“Gaza Doesn't Need Our Tears, It Needs Our Anger”

Recent U.N. reports about extensive starvation and incipient famine in Gaza spurred me to write this article about the current crisis there and to suggest how we should respond.  

Caitlin Johnstone is an Australian journalist and political commentator. Last week, I happened to come across her August 14 newsletter with the heading that I have used for the title of this blog post.**

A year earlier (on 8/18/24), Johnstone boldly posted this statement with which most USAmericans will strongly disagree:

The US is the single most murderous and tyrannical regime on the planet and retains its power by creating a mind-controlled dystopia where the public is brainwashed with propaganda, and its politicians fearmonger about the nation falling to "communism" or "fascism" if you cast the wrong vote.

Granted, Johnstone’s statement is somewhat exaggerated, but Israel’s war against Hamas occurring in Gaza, which has led to the worsening of the chronic hunger/malnutrition situation there, is due partly to the multifaceted U.S. support of Israel and its Prime Minister, Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu.

The U.S. has provided substantial financial assistance to the State of Israel since its formation in 1948, as well as additional funding and military support since October 2023. In contrast to most current issues, especially on the U.S. funding of Israel’s warfare in Gaza, I stand in opposition to both political Parties.

Perhaps now Johnstone’s 2024 statement could/should be updated to refer to fearmongering about the U.S. falling to radical Islam (such as is seen in Hamas).

The famine in Gaza is due to genocide, not war. Some news sources, such as BBC and Al Jazeera, refer to what is currently going on as the “Israel-Gaza war.” But that term has been rightly rejected by theologian Miguel De La Torre in “This is Not a “War,” his perceptive August 14 essay.

The designation which should be used is genocide, for as De La Torre asserts, “Israel, with the military backing of the United States, is engaged in the genocide of the Palestinian people—wiping out those who refuse to self-deport so settler colonialists can complete the full occupation of Palestine.”

A week after De La Torre’s essay, “The Conversation” posted, “Israel’s plan for massive new West Bank settlement would make a Palestinian state impossible,” (see here).

 “Israel’s razing of Gaza is … about the erasure of a people, a culture and a history that expose the lies used to justify the Israeli state.” This is the sub-headline of Chris Hedges’s hard-hitting article in opposition to Israel’s treatment of the Palestinian people from 1948 until the present.

Reflecting on the way the Palestinians have been mistreated by Israel for more than 75 years now, Hedges expresses the type of anger that Johnstone calls for in her lament, and at the head of his August 22 “report,” Hedges uses the following image of “Beelzebibi” by Mr. Fish (cartoonist Dwayne Booth). 

“Be angry but do not sin” (Ephesians 4:26). Yes, the New Testament admonishes us to be angry, and the genocide-induced famine in Gaza is an appropriate target for our anger as Johnstone asserts.

As a pacifist, I do not agree with the concept of just war, for I don’t think one can participate in war without sinning. How can killing people be sinless when Jesus commanded us to love our enemies? But I think there can and should be what can be called just anger.

Many of us want to show concern, sympathy/empathy, compassion, and so on to people in need. But in many cases, anger is more appropriate than merely expressing shared grief and shedding tears.

Sympathetic tears are appropriate when there are natural disasters such as hurricanes, floods, wildfires, droughts, and the like. But when widespread suffering is deliberately caused by humans, anger is the better response.

That is Johnstone’s point: the death and destruction in Gaza is entirely human-made. That is the reason the dire situation there elicits our anger rather than our tears.

If there is any hope for Gaza, it will come by increasing numbers of people heeding the words of theologian Augustine of Hippo: “Hope has two beautiful daughters, their names are Anger and Courage. Anger that things are the way they are, and Courage to see that they do not remain as they are.”

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** Here is information about the three articles I cite in this blog post:

Gaza Doesn't Need Our Tears, It Needs Our Anger (Aug. 14) by Caitlin Johnstone (b. 1974), an Australian journalist and activist.

This is Not a “War”: Israel and Hamas by the Numbers - Good Faith Media (Aug. 14) by Miguel De La Torre (b. 1958), a Cuban American who is a professor at Iliff School of Theology in Denver, Colorado. (I am pleased that he is also one of my Thinking Friends.)

Israel’s Assassination of Memory - The Chris Hedges Report (Aug. 22) by Chris Hedges (b. 1956), a USAmerican journalist, author, and commentator. 

“I Was Hungry . . .”: Observing Hunger Action Month

This article is directly related to the one posted on August 30 where I cited the words of Jesus found in Matthew 25:40. In verse 35 of the same chapter, Jesus said, “I was hungry, and you fed me.”  

September is widely known as Hunger Action Month in the U.S. This is an important emphasis that has often not been sufficiently observed. Hunger is a grave problem even here in the U.S., one of the richest nations in the world.  

Feeding America is the name of the organization that is the primary advocate of Hunger Alert Month. On their website (here), they state that more than 47 million people in the U.S. face hunger, including one in five children.  

I live in Missouri, which has a population of about 6.2 million people. It’s hard for me to fathom the fact that every person in more than seven states the size of Missouri is facing food insecurity. 

Fortunately, many of those people can get help from the numerous affiliates of Feeding America. Locally, Harvesters is the Feeding America food bank serving a 26-county area of northwestern Missouri and northeastern Kansas (see here).  

As Harvesters provides food and related household products to more than 760 nonprofit agencies including food pantries, community kitchens, shelters, and other similar facilities, I was happy to make a contribution to that organization as one of my hunger actions for this month.  

There are similar food banks across the U.S. A couple of weeks ago I created a “Google alert” for Hunger Action Month, and I have been notified about magazine and newspaper articles from all across the country, including one last week from Bolivar Herald Free-Press telling about Ozark Food Harvest.* 

Do you who live in the U.S. know the organization related to Feeding America near you? Is there some action—a contribution or maybe volunteer work—you can do during this Hunger Action month? 

Hunger, of course, is a global problem, and the World Food Program (WFP) is an international organization within the United Nations that provides food assistance worldwide. Founded in 1961, WFP is headquartered in Rome and has offices in 80 countries. (WFP’s website can be accessed here.) 

According to an Aug. 2 WFP article, 309 million people in 71 countries now face acute hunger. Of these, more than 37 million people face emergency levels of hunger or worse: there are 1.3 million people in the grips of catastrophic hunger, primarily in Gaza and Sudan.  

Cindy (Hensley) McCain became the executive director of the WFP last year, and as such she is the head of what is said to be the world’s largest humanitarian organization.**  

Feeding the hungry is good, but seeking to prevent hunger is better. We must ask why there are so many hungry people in the world, realizing that charity is good, but it is not enough. 

In my next blog post, I am planning to introduce a 2024 book by Jon Paul Sydnor, a college professor in Boston, but here are pertinent words from that book I am sharing now: 

... charity will always be necessary, but it must be practiced alongside social criticism. Charity must ask, “Why is this charity needed? Instead of feeding the hungry, could we eliminate hunger?” (The Great Open Dance, p. 284). 

Reading those words caused me to remember the words of Dom Helder Camara (1909~99) that I have cited before:  

And here is the distressing state of affairs in the world today: the global hunger problem is most likely going to become increasingly worse. Global warming, leading to more droughts as well as to more floods, will likely cause food shortages and acute hunger for many people in some parts of the world. 

Still, while being concerned about the causes of hunger and the dire prospects for the future, some chronically hungry people need help now. Let’s do something to help such individuals, knowing that when we help feed hungry people, we are figuratively feeding Jesus. 

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* The Free Press is the weekly newspaper of Bolivar, Mo., the town where June and I met as first-year students at Southwest Baptist College (as it was then, in 1955). Ozarks Food Harvest, located in Springfield, is the Feeding America food bank for southwest Missouri. It serves 270 hunger relief organizations across 28 Ozarks counties. 

** McCain (b. 1954), the widow of Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.), served as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Agencies for Food and Agriculture from 2021 to 2023.  

Note: Some of you may want to go back and read blog posts I made ten/eleven years ago regarding the topic of hunger. See “Charity is Not Enough” (about Bread for the World and posted on 6/10/14), and “Food for the Hungry” (posted on 7/30/13).