In Washington, D.C. on July 21, the right-wing organization Christians United for Israel held its banquet at the Convention Center. Liberation News was on the scene at the counter protest where we spoke with Ghassan Tarazi (pictured with wife Kay).
Liberation News: As a Palestinian Christian, what would you want to tell these people going into this event today?
Ghassan Tarazi: They can’t live by myths. We’ve been fed a lot of different myths, like Palestine or Israel is a land without people for a people without land, that’s just absolutely a fallacy. Or the current state of Israel has a direct connection to the biblical Israel, that’s also a fallacy. When we talk about Israel today we are not talking about biblical Israel.
And that Israel is committing war crimes, the Zionist regime is committing war crimes against innocent children and women and civilians. Americans would never do that based on our principles of human dignity and justice and equality.
I would want these people to have Palestinians on the same level of humanity as Israelis. God created us all equal and there’s nobody special. Not even Israeli Jews are special; we’re all made by the same God and we’re all equal, and we want to be treated equally as Palestinians.
And by the way, my father’s church in Gaza is celebrating its 1610th anniversary this year, so the first Christian community in the world started in Palestine. And I think that’s something they should know.
“Christians” call for killing Palestinian children
Highlighting the racist character of the so-called Zionist Christian movement, Liberation staffers witnessed banquet goers harassing a child who was part of the counter protest. Liberation News also spoke with counter-demonstrator Louise Thundercloud. She told us of her encounter with a woman going into the event who told her that is was right to kill Palestinian children.
The counter protest grew in size and energy as the self-proclaimed Christians entered the convention center. Protesters chanted, “Would Jesus kill children? Would Jesus commit genocide?”
Volunteers from the ANSWER Coalition (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) distributed flyers to promote the Aug. 2 National March to Stop the Massacre in Gaza.
