Raphael Warnock: “I rise today in the wake of the ongoing humanitarian catastrophe unfolding before our eyes in Gaza. As we say in my…”

“I rise today in the wake of the ongoing humanitarian catastrophe unfolding before our eyes in Gaza. As we say in my church's preaching tradition, ``Let me make it plain!'' It is wrong to starve children to death. It is wrong to starve people to death. Yet, in this moment, we are witnessing a famine unfold among children and innocent men and women in Gaza, the world's largest open-air prison, a pit of human misery. Reports estimate 18,500 Palestinian children have been killed in the conflict. Over 20,000 children were treated for acute malnutrition between April and mid-July of this year, and at least 3,000 children were severely malnourished. In Gaza today, starvation is being weaponized. Famine isn't a forecast but a fact, despite the denials of the Netanyahu government. So I rise today not only as a Senator but as a pastor, as a pastor of a church where Martin Luther King, Jr., served who told us that ``we are tied in a single garment of destiny caught up in an inescapable network of mutuality. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.'' I rise today as a father to say there is devastating starvation going on right now, and all of us--the State of Israel, the United States, and the world--cannot turn our eyes away. We must get to these people the food, the medicine, the dignity that their humanity requires. The images of mass starvation are sickening.…”