Duluth, Minnesota, might seem like a world away from the Gaza Strip. But, on Sunday night, the Hildegard House Catholic Worker community gathered with 40 local activists to bring the suffering of their 2 million brothers and sisters facing bombardment and starvation in the Gaza Strip a bit closer to home.
Hildegard House and the local Palestine Solidarity Working Group screened “The Encampments,” a documentary on the 2024 encampments across college campuses that not only provoked a national uproar but also drew renewed attention to the U.S.’s role in Israel’s campaign of destruction in Gaza.
After the documentary, Hildegard House fundraised for Yusuf el-Mobayed, a 25-year-old man from Gaza seeking to study journalism. Michele Naar-Obed of Hildegard House wrote in an email to Roundtable that they raised more than $200 for el-Mobayed, who is in need of funds to evacuate to Turkey and from there to Glasgow, Scotland.
“Yusuf has been forced out of his home in Gaza and has endured ongoing eviction and relocation by Israeli forces,” Naar-Obed wrote.
“Yusuf said that they are living in the open desert, which must be terrifying with the Israelis still bombing and shooting indiscriminately.”
Naar-Obed met el-Mobayed through Kate Hennessy, Dorothy Day’s granddaughter, and her husband, Garry Jones, who have been leading an initiative to connect Catholic Worker communities to people in need in Gaza.
El-Mobayed, like many Gazans, has been shot at while trying to reach food distribution sites.
“All those who managed to get a bag of flour were right beside the Israeli tanks,” El-Mobayed wrote in an email to Garry Jones, shared with Roundtable. “Even if I had gotten something, I wouldn’t have been able to carry it, as the aid trucks were only loaded with a few 50-kilogram sacks.”
Shot or Starving
The Israeli military has killed more than 60,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip since October 2023. More than 18,000 children have been killed in Gaza.
Since May, Gaza has been facing famine, as the Israeli military cut off humanitarian aid organizations’ access to the devastated Gaza Strip. The United Nations reported in May that a 25-kilogram bag of flour was on sale for $500. Recent reports suggest flour is sold from aid convoys onto the black market, where it can be sold for thousands of dollars. The United Nations reports that close to 1,500 Palestinians have been killed at aid distribution sites or while walking or waiting to receive food. The Guardian reports that nearly 100 children have died of starvation in Gaza over the past two years.
“It is a clear and explicit attempt to destroy Palestinian society in Gaza and create catastrophic living conditions that prevent the continued existence of this society in Gaza,” wrote B’tselem, an Israeli Human Rights organization, “That is precisely the definition of genocide.”
Israel’s Security Cabinet approved a plan for the Israeli army to occupy Gaza City, several news outlets reported on Thursday.
Starving in Solidarity
In the West Bank, Palestinians have been attacked in hundreds of reported arsons, beatings, and shootings this year, leading to at least 14 casualties, the United Nations reports.
Israeli settlers set cars and houses on fire in Silwad, a village northeast of Ramallah in the West Bank, in the early morning of July 31, killing Khamis Ayyad, an American citizen living with his wife and five children in the West Bank. Ayyad was the second American citizen killed in the West Bank in July. Sayfollah Musallet was beaten by Israeli settlers on July 11 when he was visiting family in Sinjil from his home in Florida. Witnesses attest that the settlers broke an ambulance windshield and prevented an ambulance from bringing Musallet to the hospital in time to receive life-saving treatment.
Israeli settlements in the West Bank are illegal under international law, as an occupying power has the responsibility to provide for the occupied and not to annex the territory, according to the Geneva Conventions of 1949. The West Bank has been occupied by Israel since 1967. Despite being illegal under international law, Israeli settlements are funded by the Israeli government, and immigrants and Israelis are encouraged to move to settlements with cheaper real estate and cash incentives.
Israeli settlers have been attacking several West Bank villages with greater frequency since October 7, 2023. Recently, they set fire to several cars in a predominantly Christian village in the West Bank, Taybeh, prompting a strong ecumenical response from the Patriarchs and Heads of Churches in Jerusalem.
“The attacks by the hands of settlers against our community, which is living in peace, must stop, both here in Taybeh and elsewhere throughout the West Bank,” the Heads of Jerusalem Churches said in a statement.
In late July, Israeli settlers shot Awdah Hathaleen, who helped produce “No Other Land,” an Oscar-winning documentary about the Palestinian village of Masafer Yatta.
Cassandra Dixon, a Catholic Worker in Wisconsin, wrote in an email to Roundtable that she was traveling to Masafer Yatta in August to mourn with the community. Originally, she had been planning to attend a wedding.
The State of Israel has not returned Hathaleen’s body to his family in their village of Umm Al-Khair for burial, according to the Israeli outlet +972 Magazine. “Over 70 women in Umm Il-Kheir have begun a hunger strike demanding the release of Awdah’s body,” Dixon wrote in an email. “One woman has already gone to the hospital.”
Teach-Ins and Protests
Several Catholic Worker communities have joined other peace groups in protesting the genocide in Gaza.
Catholic Workers from Worcester, Massachusetts; Ithaca, New York; and Washington, D.C., traveled to the U.S. capital to protest U.S. Christians’ “complicity in the genocide in Gaza,” reported the August/September issue of The Catholic Radical.
In conjunction with other interfaith activists, Catholic Workers displayed a banner declaring “Israeli Genocide in Palestine is a Sin” outside of a gathering of the lobbying organization Christians United for Israel in Washington, D.C.
Along with Interfaith Action for Palestine and Jewish Voices for Peace, several Catholic Workers participated in civil disobedience in the cafeteria in the Dirksen Senate Building on July 1. More than 100 protesters were arrested. (See a video of the action on Instagram.)
Hildegard House Catholic Worker has cooperated with local groups offering teach-ins on different aspects of Zionism, such as the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions movement, and the institution of an apartheid regime in Israel. Naar-Obed said that their fundraising efforts have been focused on helping el-Mobayed and his family members evacuate Gaza.
In conjunction with these efforts, Naar-Obed described their daily work of welcoming asylum seekers and living as a community as an integral element of their commitment to solidarity and peace.
“At Hildegard House, we believe that we must go beyond resistance through demonstrations and rallies,” Naar-Obed wrote. “We know it is our responsibility to continue to be part of the creation and building of a civil society that is based on the Works of Mercy and upholds the principles and values of the Beatitudes.”
In September, Hildegard House will organize a watch party to live stream the Life Aid for Palestine benefit concert. Garry Jones and local organizers have been coordinating a benefit concert in Battleboro, Vermont, for Yusuf el-Mobayed and organizations aiding Gazans, like the Middle East Children’s Alliance and the Good Shepherd Collective, Kate Hennessy said. “Most of the time, it seems all we can offer are words of love for Yusuf and his family, and to give them some comfort that there are people out there who are paying attention, know what is going on, and who are trying to help,” Hennessy wrote in an email to Roundtable.
Naar-Obed believes that the global dominance of the American empire and its war machine is reaching its expiration date. In the midst of that collapse, she said, Hildegard House remains “committed to nonviolence and we recognize that every kind, just and merciful act we live out in our daily lives will be the means to the end in realizing this new civil society.”
