Stop the Palestinian genocide now

It’s time for the United States to regain some moral high ground, and a start would be to con­demn the cur­rent Israeli war on the Palestinians.

It is odd that our gov­ern­ment can occa­sion­al­ly protest against the Russian assault on Ukrainian civil­ians, bemoan­ing the use of mis­siles and drones against hos­pi­tals, shop­ping areas, and schools, and the asso­ci­at­ed killing of chil­dren, yet can­not raise a voice against anoth­er nation that is doing the same thing in anoth­er part of the world.

The cur­rent war, begun by Hamas on October 7^th, 2023, has result­ed in the deaths of over 60,000 Palestinians, over 18,000 of those chil­dren, with anoth­er esti­mat­ed 160,000 injured.

As long ago as December of 2023, South Africa had filed a case against Israel at the International Court of Justice, alleg­ing geno­cide against the peo­ple of Gaza.

In March of 2024, the UN spe­cial rap­por­teur on the Palestinian ter­ri­to­ries report­ed that there were “rea­son­able grounds” to believe that Israel was com­mit­ting genocide.

In December of that same year, Amnesty International con­clud­ed the same thing.

Even with­in the state of Israel, the orga­ni­za­tions B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel accused their own coun­try of genocide.

And on September 1 of this year, the 500-mem­ber International Association of Genocide Scholars pro­claimed that Israel was com­mit­ting geno­cide in its ongo­ing war against the peo­ple of Gaza.

Despite all this inter­na­tion­al atten­tion to the actions of Israel, the US has remained vir­tu­al­ly mum on the sub­ject.  Not only is there no offi­cial con­dem­na­tion of Israel’s ongo­ing assaults on Gaza, but President Trump has “mag­nan­i­mous­ly” offered help in relo­cat­ing two mil­lion Palestinians and pay­ing each of them $5,000 to relo­cate.  Such phe­nom­e­nal hubris is hard to fath­om, yet it seems to be a char­ac­ter­is­tic of this president.

In November of 2024, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest war­rant for Benjamin Netanyahu for alleged war crimes and crimes against human­i­ty. He has become a pari­ah in many coun­tries.  But not here.  He is fre­quent­ly invit­ed to our White House and fet­ed there while war matériel con­tin­ues to flow to his coun­try to aid his war against the peo­ple of Gaza.

Just recent­ly, he and his ultra-right-wing Knesset autho­rized the mobi­liza­tion of 60,000 Israeli mil­i­tary per­son­nel for a new assault into Gaza, which is now underway.

It is sim­ply not pos­si­ble to see the dai­ly images of the destruc­tion inside Gaza, the vast waste of the infra­struc­ture there.  People are with­out basic ser­vices.  Missiles and bombs have hit hos­pi­tals, and even for­eign­ers there to try to help the Palestinians have been killed and injured by the indis­crim­i­nate bomb­ing and shelling from the Israeli military.

Even more dis­tress­ing are the images of dead chil­dren being removed from the rub­ble by a griev­ing rel­a­tive, or one child try­ing to care for a younger sib­ling because both their par­ents have been killed.  And the images emerg­ing from Gaza dai­ly of chil­dren try­ing to secure a morsel of food should rend the heart of any think­ing human.  The chil­dren of Gaza are also being denied any form of edu­ca­tion because their schools have been destroyed or are includ­ed as tar­gets for drones, mis­siles, and bombs.

Perhaps too much time has elapsed since the Jewish peo­ple were sub­ject­ed to sim­i­lar attempts to wipe them out, and too few remain from that era to point out to the cur­rent Israeli gov­ern­ment that what it is doing is not dif­fer­ent from what they expe­ri­enced before.

The inhu­man­i­ty now under­way in Gaza must not be allowed to con­tin­ue.  The entire inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty must invoke the strongest pos­si­ble restraints against Israel. The UN and the US can­not divest them­selves from join­ing in that con­dem­na­tion.  This coun­try must join in the call for an inde­pen­dent Palestinian state, free from the fet­ters of a neigh­bor that is con­stant­ly dis­plac­ing Palestinians in pur­suit of more land for its own set­tle­ments. And the sup­port from this nation to Israel should be trans­ferred to that sep­a­rate state until such time that it can become self-suf­fi­cient and self-governing.

If the Israeli gov­ern­ment wants to exer­cise its own form of ultra-right gov­er­nance, let it do so amongst its own peo­ple as long as they wish to per­mit it, but that gov­er­nance must not be allowed to extend into the sur­round­ing nations with­out their consent.

And the genocide—call it what it is, despite the denials of Netanyahu—in Gaza must be stopped.