End suffering in Gaza

What is happening in Gaza is a humanitarian crisis. Where is the global outrage, especially from Americans? 

Neighborhoods have been reduced to rubble, and well more than 60,000 Palestinians, many of them children, have been killed. Two million have been displaced. According to the United Nations, more than a million people now face catastrophic levels of hunger. Children are dying from malnutrition. Israel has bombed hospitals, schools and even food distribution sites, leaving civilians with nowhere to turn and no safe havens. How horrific that Israel slaughters Palestinians as they seek aid. 

Gaza’s health, water and sanitation systems have been cruelly targeted, with 84% of health facilities damaged or destroyed, and the water and sanitation system operating at less than 5% of pre-war output. 

To add insult to injury, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claims no one in Gaza is starving. Data and witnesses challenge this lie. 

What makes this even more devastating is knowing that our tax dollars are helping to fund it. The United States continues to provide military aid and political cover to Israel, even as Netanyahu’s government wages a relentless campaign aimed at eliminating Palestinians. 

Many of our elected representatives have failed to take a stronger stand against this genocide because their voices are muted by the powerful influence of pro-Israel lobbying groups like AIPAC that fund their election campaigns. The end result? Millions of dollars of pro-Israel influence in U.S. politics and complicity in the genocide that is unfolding. 

History will not only remember those who carried it out, but also those who enabled it and those who stayed silent, when outrage and action were needed. 

Now is the time for all of us to speak out, demand action and hold our politicians accountable because our silence makes us complicit as well. Call your elected officials and demand they stop funding this war, push for an immediate ceasefire and insist on full humanitarian access.

– Claire Ninde, Grand Junction