I joined the fast a few days late. I found out about it from an article in Religion News Service, shared on Bluesky. I'm not sure how I would have found out about it otherwise. I know, I know, we're all in our media bubbles, we all have access to different facts and statistics and opinions. But I'm thankful that I found out about the Veterans for Peace and the protest they've been holding outside the US Mission to the UN in New York City. This is the fast my soul has required.

I initially wanted to jump in on the more radical version of the fast in solidarity with the fasters in NYC and with the people of Gaza, who are surviving on an average of less than 250 calories per day. My fiancé asked that I check with my doctor first, though, and while no doctor is going to recommend a starvation fast, mine strongly recommended I do a modified fast. (The diabetes, the history of cancer… you get it.) I started my fast that day, on May 27, with no food from sun-up to sundown.

It's not enough, but I'm not sure what else to do.

I said that this is the fast my soul requires, and it is, but I don't want to over-spiritualize this, because the situation is dire. The little aid that is being let back in is not enough. 500-600 trucks *per day* are needed, but less than 400 *per week* are entering under the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the aid organization the US and Israel have backed. (GHF’s executive director resigned in late May over the way aid distribution was planned.) The aid distribution is tightly controlled, leading to violence. One in five people face starvation, all while Israel uses weapons sold to them by the US to continue to bombard the Strip. Israel’s goal is to force Gazans into a concentrated area in southern Gaza and they are using starvation to do it.

I have been enraged. I think we all should be enraged.

James Baldwin once said,

The children are always ours, every single one of them, all over the globe; and I am beginning to suspect that whoever is incapable of recognizing this may be incapable of morality.
-James Baldwin, “Notes on the House of Bondage,”
The Nation, November 1, 1980

Our children are starving.

My rage at this is not changing the calculus of my elected officials, and even if it did, it wouldn’t change the calculus of enough elected officials around the country to veto military aid to Israel. My rage is not changing the policies and tactics of anyone in the administration. My rage will not push through a ceasefire, my rage will not change the leadership in Israel (nor should it—nations should determine their own leaders), my rage will not root out those who carried out the October 7 attacks, my rage will not return hostages, my rage will not identify a permanent end to Israel-Palestine conflict. Honestly, my rage will probably not even change minds here in the US. I’m not naïve about that.

But I have given my rage. I have spoken out. And maybe now I understand why we used to call for fasting in the face of disaster. Because I don’t have anything else left to give except my body.

Will you listen now? Will you hear us now? Will you watch as people in front of you—not across the ocean, not in a place you have not been and will never go, not people who speak a different language than you, have a different history than you, live a different life than you, but people you know, people you recognize, people who look like you—feel the energy leave their bodies, knowing that they will not have enough to regain it? Will you notice as starvation begins to take hold and the body begins to eat itself? Will you hear? Will you see? Will you listen?

Don’t you see?

Don’t you care?

Won’t you do something?