THE brutality of the Israeli revenge attacks on Gaza must end and Israel's revenge on hamas must be brought under control. Israel has already lost the "moral authority" in this war, the carnage they are inflicting on the innocent civilians of Gaza is inexcusable, the idf is becoming almost indistinguishable from hamas. A ceasefire must be declared and the Rafah border crossing must be opened allowing relief supplies into Gaza as well as the evacuation of non-combatant wounded civilians and foreign nationals who have been trapped in Gaza since the hamas attacks on Israel on 7 OCT. ALL hostages must be released right away and a prisoner of war exchange must be arranged right away. The Red Cross and Red Crescent as well as U.N. relief agencies must be granted unrestricted access to all of Gaza to evaluate the needs of the civilian population and their safety must be guaranteed by hamas and the idf. WE all need to continue to pray for peace and to press our governments to do more to end this war. AND we need more in the government with the courage of Josh Paul. This from Sojourners and the Washington Post.....
‘CATHOLICS SAY CEASEFIRE NOW’ AT WHITE HOUSE PRAY-IN
Haajrah Gilani is a graduate student at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. She is a Capitol Hill reporter covering social justice.
Juliann Ventura is a graduate student at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism and a reporter at Medill News Service, where she covers social justice.
Fifty protesters gathered for a “pray-in” in Lafayette Square on Thursday afternoon, holding signs directly facing the White House that said, “Catholics say ceasefire now.”
The Catholic and Christian-led prayer service was meant to urge President Joe Biden, the second Catholic U.S. president, to call for a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas. Speakers and attendees expressed their disapproval of Biden’s response to the war since it started in early October.
“We’re here as Catholics, Christians to express our position as citizens of the United States, that we have a responsibility to address our decision makers, to let them know our position, our longstanding solidarity with people who are suffering in the Middle East,” said Judy Coode, the communications director at Pax Christi USA, a Catholic peace movement.
Pax Christi USA was one of several Catholic and Christian groups sponsoring the service and urging Biden to de-escalate the violence by calling for a cease-fire and the release of the hostages being held by Hamas. The demonstrators sang songs, gave speeches, and handed leaflets to people walking by with instructions on how to call the White House and Congress and demand a cease-fire.
“My faith has taught me that Jesus taught us to love one another. His greatest commandment was to love one another, to love our enemies as ourselves and to put down the sword,” Coode said. “And I think that is how we’re called to live.”
Art Laffin, an event organizer with the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker House in Washington, D.C., said he doesn’t believe in military solutions.
“We hold up Jesus here and his way of nonviolence,” Laffin said. “We’re appealing to President Biden, who’s Catholic.”
Many participants were skeptical of Biden’s recent remarks that he and Pope Francis “are on the same page” regarding Israel’s actions in Gaza.
“We’re very disappointed [with] President Biden, who we know is a devout Catholic,” Coode said. “He stated a week ago that he and Pope Francis are on the same page and that Pope Francis supports what the United States is doing, and we just don’t believe that’s true.”
Paul Magno, a member of the Catholic Worker movement who attended the service, agreed with Coode.
“The Vatican isn’t sending a couple of billion dollars a year in foreign military aid to Israel, but the president is. So, that’s not really the same page,” he said.
Philip Farah, a member of the Palestinian Christian Alliance for Peace, said he and most Palestinians have seen family members that Israel has imprisoned, beaten, or killed during the occupation.
“It’s a continuing massacre,” he said.
Laffin said he visited the region several times, forming connections to Israelis and Palestinians committed to peace efforts.
During a visit in 1996, Laffin visited the Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza, a site the Israeli military recently bombarded with airstrikes.
“The situation was dire in that refugee camp then,” Laffin said. “I can’t imagine what it’s like [now.]”
Michele Dunne, executive director of the Franciscan Action Network, said she spent years working for the U.S. State Department on diplomacy and peace efforts “that ultimately failed.” She said she felt more hope 20 years ago about a peaceful two-state solution between Palestinians and Israelis than she does currently.
“But still, the answer then is not to just say, ‘Okay, let it be sorted out by violence,’” Dunne said. “Because we know it will not be sorted out by violence, it will just lead to greater and greater conflict.”
Earlier in the week, after being confronted by a rabbi who asked Biden to call for a cease-fire, Biden said there was a need for a “pause” to help release hostages held by Hamas. “I think we need a pause. A pause means: Give time to get the prisoners out.”
Reuters reporting contributed to this article.
Why a State Department official resigned over Biden’s handling of Israel
with research by Tyler Pager and Tobi Raji
Five questions for … Josh Paul: We spoke with Paul, who resigned from the State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs last month in protest of the Biden administration’s decision to provide arms to Israel in the aftermath of Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks.
In his resignation statement, Paul described Hamas’s slaughter of more than 1,400 civilians and soldiers as a “monstrosity of monstrosities” but criticized the administration’s decision to send arms to Israel as “an impulsive reaction built on confirmation bias, political convenience, intellectual bankruptcy and bureaucratic inertia.” This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.
The Early: You resigned more than three weeks ago. How closely has the course of the war and the administration’s response to it aligned with what you thought would happen?
Paul: It has been very much in alignment with my expectations, sadly. We have seen since I resigned a massive number of civilian casualties, facilitated and conducted by, in many cases, U.S.-origin munitions, with continued statements from the administration that our support to Israel is unconditional.
While I am encouraged by some signs that the U.S. is pushing — particularly behind the scenes — for Israel to be more discriminating, for “humanitarian pauses” if not cease-fires, those have not yet happened. We continue to see precisely the sort of humanitarian catastrophe that I anticipated we would when I left.
The Early: You wrote in a Washington Post op-ed that you urged “a frank discussion” of the merits of Israel’s request for arms after Oct. 7. “My urging was met with silence — and the clear direction that we needed to move as fast as possible to meet Israel’s requests,” you wrote. Why do you think the administration was unwilling to have that discussion?
Paul: I think there is a perception that criticism of Israel is a career-killer, particularly in senior levels of government. There is a fear, frankly, that word will trickle out that someone is not sufficiently pro-Israel.
The Biden administration placed human rights at the center of their foreign policy — and yet for the entire Biden administration there has been no senior official responsible for human rights and foreign policy. The job of assistant secretary of democracy, [human] rights and labor in the State Department had been vacant. Why? Because the person who was nominated for it once said one thing mildly critical of Israel, and that resulted in her nomination not being advanced by the Senate.
The Early: What do you think the administration would have done differently if such a discussion had occurred?
Paul: I think the U.S. would not be providing, as it is now on the verge of doing, firearms to certain units about which there are clear concerns about their human rights track record — including extrajudicial killings, including torture, including sexual assault. I also think that there might have been an examination of what sort of precision-guided munitions to provide to Israel and an engagement with the [Israel Defense Forces], to work with them much more in terms of their targeting and their decision-making when it comes to Gaza.
[Ed.: John Kirby, a National Security Council spokesman, told reporters on Tuesday that “democracies like the U.S. and Israel observe the law of armed conflict” and “respect civilian life” and that Biden would “continue to urge” Israel to do so.]
The Early: What do you make of the $14.4 billion in aid to Israel included in President Biden’s supplemental request to Congress?
Paul: I have a number of concerns about that request. Israel already receives $3.8 billion in U.S. military grant assistance between [the] State [Department] and [the Defense Department] on an annual basis. If this is an emergency supplemental, why is there funding in there for research and development on a system that does not even exist yet, the Iron Beam, which will be a laser air missile defense system? And there’s also language in the supplemental that would reduce congressional oversight of how these funds are being spent.
The Early: Going back to the lack of discussion before providing arms to Israel: Do you think you still would have resigned if the discussion had taken place, even if the administration ended up providing much of the same military assistance?
Paul: The honest answer is I don’t know. My calculation throughout my over 11 years in the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs was always: Am I doing more good than I would be doing if I left? Am I doing more good than harm? Even in very difficult circumstances where I didn’t agree with past outcomes on arms transfers, I stayed because I believed that I was making a difference — that I was driving a discussion that might not otherwise be happening, and that was leading to at least minor changes, and sometimes significant changes.
It’s impossible to sort of prejudge what that discussion would have led to — but I think there is at least a possibility that I would still be in my old job had there been that discussion.
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