This week, Chicago’s City Council will vote on a resolution calling on President Biden and the Congress to push for a ceasefire in Gaza. If it passes, Chicago will join cities like Detroit, San Francisco, Atlanta, Minneapolis, and many others. It will join the more than 1,000 Black pastors who have called for a ceasefire, as well as the National Conference of Christian Churches and the leader of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. Earlier this month, RainbowPush hosted a summit bringing together rabbis, ministers, legislators, and activists to call for a permanent ceasefire, immediate humanitarian aid for Gazans, and a collective effort to reach a broader settlement.
Many have asked us why we are speaking out about the situation in Gaza. Surely, they argue, we have troubles enough here at home, unfinished business, and desperate needs that require attention. Speaking out dismays some of our allies. Why are we distracted by the situation in Gaza?
One reason is the obligation of faith and conscience. More than 20,000 people have been killed in Gaza in a matter of weeks, most of them women and children. Hundreds of thousands are on the verge of starvation in an unimaginable humanitarian calamity. Some 90 percent of the population has been displaced from their homes with no safe shelter available. Hospitals have been bombed; vital medicines are unavailable. And the savage bombing continues. There comes a time, Dr. Martin Luther King taught us, when “silence becomes betrayal,” when conscience leaves no other choice.
This is not to dismiss the complexity of the total situation, nor to make heroes out of Hamas – whose heinous terrorist assault on Israeli civilians provided the trigger for the current violence. Nor is it to ignore the need for a broader, collective solution to the ongoing tragic struggle between Palestinians and Israelis. As Reverend Jesse Jackson has taught, Israeli security and Palestinian justice are two sides of the same coin. Even with this awareness, people of conscience must call for an end to current violence. Violence offers no way out.
This concern is not simply altruism. As Dr. King taught us during the Vietnam War, what he called the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are inextricably linked. “A nation,” Dr. King preached, “that continues year after year, to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.” King was an involuntary witness as the “promise of the Great Society was shipwrecked …on the dreadful peninsula of Vietnam.”
Today, our nation remains committed to policing the world. Last year, American forces were dispatched to a staggering 178 countries. While, our navies patrolled the seven seas. We maintain 750 bases in 80 countries. Each year, the Pentagon budget consumes more than half of all discretionary spending, even as programs vital to basic security for poor and working people here at home are starved for funds. Global commitments and crises consume not just resources but the attention and energy of our leaders. Hope for the poor –Black, white, brown, and yellow – is constantly stymied when attention, resources, and urgency are focused on violence abroad. As the bombs rain on Gaza, we immediately ship billions in arms, deploy naval flotillas, put soldiers at risk, and once more, domestic concerns take a back seat. Now in Gaza, the violence threatens to turn into a regional war, with shipping in the Red Sea disrupted and US soldiers under attack there and in Iraq, Syria, and Jordan. The mothers of US soldiers now under fire and sustaining casualties won’t consider the call for a ceasefire a distraction.
A ceasefire in Gaza is a moral imperative. It is a strategic essential if a broader war is to be avoided. It is a practical necessity for those seeking justice here at home. Injustice anywhere, Dr. King taught, is a threat to justice everywhere. This is not simply a facile slogan–it is a hard and unavoidable truth. I urge every citizen of conscience to join in urging their alderman or alderwoman to vote yes for an end to the violence.
You can write to the Rev. Jesse Jackson in care of this newspaper or by email at jjackson@rainbowpush.org. Follow him on Twitter @RevJJackson.
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