Yesterday's attacks by the Israeli Air Force in Gaza City—the most densely populated piece of land on the face of the earth—indiscriminately destroyed medical and governmental buildings, homes, and other civilian infrastructure. By this morning, about 300 Palestinians, many of whom were women, children, and civil police and traffic officers (so-called Hamas “security forces”) were killed and at least 900 injured. We and many others around the world are concerned about reports from Israel that these attacks may be only the opening fanfare of a sustained military campaign that will, inevitably, create even more casualties for an already besieged people.
American Jews for a Just Peace strongly condemns the Israeli invasion of Gaza, as a cruel and barbarous attack upon a captive civilian population. Israel justifies its attack as a defensive response to Hamas rockets fired into Israel. While the firing of Hamas rockets into civilian areas is not a justifiable response, the reality is that those rocket attacks were provoked by Israel’s own violation of the cease-fire in early November, before it expired, when Israel mounted a series of unprovoked attacks against Gaza that killed six Palestinians. But the Hamas rockets were also the desperately frustrated response to Israel’s sustained and unlawful blockade of nearly all food, medicines, fuel, and other essential supplies to the full civilian population of Gaza since the election of a Hamas government there in 2006. The people of Gaza have already been reduced to living in the dark, without heat and on a bare subsistence diet as consequences of the Israeli blockade.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency has been feeding 750,000 Gazans who can no longer feed themselves. UNRWA reports that it ran out of food on December 18, 2008 as a consequence of Israel’s blockade and was forced to suspend all emergency and regular food aid. Three quarters of a million people now face starvation. Notably, last week Israel expelled an observer sent by the U.N. to assess the situation and has barred journalists from entering Gaza to report events based on their own neutral observance of them.
As American Jews, we are compelled to oppose these violations of widely held and agreed upon rules of ethical conduct by Israel—and by the U.S., in complicity with it. The inhumanity and cruelty of Israel’s violently excessive assaults against Gaza are an affront to the long-cherished Jewish commitment to basic principles of justice and humaneness. As American citizens, we call upon President Elect Obama to push publicly for the immedate cessation of bombing and reinstatement of the cease-fire pending resumption of fairly moderated peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians.
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