A few days after Hamas’ Oct. 7 atrocious attacks on Israel, I wrote a letter to the Aspen Daily News arguing that the world was about to witness Israel punish the 2.3 million people of Gaza. Collective punishment is a war crime under the Geneva Conventions, as is denying food, water and medicine. I argued that Americans had a special duty to prevent such an outcome as Israel’s oldest and staunchest supporter. I take no pleasure in being right.
Israel’s war, which it simultaneously claims is self-defense and, in Netanyahu’s words, “mighty vengeance,” has killed 19,754 Gazans, including 7,729 children and 5,153 women. That is nearly one in every 100 Gazans. Eighty-five percent of Gazans are displaced. Almost half of Gazans were malnourished before Oct. 7. Now, there is virtually no food, water or medical care. Aid groups say the level of humanitarian aid entering can barely meet the minimal needs of 10% in Gaza. Desperate people are now storming aid trucks at the Rafah crossing, devouring the food before it can be distributed to the neediest. The head of the U.N. Refugee and Works Agency warns of “social collapse.”
What was the reaction of the leader of the free world? On Dec. 8, the U.N. Security Council voted on a fifth ceasefire resolution. The vote was 13 to 1, with the U.S. voting alone against a ceasefire and using its veto power to block the resolution. The U.K. abstained.
Again on Dec. 12, the U.S. voted no within the U.N. General Assembly; 153 countries were in favor of a ceasefire and only 10 were opposed, with 23 abstentions.
U.S. officials claim the resolutions don’t sufficiently condemn Hamas or affirm Israel’s right to self-defense. They argue a ceasefire would only benefit Hamas, giving it time to regroup and plan new attacks. Arguing that only Hamas would benefit from a ceasefire is astonishing, when the world watches Israeli bombs kill and maim children, women, families, health care workers, journalists and U.N. staff, and while hospitals cease functioning and 2.3 million people face starvation and disease.
Israeli Defense Forces dropped 6,000 bombs in the first week alone, according to its own post on X (formerly Twitter). In comparison, the U.S. dropped 7,400 bombs on Afghanistan in the year of its most intense bombing. Gaza is .05% the size of Afghanistan. The New York Times reported in a story on Nov. 25, titled “Gaza Civilians, Under Israeli Barrage, Are Being Killed at Historic Pace” that one would have to go back to the heaviest bombing of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, or even further to Vietnam or WWII, to find comparable levels of bombing and rates of death.
Biden officials would like us to believe they are noble guardians of Israel’s right to self-defense in a world stacked against it.
Anti-semitism is a terrible and old scourge and there is no doubt anti-semitic attacks are on the rise. But, we must be discerning and based in fact. Criticizing any country’s foreign policy does not mean condemning its people, culture or heritage. Accusations of anti-semitism are being used to silence critics of a violent and illegal 75-year project to supplant Palestinians from their homeland. I cannot possibly settle the debate over right and wrong when it comes to this conflict in 900 words. I will just point out the uncanny continuity between the words of the founders of Zionism and the facts on the ground today.
Just to take one example, Theodore Herzl began to outline what it would look like to create a Zionist state smack dab in the middle of 1 million Palestinian Arabs.
“We must expropriate gently the private property… We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border… both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly.”
We are being asked to believe that Israel reserves the right to kill 20 times, 30 times, 40 times the number of innocent people to prevent the deaths of one innocent Israeli. Even if the bombs stopped now, it is going to take a massive effort to provide for the 2.3 million people now facing starvation and disease. No country has the right to exclusive security and protection superior to all other people. We are being asked to accept that Israeli lives are worth more than Palestinian lives.
And America is sanctioning this notion, being carried out before our eyes. The U.N. has documented 10,000 civilian casualties in Ukraine in 22 months. It is probably higher than that, but to be surpassing Ukraine’s two-year civilian death toll in just two months begs the question, “Is Israel’s war in Gaza worse than Putin’s?”
A group of locals held two protests, screened a film and marched for a ceasefire — for peace. While we’re just a group of citizens in a corner of Colorado, one can’t underestimate the value of people publicly expressing their opposition. Call the White House, Senators Bennet and Hickenlooper and Representative Boebert today, and every day, and demand a ceasefire, adequate humanitarian aid to Gaza and an end to U.S. support of Israel’s siege.
