The time is long past for a cessation of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, which has turned from a war against Hamas into a war against civilians. Israel had every right to launch attacks against Hamas after its commandos swarmed across the border and murdered over 1,200 Israelis and took over 250 hostages on Oct. 7, 2023. But the scale of death, destruction and suffering against the innocent in Gaza has reached a point where even former Israeli army generals and intelligence chiefs are calling for an end to the conflict. Meanwhile, two Israeli human rights organizations, B’T selem and Physicians for Human Rights, labeled as genocide their nation’s atrocities against the people of Gaza.
The Israel government, which called such allegations baseless, now finds itself increasingly isolated and under pressure from longtime allies, including President Donald Trump, as its efforts to feed the displaced Palestinian population of Gaza look more like a killing field than humanitarian relief. Nearly 22 months after Hamas precipitated the war, famine and starvation in Gaza are widespread and over 1,000 people have been shot and killed by Israeli troops at the woefully inadequate feeding stations set up after the government handed over the task from the United Nations and its humanitarian partners to a poorly run insider charity.
There is no excuse for turning aid sites into shooting galleries, forcing desperate civilians to rush through military zones to obtain food for their starving families. Reducing food stations from 400 to just a militarized handful is a recipe for deliberate disaster and the world knows it. While families of hostages were clamoring this past spring for a deal to end the war and bring their loved ones home, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ignored Hamas overtures for a pact and instead doubled down, blocking all aid from getting into Gaza from March through May. Shipments then resumed at a trickle under the new feeding regime, a cruelty resulting in a slow-motion genocide.
Netanyahu’s cynical endgame, conducted while staving off a corruption probe that could land him in jail if forced from office, may be the complete depopulation of Gaza, clearing the way for Israeli seizure of the territory. Or perhaps just a partial removal, squeezing the survivors into a small area in the south. In either case, the combination of starvation and the mass destruction of hospitals and health care capacity has left vulnerable civilians closer to death’s door than ever before. Another front in Bibi’s war is turning a blind eye to further expansion of illegal settlements in the West Bank, accompanied by settler attacks on Palestinians and the destruction of their homes.
African American leaders have long been in the forefront of efforts to find a peaceful resolution to the conflict between Arabs and Jews in the volatile Middle East. Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. strongly backed security guarantees and the territorial integrity of Israel while calling for Israel to give up conquered territory and accede to a Marshall Plan to lift Palestinians from the poverty and despair that fuel conflict. Malcolm X spoke out against the dispossession of Palestinians, viewed Zionism as colonialism and compared the plight of the Palestinians to American Blacks deprived of land and civil rights. Long before the United States entered into direct talks with Palestinian leaders like Yasser Arafat, civil rights icon Andrew Young, as President Carter’s ambassador to the United Nations, held secret meetings with PLO representatives and was forced to resign after the contacts became public knowledge. Young understood that diplomacy without dialogue is impossible and willingly put his career at risk to advance peace in the Middle East. Many members of the Congressional Black Caucus, including U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Boston, have condemned the Hamas attacks, called for a ceasefire, a return of hostages and the end to Israeli policies aimed at increasing rather than reducing starvation among Gazans. “The genocide must end,” she has said.
In the global arena, South African President Nelson Mandela took up the Palestinian cause and his successors led the effort to charge Israel with genocide in the International Criminal Court. In the United Nations, 149 countries have condemned the use of starvation as a weapon of war. France and Ireland have recognized Palestinian sovereignty, and the United Kingdom said it will do so if Israel continues on its current path.
None of this means an acceptance of Hamas’ jihadist approach to Israel and its charter pledge to wipe Israel off the map. Last week, the 22-member Arab League unanimously called for Hamas to surrender its weapons, release all hostages and cede power in the Gaza strip. The declaration, signed by 27 European countries and 17 other nations, affirmed the goal of establishing a sovereign Palestinian state.
In the face of pressure to scale back the conflict, many supporters of Israeli continue to label protests against the Israeli state as antisemitic. The campaign by the Trump administration against U.S. universities where campus protests proliferated has crossed the red line between protecting Jewish students from real harassment and suppressing freedom of speech. Hyperbolic slogans like “From the River to the Sea,” taken as calls to wipe out the state of Israel, would be criminal hate speech under some codes proposed by lawmakers. Defenders of Israel rightly point out that many advocates for Palestinians single out the Jewish state and ignore human rights violations by authoritarian governments in China and the Sudan. That is true, but glosses over the fact that $22 billion in U.S. military aid to Israel since the war began makes our government an accomplice to Israeli actions in Gaza. The crimes of other nations in no way absolves Israel of the moral responsibility to end its own.
The erosion of support for military aid to Israel was evident in a U.S. Senate vote last week, led by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, to stop sending military aid to the Netanyahu government, which depends on votes from virulent right-wingers clamoring for repossession of Gaza to survive. Senate Democrats voted 27-17 in support of Sanders’ measure.
With over 60,000 Gazans killed by Israeli armaments, hundreds of thousands starving and the strip’s infrastructure flattened by bombing, it’s time to end the war, feed the people and bring back the hostages. No military purpose is being served by extending the conflict. Having decimated Hamas’ leadership, driven Hezbollah from its stranglehold on Lebanon and Syria and degraded Iran’s nuclear capability, Israel should use its position of strength to cease hostilities and start the long and difficult process of reconstruction and reconciliation with Palestinian and outside Arab partners committed to peace. The United States and the international community have a key role to play in the process. Black Americans should ardently support such efforts and not fear speaking out when Israeli politicians, like the current prime minister, coddle extremism to save their own political skin.
Ronald Mitchell
Editor and Publisher, Bay State Banner
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