I’m Sick of America’s Complicity in the Suffering of People in Gaza

It’s time to turn off the spigot. Not one more tank. Not one more airplane. Not one more bomb. Not one more bullet. Nothing to the government of Benjamin Netanyahu until he stops committing war crimes in Gaza. And after military aid is turned off, not one dime of taxpayer money of any kind to the government of Benjamin Netanyahu until he knocks off the genocide-in-all-but-name in Gaza. From The Washington Post:

After four months of a near-total Israeli siege, Gaza’s few remaining hospitals now have wards for the growing number of malnourished children whose tiny bodies are just the width of their bones. Doctors are famished to the point that they have dizzy spells as they make their rounds, medics say, and the journalists documenting their caseloads are often too weak to even walk to the clinics.

For months, aid agencies had warned of the coming crisis, as Israel halted the flow of aid to the Gaza Strip before attempting to replace U.N. relief efforts with distribution points inside military zones. It was a move Israeli officials said was aimed at pressuring Hamas, whose fighters attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, and continue to hold about fifty hostages who were abducted that day, about twenty of whom are still believed to be alive.

I am goddamn sick and tired of being complicit in these atrocities, which I am, because my government is helping to fund them. I am goddamn sick and tired of having these things done in my name for the sake of an alliance that has turned bloody and sour. I am goddamn sick and tired of leaders in Washington and Jerusalem who are ignoring not only the revulsion demonstrated by international aid organizations but also the revulsion from their own constituents.

Nearly one in three people are going multiple days without eating, according to the United Nations, and hospitals are reporting rising deaths from malnutrition and starvation. In a video filmed Tuesday inside Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza, families fretted over babies with distended bellies and tiny fists that they clenched as they cried. In one of the newly established malnutrition rooms, the mothers and children were so quiet that the loudest sound came from a pair of fans that beat weakly in the cloying heat.

And how do you possibly justify this?

Gaza’s ability to make its own food has been almost entirely destroyed as Israeli military operations have wiped out farmlands and factories. As the summer heat bears down, hungry and thirsty civilians have run out of reserves to fall back on.

Palestinians in the enclave are reliant instead on humanitarian aid that most people under Israel’s new system cannot easily access. According to local health authorities, more than 1,000 people have been shot dead as they raced through territory controlled by the Israeli military toward distribution points run by U.S. security contractors, where supplies are first come, first served. I can’t justify it. Not anymore. I’m too goddamn sick and tired of it.