newsChristian leaders in Britain stay silent as graves as millions face starvation in Gaza
A statue of the Madonna with a child at Ripon Cathedral in Yorkshire. Three Mother and Child sculptures in copper by the York artist Harold Gosney attract a great response from visitors. Love of children is central to the Christian message. (Picture: Trevor Grundy
By TREVOR GRUNDY
In March 1960, sixty-nine Africans were shot dead at Sharpeville.
The name Sharpeville and the figure 69 symbolised the horror of apartheid.
For decades after Anglican and Roman Catholics clerics, often with small children on their shoulders, marched around Trafalgar Square to show their disgust at the political system in South Africa.
Today, its more of the same. Just in a different part of the world.
Something like 53,000 people have been killed in Gaza since the horrendous attack by Hamas on Jewish music-lovers and party-goes in Israel at the end of 2023.
Reaction by Israel was inevitable.
But this?
Mass starvation which UN officials say is now bordering on genocide?
Thousands of children face death by starvation and hardly a soul in the Christian churches in Britain says a word.
Roman Catholics have been busy bees seeing in a new Pope.
The Church of England is looking for a new Archbishop of Canterbury after a series of outrageous sex scandals.
Gaza, of course, is in their Sunday prayers.
A report in The Guardian today (May 13, 2025) says that at least 60 people were killed by Israeli strikes on Gaza today.
Strikes hit the European hospital complex near Khan Younis and left large craters gouged into the ground and cracks in the courtyard outside the European Hospital complex.
A damaged bus was lodged in a hole in the road.
Soon stories like this won’t make the news bulletins.
They will be commonplace.
Millions face starvation.
Perhaps, it’s a good time for Christians to shake the dust off clerical sandals and head towards Trafalgar Square – 65 years after Sharpeville.
But until then . . .
. . . the silence of Christian leaders in Britain – like the silence of the Palestinian lambs in Gaza – continues.
UN officials fear not only starvation but planned genocide in Gaza
OH RASCAL CHILDREN OF GAZA
by Khaled Juma
Oh rascal children of Gaza,
You who constantly disturbed me with
your screams under my window,
You who filled every morning with rush
and chaos,
You who broke my vase and stole
the lonely flower on my balcony,
Come back –
And scream as you want,
And break all the vases,
Steal all the flowers,
Come back,
Just come back . . .: