Editor’s Note: A version of the following first appeared on March 7, 2024, in Wendell Griffen’s blog “Fierce Prophetic Hope.” Because of the ever-evolving situation on the ground, casualty reports for all of Good Faith Media’s coverage of the war in Gaza are subject to change before publication.
In the face of a genocide conducted by Israeli Defense Forces in Gaza that has killed over 30,000 Palestinians, maimed over 70,000 others and is worsening minute by minute, major news outlets in the United States lead with “breaking news” each day about the campaign to elect whoever will be inaugurated as President of the United States in January 2025.
One of the two leading contenders is known throughout the world as a sociopath. Donald Trump is a civilly judged sex offender and civilly judged corporate con man.
His racism, anti-Muslim bigotry, xenophobia, pathological dishonesty and capitalist greed have become the new face of U.S. fascism. Sadly, his most loyal voting constituency claims to be “evangelical Christians” who believe in “family values.” Trump is cheering for Israel to “finish the job” in Gaza.
The other leading contender is a career Democratic politician who has fecklessly backed every iteration of the Israeli settler colonial enterprise for decades. That is hardly surprising.
Joseph Biden has always called himself a Zionist. However, Biden is so morally and politically enthralled by the Israeli regime that he is unable to recognize its moral, political and legal criminality, and his complicity with it.
On four occasions during the past five months, the Biden administration has used its position in the United Nations Security Council to block resolutions calling for an immediate ceasefire and provision of humanitarian aid in Gaza. The Biden administration has sent bombs, artillery and tank shells and other war equipment to Israel, which exploded more ordinance in Gaza in less than five months than the U.S. used in a year of warfare in Afghanistan.
Despite the fact that Palestinian men, women, and children are dying daily from the direct and indirect results of the Israeli genocide, U.S. news outlets, including religious news outlets, refuse to expose Biden’s cruel, feckless support for Israel’s genocidal actions. Despite the starvation, disease, nakedness, and utter helplessness of people in Gaza, Biden— an observant Catholic who claims to believe in mercy and kindness for suffering people— will not use U.S. power to stop the genocide. Instead, his administration is outfitting, financing, and defending the people who are perpetrating it.
That is why history will damn Joe Biden for Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Yes, historians will chronicle the actions and policies of Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel’s War Cabinet. But historians will chronicle that Biden was the national leader with the most power to stop Netanyahu’s genocidal actions against Gaza.
Netanyahu dispatched the IDF killers. Biden armed and financed Netanyahu’s government, including the IDF, with full knowledge that Netanyahu was determined to depopulate Gaza.
The starving, unhoused, cold, sickened, terrified and defenseless people of Gaza are surrogates for God. Biden’s administration is helping Israel starve them, terrify and kill them.
Donald Trump is rightly condemned as a sociopath, despite how much white “evangelical Christians” are determined to make him the next President of the United States. Similarly, Joe Biden, a Catholic, deserves to be condemned as a sociopath— because he is helping Israel murder, starve, rob and run Palestinians from Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank—despite how much the Democratic party faithful are determined to re-elect him.
Historians will damn Joe Biden for Israel’s genocide in Gaza. They will also damn U.S. religious leaders for refusing to do the same.
In both cases, they will be right.
Pastor at New Millennium Church in Little Rock, Arkansas, a retired state court trial judge, a trustee of the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference, author of two books and three blogs, a consultant on cultural competency and inclusion, and a contributing correspondent at Good Faith Media.