2023–12–26

As the world celebrates the holidays Gaza burns

Spent the past few hours reading and watching the most recent Gaza news. While much of the world has been happily celebrating the holiday, the dehumanization and brutality being visited upon the Palestinians has continued, by some accounts the intensity has actually increased.

In two months 10,000 children and more than 20,000 Palestinians of all ages, have been killed.

And if you’re been tuning it out because it’s ugly and hard to watch I’d ask/urge you to not turn away from it especially if you are a citizen of the US. This is the direct result of US foreign policy, being done with US funds and weapons. The least we can do is bear witness to it. That’s the very least we can do. Any mental or emotional reaction we have pales in comparison to what our fellow human beings are enduring every moment of every day.

The US is Israel’s number one supporter and funder and have been for decades. Many decades. All that has been happening there in recent weeks is the culmination of those decades. Thus far it is rightly being described as: war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and in the near future will very likely be classified as genocide.

So while we have been enjoying feasts of food, comfortably visiting with friends and family, they have been going without basic nourishment and being thirsty every hour of every day. Watching the world around them be blown apart. Daily watching people be shot, blown apart or crushed under buildings that have been blown apart.

I cannot begin to imagine the daily horror of it. And so I watch and read to try to witness it. It’s truly the least I can do and only the bare minimum.

We in the US have got to stop turning away from the horror we create in the name of our strategic positioning and security. The citizens of the US turn away from the truth of our foreign policy and have done so for many decades. We live in a permanent state of denial of our violence and our responsibility for atrocities.

We need to own it because turning away from it allows it to continue. Decades of brutality and dehumanization against the Palestinians explain what we see in Gaza today. And by turning away we ensure that it will continue.