Israel has murdered over 28,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children. The United States is supporting this mass genocide. This must not be allowed to continue.”
Those numbers are provided by Hamas, and do not differentiate between combatants and civilians. Israel says at least 10,000 of those killed are terror operatives, and asserts it makes considerable effort to avoid harm to civilians while fighting in a complex urban environment. It accuses Hamas of using civilians as human shields.
The New York Times describes the AME as “one of the country’s oldest and most prominent Black Christian denominations.”
The Times of Israel Community.