Art Laffin offers the following reflection on the experience on March 21 of being arrested alongside twelve other members of Christians for Ceasefire while wearing pictures of the destruction in Gaza and singing hymns of peace in the rotunda of the Russell Senate Office building.
The following article was published in the November-December 2024 issue of NewsNotes.
Yesterday, October 10, a notice was sent to our lawyers, Mark Goldstone and Frank Panapoulos, from Assistant Attorney General John Roberts of the District of Columbia, stating that the charges against Kathy and me are dismissed.
Kathy and I are deeply grateful to Mark (and his interns) and Frank for all their help in this case, and for Josh Paul and Philip Farah’s willingness to testify on our behalf at trial. [Josh Paul resigned from the State Department in October 2023 due to his disagreement with the Biden administration’s decision to rush lethal military assistance to Israel in the context of its war on Gaza. Philip Farah is a Palestinian Christian from East Jerusalem, now living in the Washington, DC area, and co-founder of Palestinian Christians for Peace.]
We are also thankful for everyone who came to court to offer their prayerful support, as well as those who were not able to be at court and who expressed their prayerful solidarity.
On March 21, the date of the Christians 4 Ceasefire witness, the official Palestinian death toll in Gaza was over 32,000. Additionally, relief agencies reported that a vast majority of Gazans faced famine conditions due to lack of food and Israel’s prevention of crucial humanitarian aid shipments.
According to the Gaza Health Ministry, as of the first week of October, an estimated 42,000 people have died in Gaza, including 17,000 children, and over 100,000 have been injured as a direct result of Israeli bombing and siege. Nearly 2 million Palestinians have been displaced. As Israel has blocked critical food and aid, Gazans are experiencing famine conditions. Cases of polio have been reported. Most of Gaza is virtually uninhabitable.
Just think, over 10,000 Palestinians have been killed since our March 21 witness. On March 21, the 13 of us who were arrested in the Russell Senate Rotunda were in fact engaging in an act of crime prevention. We should never have been arrested for this nonviolent witness.
If the U.S. Senate would have listened to our prayerful plea and that of so many more across the U.S. and called for a permanent ceasefire on the day of our pray-in, and authorized an arms embargo on Israel in accordance with the Leahy Law, over 10,000 lives could have been saved.
Israel’s war on Gaza continues without release of hostages and has expanded into Lebanon. Settler violence and Israeli military attacks have increased in the West Bank. And the Israeli government, with U.S. backing, is now threatening to attack Iran.
Meanwhile, the Japanese group Nihon Hidankyo, a grassroots organization of atomic bomb survivors (known as Hibakusha) from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, have received the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize. After the prize was announced, the co-chair of Nihon Hidankyo, Toshiyuki Mimaki, spoke to reporters in Tokyo and said, “In Gaza, bleeding children are being held [by their parents]. It’s like in Japan 80 years ago.”
I conclude with a portion of a Prayer of Lament that was offered last Friday, Oct. 4, outside the White House, during a prayer service for peace in Gaza and the Middle East to mark the feast day of St. Francis:
For our nation’s role in the deaths of more than 42,000 Palestinians, including more than 17,000 children, each one of them a precious and irreplaceable life. Our leaders knowingly sent to Israel the weapons that killed them. For this we repent.
God forgive the wrong we’ve done; God, forgive us now.
For our nation’s failure to advance a permanent ceasefire and to prioritize the release of Israeli hostages as well as Palestinians unjustly detained; for our failure to promote diplomacy toward a just and lasting peace for both Palestinians and Israelis, we repent.
God forgive the wrong we’ve done; God forgive us now.
We stand with all Jewish, Christian and Muslim brothers and sisters who are working to end U.S. complicity in Israel’s war on Gaza and to help bring about a ceasefire and just peace for Palestine and Israel. Now more than ever we need to proclaim the Gospel of Nonviolence!
Photo of Art Laffin in the Russell Senate Office Building before his arrest for the demonstration referenced in the article.