Steven Sahiounie, journalist and political commentator
The Jews are closely associated with the word holocaust. The word is culturally attached to the Jewish people, recalling a terrible genocide in Europe in the WW2 era which killed millions. It wasn’t the first genocide of modern times, that was committed on the Armenians and Syrian Christians in 1916, and it likely will not be the last genocide. We are currently watching the 2024 genocide in Gaza.
Similarly, the Japanese are closely associated with the word Hiroshima, recalling the twin US attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki which turned some 100,000 people instantly into ashes, and killed thousands more in the days that followed, mostly civilians.
On March 25, US Representative Tim Walberg, Republican of Michigan, was speaking at a town hall meeting in Dundee, Michigan. He was asked a question about why US money is being spent to build a port to deliver humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza.
Walberg said, “It’s (President) Joe Biden’s reason. I don’t think we should. I don’t think any of our aid that goes to Israel to support our greatest ally, arguably maybe in the world, to defeat Hamas, and Iran and Russia and probably North Korea’s in there and China too, with them helping Hamas. We shouldn’t be spending a dime on humanitarian aid. It should be like Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Get it over quick.”
After the video of Walberg’s calling for the Palestinian people in Gaza to be nuked went viral on social media, Walberg spokesman Mike Rorke confirmed the validity of the video.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-MI), a Michigan chapter of the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, condemned Walberg’s call to end humanitarian aid for the Palestinian people in Gaza and instead nuke the civilian population into extermination.
Humanitarian groups and the UN say a port is necessary because Israel has blocked seven land routes for food and medicine to get in to Gaza. The UN warns that famine is “imminent” in Gaza. The International Court of Justice last week ruled unanimously that Israel must allow humanitarian assistance to enter Gaza because “famine is setting in.”
Walberg serves as the US Congressional representative from Michigan’s 5th congressional district. He has previously represented the 7th district from 2007 to 2009 and from 2011 to 2023. As the longest tenured member from Michigan, Walberg is the current Dean of its delegation to the US House of Representatives.
Walberg the Christian leader
From 1973 to 1977, Walberg served as pastor at Grace Fellowship Church in New Haven, Indiana. He also spent time as a pastor and as a division manager for the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago.
Walberg often talks about his faith guiding his politics. A graduate of three evangelical schools: Moody Bible Institute in Illinois, Tayler University in Indiana, and Wheaton College in Illinois.
In February, Moody published a quote from Walberg, “Living out my biblical worldview and not succumbing to acquiesce in any way, shape, or form to anything that God condemns. … I can’t — by silence or direct statement — condone what God condemns.”
In an interview with World magazine, Walberg said, “Everything comes at me through the filter of my faith. It has to be that way if this is more than a religion.”
In April 2019, a Jewish group at the University of Michigan hosted Walberg speaking. Walberg spoke on how his religion guides his support for Israel. He said the main reason he fervently believes the US must support Israel is because he believes God supports Israel.
“I read the Torah, I’ve read the entire Old Testament,” Walberg said. “What God condemns, I condemn. Who God loves I will love. If I don’t, I’m a sinner.”
Walberg went on to say that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has “moral clarity.”
“The most impressive experience was being able to be with Bibi Netanyahu,” Walberg said. “In his presence, I understand very clearly he knows good from evil, right from wrong, success from failure.”
US College and University students protest
In the aftermath of the Israeli attack on Gaza, American college students began protesting the Israeli slaughter of innocent civilians in Gaza. They carried Palestinian flags and placards reading ‘Free Palestine’ and ‘Stop the War’ among other sentiments. The American youth have seen the war on Gaza as a social justice issue which needs to be solved, and the US and other nations have called for a two-state solution, where Palestinians and Jews live in freedom ‘from the river to the sea’.
However, AIPAC, the powerful Israeli lobbying group which welds enormous power over the Congress and the White House, immediately instituted a campaign to discredit university presidents, professors and students with a label of ‘anti-Semitics’.
Walberg authored a letter in October and signed it along with 43 other lawmakers calling on Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona to take action on college campuses across the US.
Walberg, and others, identified statements in support of Palestinians as ‘anti-Semitism’, when the freedom for Palestinians called for by the students is the same as the UN resolution ratified by the US and calling for a two-state solution, which Netanyahu has said will never be allowed in Israel.
Palestinian Christians
Christian churches in Gaza have been destroyed by Israeli forces, including a Baptist church. The remaining Christian communities would be among those facing the nukes called for by Walberg, a former Baptist pastor.
“A genocide has been normalized,” Reverend Munther Isaac, pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the West Bank town of Bethlehem, said during his Easter Vigil sermon on March 30, as he pleaded for an end to the war in Gaza.
“As people of faith, if we truly claim to follow a crucified Savior, we can never be okay with this. We should never accept the normalization of a genocide. We should never be okay with children dying from starvation,” Isaac said.
“These are dark, dark days. And in times like this, we Palestinians look at the cross, identify with the cross, and see Jesus identifying with us,” he added as he stood next to a cross planted in rubble to represent Gaza. “In Easter, we relive his arrest, torture, and execution at the hands of empire with a complicity of the religious ideology.”
Isaac said, speaking to Al Jazeera from Bethlehem in the West Bank at Easter, “I think the restrictions this year have definitely increased. Even for us here in Bethlehem – and Jerusalem is literally 20 minutes away from here – we don’t have access.”
Zionism
The opinion Walberg voiced publically was full of hate and racism. He might have gotten away with his bigoted hate speech; however, he is a former Christian leader, and is on the record as depending on his faith as the guiding factor in his life and public service.
How did Walburg profess Christian faith, while suggesting a quick end to the Israeli war on Gaza by using nuclear bombs?
Walburg is a Zionist. Zionism is a fascist political ideology hiding behind religion. Not every Jew is a Zionist, and not every Christian is a Zionist, but many are. If Jews are following their religious tenant, “do no harm” and Christians are living their religious tenant, “love your neighbor as yourself” then nuking Gaza has no place in either faith.
Fascism is a political dogma best described as, “you are either with me, or against me”. The German NAZI party was a fascist political ideology. Zionism calls for the Jewish State of Israel and the expulsion of Palestinians, as they have no legal claim on the land of their ancestors, or even the land they legally own presently. Zionists want Palestinians to leave by their own choice, or deportation, or by death.
Zionism disregards international law and religious teachings of humanity and the value of human life.
Japan
Walberg called for Gaza to get the Hiroshima treatment. If you ask the Japanese people about Nagasaki and Hiroshima they will tell you a far different story than the US school textbooks, because they suffered massive deaths and destruction, while no Americans lost their life in the attack.
‘Oppenheimer’ ,the US film, finally premiered in Japan eight months after its release, in a deliberate delay due to the sensitivity of the subject of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Oscar-winning film left Japanese filmgoers’ with reactions that were mixed and highly emotional.
Former Hiroshima Mayor Takashi Hiraoka said, “From Hiroshima’s standpoint, the horror of nuclear weapons was not sufficiently depicted,” he was quoted as saying by Japanese media. “The film was made in a way to validate the conclusion that the atomic bomb was used to save the lives of Americans.”
Kamikawa Yoko, the Japanese foreign minister, has told the Palestinian Prime Minister, Mohammad Mustafa, on April 2 that Japan will resume funding the UNRWA, the largest food and aid agency delivering to Gaza.
The Japanese government suspended funding to UNRWA in January following Israeli allegations that some UNRWA staff members were involved in the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7.
Kamikawa said Japan will also provide medical services to Palestinians in the neighboring countries, and plans to offer relief supplies for women and infants in the Gaza.
US complicity in the genocide in Gaza
On March 19, the US Congress and the Biden Administration reached an agreement on a massive bill funding the military among others government programs. The bill will continue to ban US funding of UNRWA until March 2025.
Biden had said in January it was temporarily pausing funding to UNRWA based on the Israeli accusation that 12 agency workers out of 13,000 in Gaza had participated in the October 7 Hamas attack, which killed more than 1,100 Israelis.
Gaza already resembles the aftermath of a nuclear attack after more than five months of constant and intense bombing by Israel, which has killed more than 32,700 people in Gaza, including more than 13,000 children.
Steven Sahiounie is a two-time award-winning journalist
