Since Oct. 7, 2023, the U.S.-Israel war has killed more than 73,000 Palestinians, including 1,300 more after the so-called cease fire. More than 20,000 children have died, untold numbers are orphans and amputees who will continue to suffer the trauma of war for the rest of their lives.
In 2025, the U.S. spent $12 billion on military aid to bomb Gaza and 2026 will send another $20 billion in unconditional aid. Is anyone sincerely listening to the Palestinian people? Really listening to their suffering, not simply justifying their defensive position that war is necessary for Israeli security? I relive in my mind’s eye a photo of a young girl in Gaza, about 12 years old, sitting in a wheelchair wearing a diaper, her face bruised, her right arm bandaged and amputated above the elbow, the fingers on her left hand blackened, both legs bandaged and amputated mid-thigh — a triple amputee.
As a Jew, I abhor what is being done in our name on both economic and ethical grounds. As the upcoming election will predictably put “kitchen table” issues front and center, voters should realize the cost of war as it depletes funds that could be otherwise spent at home. William Lawrence, candidate for Michigan’s 7th Congressional District, states, “Every dollar we spend blowing things up and killing people abroad is a dollar we don’t spend building housing and caring for people at home.”
Ethically, what has been called a genocide is a reminder of lives lost during the Holocaust and the prophetic words “never again,” a prohibition to Jewish people never to inflict mass murder on others, especially the young and innocent.
Yet, headlines from news outlets like Drop Site Independent cry out daily, “US and Israel Obliterated 6 Year Old Girl on Way to School.” Her name was Wafaa Akila.
Reportedly, Israel is again escalating its bombing of southern Lebanon despite a ceasefire and ongoing U.S. brokered talks. It describes an Israeli attack on the Farhat family home that killed 12 family members including six children, ages two months to 13 years. Two other children were severely wounded. Two brothers, Hassan and Hussein, were preparing their siblings for school after months of closures due to Israeli’s bombardment. School books lay scattered among the ruins.
Our administration’s continued silence and open support for Israel makes us complicit in their crimes. Last week, Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz again openly called for ethnic cleansing of Gaza, saying that as soon as the U.S. assesses support for moving the Palestinian population out of Gaza, it will be done. Current Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir stated, “I think targeted assassinations should be carried out in Gaza, taking down 30 to 40 every night. Not just those who pose an immediate threat – there are people there who are not worthy of life. They shouldn’t live. They’re not even people.”
One child who survived the Holocaust, thanks to his parents who emigrated to Israel in 1935, is Omer Bartov, a prominent Holocaust and Genocide scholar whose recent book, “Israel: What Went Wrong” highlights the “ideological brutality” of the Israeli Defense Forces comparing them to the Wehrmacht. The author claims Zionism was wrong from the beginning, becoming progressively “state sanctioned, militaristic, expansionist, intolerable and violent.” Zionism, born originally of a humanitarian desire to provide Jews with a safe haven now advocates ethnic cleansing of its minority people.
Bartov, a first generation “sabra,” describes his childhood playing in abandoned villages and cemeteries, taking the land for granted, unaware that Palestinians were once expelled, their homes destroyed and memories erased like those of his mother who never returned to the ruins of her childhood village in Poland. The events of the Holocaust and the Nakba are connected by this double tragedy.
Gaza’s borders now are even more restrictive as 2 million overcrowded people suffer from scarce water, starvation and lack of basic sanitation, similar to the World War II ghettoized Jewish communities concentrated in closed quarters awaiting their fate. The Israeli government continues to confiscate Palestinian land in the West Bank and to restrict their lives under military rule and constant surveillance.
As Israel continues to wrestle with its deep seated contradiction of how it can remain both Jewish and democratic, it has, it seems to me, become a pariah state. Whether you’d agree with me or not, we, united as human beings, can and must pressure our government to end its unconscionable violence against civilians.
If not, warned Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1967, “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”
Ann Podlipny lives in Chester.