Hey, you gonna eat those fries?
Todd Epp reports that Indians have been fasting to protest American support for Israel’s war on Gaza:
A Lakota activist from Whitehorse called Senator John Thune’s office July 28, to protest the senator’s support for Israel while children starve in Gaza.
The call was part of a broader fast involving more than 75 Indigenous people across South Dakota.
Chas Jewett told Thune’s staff she was “horrified” that the senator received $461,000 from pro-Israel groups while 36,000 South Dakotans lost Medicaid coverage. Jewett said she and other Oceti Sakowin citizens fasted in solidarity with Palestinians, and that she fasted for five days to bring the number of fasters to 100.
“There are worldwide fasts happening,” Jewett told Northern Plains News. “Veterans for Peace folks have been fasting for some months. I know two people who fasted for 30 days with them” [Todd Epp, “Lakota Activist Leads Gaza Fast, Confronts Thune on Israel Policy,” Northern Plains News, 2025.08.05].
That Veterans for Peace fast resulted in some rough health outcomes…
Over 800 participants conducted various types of fasts in solidarity, but the core group of Veterans for Peace activists restricted themselves to 250 calories per day—at one point the average daily caloric intake in parts of the Gaza Strip, which doctors consider to be a starvation diet.
…The Veterans for Peace activists are careful to distinguish their fast from an indefinite hunger strike. But there are still risks. Ten days in, one 72-year-old activist was told to stop fasting or risk organ failure. Three weeks in, 74-year-old Ferner was admitted to the hospital; he was told that his potassium levels were not compatible with life. “Obviously, people in Gaza don’t have that option,” Ferner said. “They just die” [Emmet Fraizer, “These Veterans Starved Themselves to Protest the War in Gaza,” The Nation, 2025.07.07].
…but no stand-down by Israel and no surrender by the Hamas terrorists who started this war.
Hunger strikes may get headlines, but they aren’t really a practical solution. If you’re fighting for justice and policy change, you’re no good to me tired, and you’re no good to me hungry. If we’re going to march on Washington or Jerusalem, I plan to get some rest and eat a big breakfast.
I just can’t endorse holding oneself hostage. I suppose it’s nominally more moral than taking other people hostage—you’re only objectifying yourself rather than violating someone else’s dignity—but no one else bears responsibility for the harm you choose to do to yourself. Self-harm only weakens you and leaves you less able to engage in other equally visible and effective forms of social action, like marching, writing letters, raising righteous hell at Republican town halls, and organizing campaigns to remove Thune and all the other Trumpists from office.
If you’re not going to eat those fries, hand them to me. I need my strength to write another blog post.
The act of risking one’s own body can dramatize a crisis in a way that marches or petitions sometimes can’t. For Indigenous people in the U.S., especially those aware of their own peoples’ histories with government-inflicted starvation, there’s also a deep historical resonance that makes this form of protest culturally and politically potent.
Fasting worked for Gandhi. Alas, it’s never cut quite the same way in Western cultures.
Agree, but if this is what others do, it’s okay with me. It does bring some attention to an important issue.
Fasting worked for Gandhi perhaps because he aimed it at a government that still had a sense of shame. Republicans who back Trump cannot be shamed into changing course.