What Gaza Has Done to My Faith in America

The day I became an American citizen remains one of the proudest days of my life.

It was February 1977. Standing among dozens of immigrants from around the world, I raised my right hand and pledged allegiance to the United States of America. I was not born into that moment. I had traveled a long road to reach it.

I was born in Jerusalem. In 1948, when I was 2 years old, my father, a civilian, was killed during the war that accompanied Israel's establishment, during which most Palestinians were forcibly displaced from their homes and land. My mother suddenly became a widow with seven children ranging in age from 6 months to 11 years. Much of our childhood was spent in orphanages, and like hundreds of thousands of other Palestinians, we became refugees.

Years later, while studying theology in Switzerland, another war changed my life. After the 1967 Arab Israeli War, East Jerusalem came under Israeli military occupation, and my request to return home was denied. At the same time, the Swiss authorities informed me that I could no longer remain in their country. Overnight, I became a man with nowhere to go; a person without citizenship and without a country. Miraculously, I was awarded a scholarship to study in the U.S. which opened the road to citizenship.

I knew America was not perfect. I knew its history included the genocide of Indigenous peoples, centuries of slavery of Africans, Jim Crow, and other grave injustices. But there was something admirable about a nation willing to confront its own shortcomings and strive, however imperfectly, toward a more just future.

For decades, that belief sustained me.

I watched America expand civil rights. I watched citizens challenge injustice through protest, journalism and democratic participation. I admired a country whose founding ideals were often honored imperfectly but were nevertheless taken seriously enough to inspire reform. Like many immigrants, I loved America not because I believed it was flawless, but because it was capable of self-correction.

That faith has been profoundly shaken over the past two and half years.

Since the beginning of Israel's military campaign in Gaza in October 2023, I have watched with growing anguish as tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed, entire neighborhoods have been reduced to rubble, hospitals and schools have been systematically destroyed, and a humanitarian catastrophe deliberately engineered by Israel has unfolded before the eyes of the world. As a Palestinian, the suffering is deeply personal. As an American citizen, the role of the United States in that suffering has been impossible for me to ignore.

The feeling is difficult to describe. The closest comparison I can make is that of a child discovering that a parent he deeply admired has committed a terrible crime. Love does not instantly disappear. Neither does the gratitude. But they become intertwined with disappointment, sorrow, and disbelief.

For much of my life, I looked to the United States as a country that aspired to defend human rights and uphold international law. Yet throughout Israel’s assault on Gaza, the Biden and Trump administrations have continued to provide Israel with tens of billions dollar’s worth of weapons, diplomatic shielding and political support even as evidence of grave violations of international law and crimes against humanity mounted.

As the assault continued, I found myself reading reports from human rights organizations, statements from legal scholars and the text of the Genocide Convention itself. I did not do so as an academic exercise. I did so because I was struggling to understand what I was witnessing.

The conclusion I reached was one I never expected to reach about the country to which I had pledged allegiance nearly half a century earlier. I came to understand that the United States government was not merely failing to stop a genocide. It was helping enable it.

It’s important for me to note that a majority of Americans oppose US support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Yet it has become increasingly clear that American leaders have seemed unwilling to place meaningful limits on their support even as the scale of civilian suffering became undeniable.

For me, the question is no longer only about Gaza. It is also about America.

What does citizenship require when the country you love acts in ways that violate your deepest moral convictions? What does patriotism mean when silence begins to feel like complicity?

These are questions I never imagined asking when I raised my right hand in 1977. Yet they are the questions that now weigh most heavily on my conscience.

As I approach the fiftieth anniversary of my citizenship, I wonder whether the America that inspired my allegiance will once again prevail.

I long for the day when I can once again raise my right hand during the Pledge of Allegiance with the pride I felt in 1977—not because America is perfect, but because it has found the courage to live more fully by the ideals that inspired a refugee from Jerusalem to make it his home.

Below is my certificate of citizenship

Alex Awad is a Palestinian American who was born in Jerusalem. He is a retired faculty member of Bethlehem Bible College, former pastor of East Jerusalem International Church, and co-chair of the Palestinian Christian Alliance for Peace. Awad is the author of Palestinian Memories: The Story of a Palestinian Mother and Her People