Rev Dr Eliza Getman 17-Aug-2025
248 journalists have been killed in Gaza since the start of that war. In early August, the Israeli army announced that its missiles had killed Al Jazeera journalist Anas al-Sharif in Gaza City. Sharif was claimed to be a Hamas militant. Five other journalists sleeping in a tent near Sharif were killed in the same attack. [Source: “The Guardian” 08-September 2025]
August 6 and 9 of this year marked 80 years since two atomic bombs were dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing between 150,000 and 246,000 people. Statistics in August 2025 indicated that at least 85,000 tons of bombs, which is the equivalent of over 6 Hiroshima atomic bombs, had been dropped on Gaza since the beginning of the war.
Eliza included a poem by Clare Byden entitled “VJ Day 2025” that enjoined us to listen to the “bells of Urakami”, the Catholic Cathedral in Nagasaki in which more than a thousand Christians were incinerated on 09-September 1945.
She concluded with the reminder that we are “to plant seeds of love and hope and the true peace which passes all understanding”; that we are “all called out of darkness to bring light”.
The full text of her sermon and of Clare Byden's poem can be found here.