America’s ‘forever wars,’ from Gaza to Minneapolis

MILWAUKEE — Presbyterian Peace Fellowship held its Peace Gathering Friday at Immanuel Presbyterian Church, a beautiful 150-year-old church on the National Register of Historic Places.

The gathering included awards, music, updates and a talk confronting the nation’s “forever wars” from Gaza to Minneapolis.

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Singer/songwriter Matthew Black got things going by leading those gathered in a spirited “No One is Getting Left Behind This Time,” for which people stomp-clapped.

PPF then provided updates on General Assembly business that’s important to many of its members. It then presented Presbyterians for Earth Care with its 2025 Peaceseeker award and Westminster Presbyterian Church in Minneapolis with its 2026 Peaceseeker Award.

“If I love my country, I show love to my neighbor,” said Lucy Youngblood, who represents the South Atlantic Region for PEC. “When we love our close neighbor, that leads us to love our international neighbor.”

Westminster Presbyterian Church, a leader in ministering to the community impacted by Operation Metro Surge, received a standing ovation from those in attendance.

“It’s rare anyone from Minnesota gets a standing ovation,” said Vince Thomas, clerk of session at the church, introducing a large contingent from WPC. “On behalf of the session, I accept the 2026 Peaceseeker Award” with “humility alongside the many faithful Twin Cities congregations who responded to Operation Metro Surge.”

“We recognized that not only were people in our congregation looking to us for leadership, but other people of faith were looking to us, too,” Thomas said. “Those congregations and individuals recognized that something needed to be done” to protect and comfort their neighbors who were afflicted, he said.

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“We accept this award with them,” Thomas said. “We pledge to continue leading a ministry Presbyterian Peace Fellowship will be proud of. We wish PPF success, starting with the work it is doing at the 227th General Assembly.”

“How many believe Presbyterians should speak out compassionately and passionately about peace?” asked the Rev. Ben Daniel of PPF’s Peace Church Working Group and the author of “Grace Over Guns.” “We are the ones who will make peacemaking happen in the PC(USA).”

Friday’s keynoter was Dr. Osamah Khalil, a history professor and chair of the International Relations Undergraduate Program at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. Khalil published “A World of Enemies: America’s Wars at Home and Abroad from Kennedy to Biden.” He called his talk to PPF “From Gaza to Minneapolis: Confronting America’s Forever Wars.”

“The work you’re doing is impressive,” Khalil told the crowd of more than 80 people. “Thank you for considering overtures relating to Palestine and genocide in Gaza.”

The connection between Gaza and Minneapolis “is not superficial,” he said. “They are intertwined. These policies have been institutionalized by close ties between the U.S. and Israel.”

The “costs and tradeoffs” of war are rarely discussed, Khalil said. “What are we told that is not possible because we must focus on national defense and crime? Politicians are increasingly candid about these tradeoffs.”

“There is not a single profession in Gaza that has not been touched” by violence, he said. “The eradication of life in Gaza was deliberate, planned and approved at the highest levels of Israeli and American governments, no doubt about it.”

Of the more than 80,000 people killed in Gaza since the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks, 30% are children. Gaza has more children with amputations than anywhere on Earth, Khalil said. Water is a daily uncertainty for 1.1 million children there. 

“This is not a post-apocalyptic dystopian novel or movie,” Khalil said. “This is Gaza today, and it’s deliberate.”

Lest those attending the Peace Gathering might think it’s all happening far away, Khalil pointed out that since Donald Trump became president, more than 6,300 children have been detained in the United States, including 500 babies.

Children in detention suffer frequent illness and from depression, he said. Fully 97% have no criminal record. “By holding them, the administration is violating federal law — not that it cares,” he said.

“But there is hope,” Khalil said. “I sense this is a growing movement of Americans exhausted by wars abroad” and by unrest at home.

“Genocide in Gaza has galvanized a generation. It will not be enough to be passively opposed,” he said. “Gaza is the moral issue of our time — indeed, any time. Stopping it is the call of people of faith.”

“Thank you and peace.”