Some Metro Detroit community members are fasting in solidarity with Gaza to protest the starvation and malnutrition people in the region face as Israel continues its planned offensive to control Gaza City.
At a press conference on Tuesday at the Central United Methodist Church in Detroit, religious community leaders and representatives from groups such as Veterans for Peace and the United Auto Workers labor union shared why they fasted and urged action to establish a permanent ceasefire.
“What’s happening in Gaza is a moral and spiritual crisis,” Rev. Paul Perez, the pastor of the Central United Methodist Church in Detroit, said at a press conference on Tuesday.
“There’s nowhere else that we can be this morning, except here to join in solidarity and to speak and to stand for peace and justice.”
The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, a United Nations-backed initiative that analyzes and classifies the severity of food insecurity and malnutrition, said last Friday that parts of Gaza are in famine, and that it could spread to the central and southern areas by late September.
Rabbi Asher Lopatin, community relations director at the Jewish Federation of Greater Ann Arbor, was recently part of an interfaith plea elevated to the Trump administration by U.S. Sen. Elissa Slotkin, D-Holly.
Doctors and other experts say that famine will first affect the most vulnerable members of the population, such as young children and babies, the Associated Press reports.
According to the AP, Gaza’s Health Ministry reports that 281 people have died of malnutrition in the 22 months of the Israel-Hamas war.
Israeli leaders have said the country’s most recent military offensive to take control of Gaza is necessary to defeat Hamas and return hostages the group captured during its Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.The attack left some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, dead. Some 251 people were taken hostage; ceasefire agreements and other deals have accounted for most of the 148 released, including the bodies of eight dead hostages.
Israel’s ensuing military offensive has killed at least 62,686 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, the Associated Press reported Tuesday. More than 2,000 died while seeking aid.
Israel also called the IFC’s famine announcement an “outright lie” and said Hamas is siphoning off aid, the AP reported. UN officials have disputed these accusations and said Israel’s restrictions have prevented food from being delivered to those who need it, according to the AP.
Hasan Newash, 84, fasted for about a month before a hiatus of about three days after being warned by his doctor. Newash resumed his fast on Tuesday.”This is about our collective liberation,” Newash said. “Not just Palestine.”
Multiple speakers at the press conference said Newash’s fast inspired them and they fasted in solidarity with him as well as the people in Gaza who have limited access to food.
Various groups, including the Detroit chapters of Jewish Voice for Peace and Veterans for Peace, have organized local fasting campaigns as nationwide movements continue to encourage people to protest the food insecurity experienced in Gaza.
“Behind every statistic is a name, a face and a life extinguished because the world has failed to uphold the most basic principle of human dignity: the right to food and survival,” said Imam Steve Mustapha Elturk of the Islamic Organization of North America.
Barbara Weinberg Barefield, one of the founders and leaders of the Detroit chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace, said she fasted throughout June — typically for one day a week — to raise awareness for Gaza. About 70 Jewish Voice for Peace members fasted in Detroit, Barefield said.
Fasting is symbolic, and many religions have traditions of using fasting as a way to introspect about how to be a better person and make the world better, she added.
Barefield said community members are calling for a complete and permanent ceasefire; avenues to open for all food and medical aid; for the Israeli military to leave Gaza; and an arms embargo to stop military aid to Israel.
Being able to decide when she wants to eat or drink is a luxury, Barefield said, which many people do not have.
“It’s a tiny thing to me. I can walk to my refrigerator, I’ve got electricity, I’ve got running water,” Barefield said. “We need to tell people why we are fasting: to make this world a better place, have empathy for our brothers and sisters around the world, to demand that nobody should use food and medicine as weapons.”
