African Methodist Episcopal Church calls for end to all US aid to Israel
President Joe Biden during a campaign event at Mother Emanuel AME Church on Jan. 8, 2024 in Charleston, South Carolina. Photo by Sean Rayford/Getty Images
By Camillo Barone February 16, 2024
Describing Israel’s military campaign in Gaza a “mass genocide,” leaders of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the nation’s oldest predominantly Black denomination, have called for the U.S. to halt “all funding and other support” for the Jewish state.
The statement came from the church’s Council of Bishops Thursday as the Israeli army continued to move into Rafah, a city in southern Gaza where 1.6 million Palestinians are sheltering.
Israel has “denied them access to food, water, shelter, and health care. After this torture, they plan to murder them,” the statement reads.
Several major American Christian churches and the National Council of Churches have come out in support a ceasefire in Gaza. Some have called for the U.S. to end military aid to Israel, as opposed to the AME’s call for the U.S. to end all its support for the Jewish state.
Israel has said its purpose in Gaza is to wipe out Hamas before it can make good on its stated intention to repeat attacking Israel until it is destroyed, and to free the hostages the militant group took on Oct. 7. It blames Hamas, which rules Gaza, for the high Palestinian death toll, pointing to its strategy of hiding militants and weapons among civilians.
According to Gaza’s health ministry, Israel has killed more than 28,000 Palestinians, mostly civilians, in its four-month military campaign. The terror group killed about 1,200 people and took 240 hostage in its Oct. 7 attack. The bishops refer to Hamas’ killings in Israel as “brutal murder.”
“The cycle of violence between historically wounded peoples will not be dissolved by the creation of more wounds or through weapons of war,” the statement continued. “We remain in solidarity with Jesus Christ of Nazareth, a Palestinian Jew, and the Prince of Peace.”
The bishops noted that they issued their statement on the birthday of Richard Allen, an enslaved person who bought his freedom and founded the AME Church in the late 18th century.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
