If you’re reading this, I hope you’ll join me in solidarity with the citizens of Israel, Palestine, the US, and around the world who want peace. Many organizations have been calling for peace, including within Israel: B’tselem, Jewish Voice for Peace, Shovrim Shtika, Shalom Achshav, Rabbis for Human Rights. Pope Francis has called for a ceasefire as well. Hundreds who worked on Biden’s campaign, over 1,000 at USAID, 10% of their workforce, signed a letter urging for a ceasefire, as have diplomats within the State Department.
You can write a letter of your own here.
At the very bottom you can find a more detailed guide for emails, phone calls and other resources. If you want to read on, I’ve put together some of the things I’ve learned about the conflict, and some reasons to support peace.
Peace is a far more powerful answer to terrorism than any bomb.
War Serves Terror
The war in Gaza is responsible for a catastrophic level of human suffering in Palestine; the grievances produced will drive extremism and terrorism for years to come. Echoing this, Americans are already tearing each other apart with rising violence against Jewish and Muslim children in the US. The conflict is already spreading throughout the region.
The human cost in Gaza is not acceptable:
♦ No political outcome can justify the killing of thousands of children. 70% of the casualties in Gaza have been women and children, and almost entirely civilians. This is insecurity, not security.
This war is not in the best interest of Jewish nor Muslim people living outside of Israel:
♦ Muslim Americans have faced hate crimes, including a 6-year-old Palestinian American child killed after he was stabbed 28 times along with his mother in Chicago by their landlord due to his views on the war in Gaza.
♦ Antisemitism was already at record levels in the US even before October, as hate crimes have increased with right-wing extremism. Since the war in Gaza, incidents are up 400%, including assault, vandalism, and a woman trying to drive her car into what she thought was a Jewish school.
♦ 67% of Arab Americans are afraid of expressing public support for Palestinian people. The high profile cases of Muslims in the US and Canada losing their jobs as a result of tweets criticizing Israel’s actions are likely a contributing factor, including journalists.
♦ Republicans introduced measures to expel Palestinian refugees from the US.
The war in Gaza is not in the best interest of the Israeli nor the American peoples:
♦ War has already spilled into Lebanon and Syria, with the US launching its own air strikes. In the words of Jordan’s Prime Minister: “This will bring the region into the hell of war… we have to end this madness.” This could be the fuse on a powder keg.
♦ Tens of thousands in Egypt, Bahrain and Morocco are protesting their government’s relations with Israel, with protesters chanting “Death to Israel!” An anti-semetic mob stormed an airport in Russia. Israel has withdrawn diplomatic staff from Egypt and Jordan.
♦ Researchers have found that Israeli attacks in Gaza strengthen public opinion and electoral victories in favor of Hamas, undermining peaceful political alternatives. This is consistent around the world: grievances drive people to join terrorist organizations, including Al Qaeda. I believe outrage over the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza will also result in a dramatic increase in transnational resources for Hamas and other terrorist groups around the world whose targets are the US and Israel. The scale of what’s happening in Gaza is an atrocity of historic proportions, and the ramifications will continue for decades.
♦ Violence serves the agenda of extremist politicians in both Israel and Gaza at the expense of pro-peace movements. Israel was on the path to peace in the 90s, until Prime Minister Rabin was assassinated and Netanyahu began his long reign with the extreme-right Likud Party, his own party a descendent of the paramilitary-terrorist organization Irgun Zvai Leumi. Trump-ally Netanyahu entered into a symbiotic relationship with Hamas for over 16 years in order to undermine the Palestinian Authority, weaken popular support for Israeli peace movements, and undo the Oslo Peace Accords. His goals are not the security of Israel, but right-wing political interests.
Civilians Pay the Price of War
From October 7th to November 1st, more than 30 Israeli children and 3,648 Palestinian children were killed. In just 3 weeks, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) killed more children than the sum of all children killed in conflict zones since 2019. As of Nov 13th, that number is over 4,500, one child killed every 10 minutes with more missing and presumed buried under rubble. By the time you are reading this, these numbers will be far higher.
By the end of October, over 1,538 Israelis had been killed, at least 378 of them combatants (soldiers and police). Meanwhile, at least 8,800 Palestinians were killed in the same time period, almost entirely civilians. This has risen above 11,100 as of today, and is only going up.
Some estimate 250,000 Israelis have fled. More than half of Gaza’s 2.3 million Palestineans have either been killed or displaced in the past weeks. As Palestinans starved of food, water and electricity flee to shelters and schools-turned-refugee camps, the IDF bombs those as well.
Israeli targets in Gaza have been residential areas, schools, hospitals, mosques, churches, and refugee camps. Consequently, 40% of the Palestinian casualties have been children, 70% women and children. Palestinian children’s names are written on their forearms in marker so their bodies can be identified if they are dismembered. 64 UNRWA staff (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees) died in Israel’s air strikes, as well as over 36 journalists prompting Reporters Without Borders to call on International Criminal Court prosecutors to investigate both Israel and Hamas for war crimes. 31 of the 36 journalists were Palestinian. On the ground, journalists have consequently been unable to verify Israel’s claims of killing Hamas targets, which Hamas denies.
War Crimes
Tensions in the region have been boiling for over a century, rooted in the displacement of the Palestinian people and the expansion of Israeli territory.
On Oct 7th, claiming retaliation for recent police brutality in the Al-Aqsa mosque, Hamas launched an attack on the Re’im electronic music festival, massacring at least 260 partygoers, wounding over 1,000. They launched armed assaults on several communities, murdering over 400 more in seven massacres. At the leftward-leaning Be’eri kibbutz, Hamas went house to house executing men, women, and children, killing 10% of the population including peace activists and Palestinian allies. Over 240 hostages were taken in the assaults, including Vivian Silver who sits on the board of human rights organization B’Tselem. Hamas simultaneously launched 2,000-5,000 rockets at Israel, some which may have been aimed at medical facilities. Given Israel’s advanced Iron Dome missile defense system and Hamas’s rudimentary technology, the attacks were likely indiscriminate. Human Rights Watch, the UN Secretary-General and countries around the world were quick to condemn Hamas.
October 9th, the Israeli Defense Minister announced, “There will be no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel…. We are fighting human animals and we will react accordingly.” Israel launched air strikes into hospitals, markets, refugee camps, mosques, schools, and residential areas. 6,000 air strikes killed over 3,000 civilians in the first week, thousands more in the weeks to follow. Israel dropped as many bombs on Gaza in 6 days as the U.S. dropped in Afghanistan in one year.
Repeated air strikes against the Jabalia Refugee Camp prompted the UN Human Rights Office to suggest that Israel’s attacks may constitute war crimes. On Oct 17th, the IDF launched air strikes against a UNRWA school that had been turned into a shelter for 4,000 people. Churches sheltering Christians and Muslims were also targeted, and November 3rd the IDF bombed ambulances in a medical convoy, in violation of international law protecting medical neutrality. There have been over 100 attacks on healthcare workers.
By October 14th, water had run out, with death from dehydration imminent, people resorted to drinking sea water and sewage shortly thereafter. A group of UN Special Rapporteurs, Oxfam, Doctors Without Borders, and others have argued that Israel’s attacks and war-by-starvation constitute collective punishment against the Palestinian people, violating the Geneva Convention. The UN Secretary-General condemned Israel for “clear violations” of international law. Israel’s humanitarian blockade causes civilians to starve while Hamas’s position is strengthened with its stockpiles of food and fuel.
On Oct 13th the IDF issued an evacuation order for all noncombatants in Gaza. The WHO charged that evacuating 22 hospitals was a death sentence for patients, and the order was condemned by UNICEF, the IRC and Doctors without Borders. Around the same time, an Israeli think tank published a policy brief stating, “There is currently a unique and rare opportunity to evacuate the entire Gaza Strip… At the moment, these conditions exist, and it is unclear when such an opportunity will arise again, if at all.” Forced displacement is also a war crime.
An estimated 5,000 Palestinians in Israel on work permits at the time of the October 7th attacks were rounded up, detained for 25 days, and tortured. Video footage of torture, including one of a man stripped naked, bound and beaten by IDF troops while screaming, circulated on a right-wing Telegram channel, with thousands of Israeli viewers celebrating. Possessions confiscated, without food and water for days, they were numbered and tagged with blue ankle bracelets, then sent to walk back to Gaza. Those interviewed by reporters recounted stories of boiling water being thrown on the elderly, of being bound and urinated on, all while suffering from extreme thirst.
Strategies for Promoting Peace: Why Focus On Israel?
For those of us in the US, we have a more direct influence on Israel than we can have on Hamas. Meanwhile, holding Israel to agreed-upon human rights standards harms recruitment and support for Hamas. Israel is responsible for 80-90% of the civilian casualties, curtailing this would de-escalate the conflict and prevent future terrorist activity aimed at Israel and the US. Observing human rights in Palestine is the best way to weaken Hamas, bombs will do the opposite.
Unlike Hamas, which is a terrorist organization, Israel is a state and therefore subject to charges of war crimes. Unfortunately, the US has a long history of insulating Israel from the consequences of its violation of international humanitarian law, at great expense to global security and ultimately the welfare of Palestinian, Israeli and American peoples
The General Assembly of the United Nations has condemned Israel 15 times this year alone prior to the war. The United Nations Human Rights Council has condemned Israel over 100 times since it was created in 2006. The United States has repeatedly blocked any attempts at curtailing Israel’s actions in the conflict. As opposed to censuring Israel, the US plans to increase military aid to Israel five-fold with a 14 billion dollar package.
Peace has been possible in the past and will be in the future. Under heavy pressure from the US, Israel and Palestine were close to peace in the 1990s under Israeli Prime Minister Rabin and hopefully could be one day again.
How to Help
1. Contact your politicians
You can email, call or best of all drop in to your local representative’s offices. You can adapt letters you write to your politicians as letters to local media outlets as well. If you’re in the US, you can find your representative and how to contact them here:
https://www.usa.gov/elected-officials
Many of Israel’s allies have called for a “humanitarian pause” to deliver aid to civilians, while civil society calls for a ceasefire. A pause, won’t stop the bombing of civilian targets but it will allow aid to alleviate mass starvation, impending death of thirst, and medical supplies to the injured, which may be responsible for countless casualties and human suffering. The length of the pause needs to be specified; Israel has agreed to a humanitarian pause of 4 hours per day, Biden is pressing for three days, both of which are inadequate. Neither a significant pause nor a ceasefire are going to happen without pressure.
Both Republicans and Democrats want to send 14.3 billion in military aid to Israel on top of the 3.8 billion the US already supplies each year, however they are fighting over where the money will come from. The current package passed by the House will not pass the Senate, and Biden has his own counter proposal. Both of these proposals will further finance war.
There are a lot of policy options on the table. Depending on your position:
♦ You can express opposition to that aid package
♦ If you’re feeling less ambitious, request that the aid package have conditions such as observing international human rights law, humanitarian pauses, or a ceasefire
♦ Representative Cori Bush along with Tlaib, Carson, Lee and Ramirez have introduced a Ceasefire Now Resolution, endorsed by a long list of human rights organizations. Even if you prefer humanitarian pause to ceasefire, expressing support for this will shift the needle closer to relief for Palestinian citizens.
♦ If you’re more ambitious, express support for the Palestinian human rights groups suing for war crimes charges against Netanyahu in the International Criminal Court (ICC). Colombian President Petro and others have joined the charge. Long-term pressure from social movements in the US will be central to ensuring that the US does not block this from happening. Netanyahu is worried enough to make threats if the Palestinian Authority goes to the Hague to sue for war crimes. Human Rights Watch has urged the ICC prosecutor to make public statements in the hopes that they might have a deterrent effect on the war crimes in progress.
♦ You can also urge for human rights monitors to be present in Israel and Gaza, following the call of a coalition of human rights groups.
Various organizations have put together scripts to support a ceasefire, each with different strategies and tone. Here’s a collection of letters:
Ceasefire Today This is a great comprehensive list of letters, petitions, phone banks and more, and includes actions people outside the US can take.
Friends Committee on National Legislation This assumes you are Quaker, but they are a wonderful organization with a long history of advocating for peace, and what they’ve written is short and well put.
Open Society Foundation Soros’s organization. Foundations are usually more measured on these things to avoid controversy, so it’s a signal to the extremity of the situation that they are speaking up.
USAID Staff Open Letter Over 1,000 staff signed the letter that’s in this google doc.
Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)
The US Campaign for Palestinian Rights
2. Support those who have been censured for speaking out
Dr. Zaki Masoud, a medical resident, was fired from NYU when his private instagram was doxxed on twitter. Support him here:
https://www.change.org/p/reinstate-dr-zaki-masoud-at-nyu-langone-winthrop-hospital
As more of these circulate, I’ll try to add them here.
3. Support pro-peace organizations
UNRWA is the strongest humanitarian presence in Palestine. They have lost the lives of their own staff. Relief organizations like Save the Children and Doctors Without Borders help as well.
Palestinian human rights organizations Al-Haq, Al Mezan and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, are suing Netanyahu for war crimes, and will need a lot of support over a long period of time. They each are different, and have various stances on things that are worth looking into.
Jewish organizations B’tselem, Jewish Voice for Peace, Shovrim Shtika, Shalom Achshav, Rabbis for Human Rights have sought peace and human rights protections for Palestinians at great personal sacrifice as well. Renowned human rights organizations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch are also critical for monitoring the situation.
Develop a long-term relationship with human rights organizations promoting peace in Palestine to confront continued human rights abuses as the war wages on and after. Even if you cannot donate, they are excellent resources to stay apprised of developments in the future.
4. Protest
You can find a protest here.