A MESSAGE FROM THE PUBLISHER
How long, LORD, must I call for help, but you do not listen? Or cry out to you, “Violence!” but you do not save? Habakkuk 1:2 NIV
By Bobby R. Henry, Sr., Publisher, The Westside Gazette
I had the opportunity to visit Israel shortly after the October 7 attacks to walk through the shattered streets, to see the homes turned to rubble, to stand in places where laughter had been replaced by silence. I spoke with mothers who had lost their sons, fathers who still waited for words about their daughters, and children whose eyes carried stories no child should have to tell. It was not just newsprint; it was human agony made visible, an entire people crying out beneath the weight of hate and history.
That experience has stayed with me, haunting and humbling. It made me reflect not only on the pain of Israel and Gaza, but also on the pain that still pulses in the soul of America the pain of slavery, the legacy of Jim Crow, and the unhealed scars of racism and political division.
When I see the destruction there, I think of what has already happened here: the atrocities we endured on our own soil. Enslaved Africans, stripped of their humanity, sold, beaten, and branded their cries rising to the heavens, just like those I heard overseas. Their suffering laid the foundation for a nation that still struggles to tell the truth about itself. That was our Gaza. That was our holocaust of the body and the spirit.
Now, as I watch Trump treat the people of this country with the same callousness that history has shown toward the oppressed mocking justice, bending truth, and weaponizing fear I cannot help but ask: what would America look like if the tables were turned?
What if those who were enslaved became the masters? What if the oppressed wielded the whip of judgment and demanded justice with the same relentless hand that once denied it to them? What if America, the land that preached liberty while chaining men and women to its fields, were forced to face its reflection the way Israel and Gaza must through the tears of its own contradictions?
Trump’s brand of politics thrives on division on anger that blinds and fear that sells. It is the same sickness that once justified slavery, that codified segregation, and that cloaked cruelty in the language of patriotism. It’s that same old serpent of deceit, dressed now in red, white, and blue, hissing that power matters more than people.
But the prophet Habakkuk spoke to such times, crying out, “How long, O Lord, shall I cry, and Thou wilt not hear?” And yet the Lord answered that the vision is for an appointed time, and though it tarry, wait for it, for it shall surely come. Justice delayed is never justice denied in God’s time.
We are living in that waiting moment now between what is and what must be. Between a nation’s arrogance and its possible redemption.
If we continue to feed on lies, to glorify cruelty, and to elevate men above morals, then the same destruction I saw overseas could one day visit our own doorstep not through bombs, but through the slow decay of the soul.
But there is still time to turn.
There is still time to remember the humanity we buried under profit and pride.
And there is still time to build the kind of nation our ancestors prayed for a nation rooted in righteousness, not rhetoric, in compassion, not conquest.
As for me, I will not be silent.
I will keep writing, keep warning, and keep believing that the Rock of Ages cleft for me, and for all who suffer still stands.
Because when nations crumble and men lose their minds, that Rock remains unshaken.
And if we hold onto that Rock through the storm, through suffering, through the history we’re still trying to heal from— maybe, just maybe, America will remember how to be h
