Dear Editor,

What is happening in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank has slipped under the radar as the 24-hour news cycle moves on to the next headline, such as the US bombing of Iran’s nuclear sites. 

By the time of this being published, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be in Washington to warn about Iran and its nuclear ambitions while Trump will continue to speachify that any protests of Israeli actions are anti-semitic. In the meantime, mass starvation is happening to over 2 million Palestinians in Gaza who are now being squeezed into 1/5 of the totality of the Strip.  Told to move north out of new exclusion zones, then told to move south to avoid another days later, many have been displaced multiple times.

 And every day new deaths are added to the 56,000 who have been killed, collateral deaths in this war to eliminate Hamas. Israel has intensified its bombing campaign in Gaza lately, which many are calling “indiscriminate”. The number killed every 24 hours is tragic but consistent. 80 today, 110 yesterday, 70 the day before.  Women and children are common victims. The bombings of a seaside café, a school, a hospital, here and there among the tent sprawl, leaves the Palestinians terrorized.   

What is their fate today? Tomorrow? Now there is talk among Israeli cabinet members of annexing what is left of the West Bank as well, after increasing “settlements” there for years. It must be noted that this cabinet is the most far right in Israel’s history and is what props up Netanyahu. He needs them to stay in power, which conveniently keeps him from being prosecuted for corruption. 

Is Israel levelling Gaza in preparation to move out the whole population. Why would you need a two-state solution if the 2nd state no longer exists…a “fait accompli” of ethnic cleansing while the world fumfers.

Meanwhile, the US has given its tacit approval by selling arms to Israel in large quantities: $510 million last week, $3 billion in early March, as well as $660 million (hell fire missiles), $6.75 billion in munitions and fuzes, 2.04 billion for heavy bombs and support systems and $180 million for Eitan tank engines in other sales. Trump approved all these sales just this year, bypassing congressional review. Biden did similarly.

 Isreal began the most recent blockade of food, fuel and medicine on Mar 3, allowing only a trickle of aid, and only at the four Israeli sanctioned distribution sites. Prior to the war, there were 400 sites. According to Democracy Now on PBS, there have been many casualties surrounding the distribution of food as people press forward, starved and trying to bring food back for their parents and families. 

Democracy Now interviewed a US surgeon volunteering in Gaza who described the multiple gunshot wounds he and his colleagues have been treating. He was disgusted and called the bombing indiscriminate and cruel.

The Doctors without Borders website (Medicins Sans Frontieres or MSF) is calling for the immediate end to the “deadly Israeli distribution scheme in Gaza.”  “This system has forced more than 2 million Palestinians in Gaza to access aid from just four military-controlled distribution sites, where they face daily gunfire and mass casualties while trying to obtain food and are denied other life-saving supplies….” It is “forcing Palestinians to choose between starvation or risking their lives for minuscule amounts of aid.”  

Aitor Zabalgogeazkoa, the MSF emergency coordinator in Gaza, states, “The way supplies are distributed forces thousands of Palestinians who have been starved by a more than 100-day-long Israeli siege to walk long distances to reach the four distributions sites and fight for scraps of food supplies.

These sites are especially difficult to access for women, children, the elderly and people with disabilities. People are often killed and wounded in the chaotic process; over 500 people have been killed and nearly 4,000 have been wounded while trying to get food.”

Meanwhile MSF medical teams have noticed a stark increase in the number of patients with gunshot wounds following frequent violence and attacks at and around the aid distribution sites.  MSF continues, “If people arrive early and approach the checkpoints, they get shot. If they arrive on time but there is an overflow and they jump over the mounds and the wires, they get shot. If they arrive late, they shouldn’t be there because it is an ‘evacuated zone’, so they get shot.”

The US has leverage here, given the three + billion dollars we give Israel every year. This, of course, would go against the very strong pro-Israel lobby here in the US. But we Americans know injustice when we see it.  We must say enough of this carnage. 

These are human beings and deserve to be treated as such.  The Geneva Conventions were signed to guarantee this. The International Criminal Court has charged Netanyahu, as well as Yoav Gollant, a member of the Israeli war cabinet, with crimes against humanity “for intentionally depriving Gazans of food and directing attacks against civilians”.  

So, folks, keep this on your own radar and protest.  It’s not anti-semitic to protest cruelty and inhumanity. 

Bill Thibedeau

Gilpin County