Pax Christi
Disintegrating refugee tents, babies freezing to death, and extreme malnutrition are samples of the horrid conditions aid workers with the American Friends Service Committee have been witnessing in Gaza as they and other organizations provide the bulk of health and human services in the decimated region. But soon even those services could be gone. Under new registration requirements from the Israeli government, 37 aid organizations are set to be expelled from the region in March.
“It’s a red flag. It’s a shining light that says things are going to get worse,” Kerri Kennedy, AFSC international associate general secretary, told Sojourners. Kennedy oversees the 100-year-old nonprofit’s work in Gaza. AFSC and dozens of other aid groups have protested the new registration requirements and warned that their expulsion is a harbinger of things to come. “I can’t imagine the horrors and the lives that will be lost,” she said.
Fifty protesters gathered for a “pray-in” in Lafayette Square on Thursday afternoon, holding signs directly facing the White House that said, “Catholics say ceasefire now.”
Pax Christi International, the Brussels-based Catholic peace movement, elected a lay woman and an archbishop as co-presidents.
"Whatever the turmoil, whatever the divisions among humankind, whatever the violence, the followers of Jesus can refuse to be moved from his transcendent message of peace.