Israeli students with Images of Israeli hostages held in Gaza (Israel Ministry of Education)
Leaders of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, one of the most important African-American churches, have condemned Israel over the ongoing Iron Swords War in Gaza and called on the U.S. government to end military aid to Israel. While such calls are not necessarily anti-Israel in nature, the text of the statement on the matter released by the church’s Council of Bishops was filled with false allegations against Israel.
Relations between African Americans and American Jews have been frayed for decades. Many in America falsely identify with the Palestinians as being “people of color” suffering from colonialism meted out by a White European people – Jews. However, that narrative is simply false and springs from the propaganda campaigns made against Israel by its enemies.
This does not mean that all African Americans feel this way. But, apparently, the African Methodist Episcopal Church does.
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The Council did not limit its attack on Israel to the current war in Gaza, nor to the events of the past 57 years, since Israel took control of the West Bank and Gaza in the 1967 “Six Day War.” The Council went back more than a decade before that, for some reason citing 1954 as the beginning of the conflict.
“The Council of Bishops of the African Methodist Episcopal Church calls on the United States Government to immediately withdraw all funding and other support from Israel,” it said in a statement. “Since 1954, Israel has shown a willful disregard for the human dignity of Palestinians. Since October 7, 2023, in retaliation for the brutal murder of 1139 Israeli citizens by Hamas, Israel has murdered over 28,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children. The United States is supporting this mass genocide. This must not be allowed to continue.”
The Council went on to accuse Israel of supposedly trapping 1.6 million “desperate Palestinians in the southern Gaza city called Rafah.”
It is not clear how it arrived at this figure which amounts to 80% of Gaza’s total population of a little over two million people, a number of people that could not fit into the Rafah area.
The Council also stated that most of them are women and children, an obvious fact considering that the majority of any population is comprised of women and children. It also falsely accused Israel of denying them access to food, water, shelter, and health care. Israel has allowed tons of humanitarian aid to be transferred to Gaza by the U.N. on a daily basis, but once in Gaza, the U.N. does nothing to ensure the supplies get to the people who need them.
And there was also a heinous accusation that Israel plans a mass murder with the Council saying, “After this torture, they [the Israelis] plan to murder them. The United States of America will have likely paid for the weapons they use. This must not be allowed to happen.
The African Methodist Episcopal Church is the first independent Protestant denomination founded by Black people in the United States. It was founded in 1816 by Richard Allen in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania after Black members of the Methodist Episcopal Church were subjected to discrimination. The AME Church is a global denomination with over 2.5 million members in 39 countries. The church is led by a Board of Bishops, and its highest legislative body is the General Conference, which meets every four years.
