After six months of the world’s first high-tech genocide, with its horrific mixture of mass slaughter of civilians, flagrant war crimes, and the banality of evil, Israel has murdered over 33,000 Palestinians.
The vast majority of them were civilians, and over 10,000 of them were children.
They’ve killed over 100 journalists, 200 aid workers, and close to 700 health workers. Most of them were at work assisting individuals or society when they died. This is on top of the total destruction of Gaza’s fragile infrastructure and Israel’s targeted attacks in Syria, Lebanon and more - a shocking amount of which were executed via drone warfare.
Still, the US is aiding the Israeli war machine daily, and refusing to acknowledge any massacres as war crimes. Congresswoman and former Tacoma Mayor Marilyn Strickland joined a bipartisan meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu just last week, and the Biden administration approved sending 2,000 bombs to Israel the same day as the World Central Kitchen massacre. One of the seven WCK aid workers murdered was a US citizen, and founder Chef Jose Andres is a Biden acquaintance.
While personal proximity may have driven an emotional Biden to issue a “stiff rebuke” after the attack, it's hollow and almost unconscionable after he rejected the human decency of thousands of others in the face of overwhelming evidence. And, while we appreciate that he finally called for ceasefire yesterday - on the six month anniversary of the war- we note it was only after approving even more military aid.
We must do better. We must reject the Israeli war machine and genocide. We must join the intergenerational, interfaith leadership of our Palestinian youth and Jewish Voices For Peace in calling elected officials at all levels of government to support #ceasefirenow. We must immediately cut military support for Israel, and to divest from war profiteering Israeli corporations and institutions. This is the decisive moral call of this moment, and generations of youth will look back on the adults of today and ask “which side were you on?”
So we ask this of all elected officials and candidates: Which side are you on? Will you join the voices calling for immediate action, or will your silence signal your complicity?
Join us in demanding #CEASEFIRENOW.
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