The Rev. Sara Ofner-Seals praying at a White House vigil during the March 2024 Stones Cry Out witness

This September a delegation of faith leaders and activists, convened by The Stones Cry Out, will be gathering in Washington, DC, to advocate for Palestinian rights, for justice, for an end to Israel’s occupation, and for the U.S. to stop its complicity with genocide. This gathering is a follow-up to an initial The Stones Cry Out delegation this past March when 50 people traveled to DC.

Half of that group had spent a week, guests of Palestinian Christians, in the West Bank and went directly to DC on their return where I and others joined them in lobbying legislators to do more to stop the devastation in Gaza and to advocate for justice for Palestinians in the West Bank. In addition to meeting with members of congress, we held a vigil outside the White House, heard from prominent activists and leaders like Miko Peled and Representative Jamaal Bowman, and ended our time with an interfaith service of lament and solidarity where we heard from, among others, Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib.

The Stones Cry Out is organizing this second DC delegation recognizing that time is of the essence; our advocacy now is all the more urgent. The official death toll in Gaza is purportedly around 40,000, but most experts agree this is a vast undercount. When you add in the number of indirect deaths from disease and starvation, and the tens of thousands missing and presumed dead, the number of deaths in Gaza since October 7, 2023, soars to over 100,000, and that’s a conservative estimate.

Meanwhile, life in the West Bank has gotten even more dangerous for Palestinians. Israeli settlers are so terrorizing Palestinian villages that many residents are being forced to flee their homes. Since October 7, over 600 West Bank Palestinians have been killed and nearly 10,000 have been arrested and put into detention, with rarely any charges against them. Last month, the UN International Court of Justice ruled that the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, in place since 1967, is illegal according to the Geneva Conventions.

All of this is why I will be traveling to DC in September, because if we do not speak up, I believe that even the stones would cry out for justice. Indeed, “the living stones,” as we call the Palestinians and Israelis working for a just peace in their land, cry out every single day. I stand in solidarity with them.

Ever persistent, those gathering in September (from the afternoon of September 23 through the evening of September 25) will participate in advocacy, meeting with Members of Congress and engage in public actions at the US Capital and elsewhere in DC. We will once again be hearing from prominent leaders in the movement, including Rev. Graylan Haglar, activist Miko Peled, Medea Benjamin from Code Pink, and Laila El-Haddad, author of Gaza Mom and Gaza Kitchen. There will be an opportunity to visit the Museum of the Palestinian People. An interfaith worship service will end our time together. Over a dozen organizations are sponsoring The Stones Cry Out witness, including Sabeel Liberation Theology Center, Friends of Sabeel North America, Kairos USA, and our own UCC Palestine-Israel Network.

Let your voice be heard. Please join this powerful gathering of faith leaders and activists. To participate, contact our lead organizer, Doug Thorpe, at dthorpe@spu.edu. Once you have indicated your interest in joining us, you will receive more information and a detailed schedule. We hope to see you there!

This is a section of the UCCPIN August 2024 E-Newsletter. To read the entire newsletter, follow this link.