The US must stop facilitating mass killing in Gaza

It is against US law to provide weapons to forces who block United States humanitarian assistance. And that is exactly what is happening right now

Iknow a man, a decent man, who said that “preventing genocide is an achievable goal, a goal that requires a level of government organization and engagement that matches in its intensity the brutality and efficiency required to carry out mass killing. Too often, these efforts have come too late, after the best and least costly opportunities to prevent them have been missed.”

The man that said that was then Vice-President and now President Joseph Biden. And he was right.

I rise to say that such a time is now. As we speak, in this moment, 1.1 million innocents in Gaza are at famine’s door. A famine that is being intentionally precipitated through the blocking of food and global humanitarian assistance by leaders in the Israeli government.

This is a mass starvation of people, engineered and orchestrated following the killing of another 30,000, 70% of whom were women and children.

There is hardly a single hospital left. And this was all accomplished with US resources and weapons. If you want to know what an unfolding genocide looks like, open your eyes. It looks like the forced famine of 1.1 million innocents. It looks like thousands of children eating grass as their bodies consume themselves, while trucks of food are slowed and halted just miles away. It looks like good and decent people who do nothing. Or too little. Too late.

It is against United States law to provide weapons to forces who block United States humanitarian assistance. And that is exactly what is happening right now. So much so that the president himself stated, during the State of the Union, that the United States must and will be building its own port to let aid through. It will be too late.

The time is now to force compliance with US law and the standards of humanity. And fulfill our obligations to the American people to suspend the transfer of US weapons to the Israeli government in order to stop and prevent further atrocity.

Honoring our alliances does not mean facilitating mass killing. We cannot hide from our responsibility any longer. Blocking assistance from one’s closest allies to starve a million people is not unintentional.

We have a responsibility to prove the value of global democracy, enshrined in the upholding of civil society, rule of law, and commitment to human and civil rights.

This is not just about Israel or Gaza. This is about us. The world will never be the same. And we will never be the same. And we must write our story in this moment, of what it means and who we are as Americans. And our story must be not that we were good men who did nothing. But that we were a committed democracy that did something.

Cover photo: It is against United States law to provide weapons to forces who block United States humanitarian assistance.’ Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images