As of Sunday evening, as far as I can discern, the United States government has said nothing about the IDF’s bombing on Palm Sunday morning of Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City. Israel gave an ER doctor 20 minutes to organize an evacuation of over 200 patients and staff before it launched a pair of rocket attacks that destroyed the emergency department and other facilities and damaged nearby St. Philip’s Church. A child died because their treatment was disrupted.
Al-Ahli was Gaza City’s last functioning hospital. Israel claims Hamas was using it as a base of operations but offered no evidence. Hamas denies it and has called for an international investigation. My fellow Episcopalians should understand Israel’s charge as implicating Archbishop Hosam Naoum رئيس الأساقفة حسام نعوم and all our colleagues and friends in The Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem, which operates the hospital and condemned the attack.
The diocese received support from Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe and the ranking archbishop in the Church of England. The governments of Great Britain, Germany, Jordan, and Qatar all spoke up today, but not, as far as I can find, my government. No pro forma expression of regret. No call on Israel to provide evidence of its allegations, take greater care in operations targeting medical facilities, or return to the bargaining table. Not even a warning against rushing to judgment before all the facts are in.
Our official silence is unprecedented, deafening, ominous, and deadly. The U.S. appears to have given carte blanche to the Netanyahu regime in its brutal new offensive and inhumane suspension of aid shipments. Trump has already made clear he wants Gaza cleansed of Palestinians. Perhaps he and Israel are colluding to make it so. If so, sooner or later, both will have to answer for it, because it would be a war crime.
I can’t remember feeling more ashamed to be an American. At the dawn of the Cold War, Churchill said that an iron curtain had fallen across Europe from the Baltic to the Adriatic. Trump is wrapping the whole world in a ribbon of darkness. In the region, as in other conflicts, a just peace is for all intents and purposes impossible without U.S. influence and leverage. Trump’s ethnic cleansing scheme and complicity in Israel’s war aims and its abandonment of the two-state solution are millstones around the neck of anyone who has been praying, advocating, and working for freedom and national self-determination for Israelis and Palestinians alike. The death of hope in the land of the Prince of Peace is yet another disheartening consequence of having a president who has gutted our paltry foreign aid budget, shattered alliances with our oldest friends, and pledged only to help those who pay.
But if the people’s government won’t help, we the people still can. The best way to help Al-Ahli rebuild is to send donations to the American Friends of the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem, here. Our Arab Christian friends sometimes feel we have forgotten them, especially as our own government descends into authoritarianism. If you can, please join me in making a gift to the American Friends today. It is what Easter people do, and it will help more than you can possibly know.
(Photo: Omar al-Qattaa/AFP/Getty Images)