Opinion Submission: Stop the killing in Gaza, and end aid to Israel

| Professor of Anthropology

There is no justification for Israel’s slaughter of innocent people in Gaza. The complicity of the United States government in this mass killing is equally inexcusable. The events of Oct. 7, including horrible attacks on civilians, are no excuse. One need not be Jewish, Israeli, Palestinian, or have a PhD in Middle East Studies to have an opinion on what is right and what is wrong. And what Israel is doing in Gaza is wrong. But we are told that criticizing Israel is antisemitic. Or, absurdly, that the 11,000+ dead are guilty because they are Hamas or “animals.” The babies in the incubators are Hamas? Entire families murdered in their homes? The fifty journalists who have been murdered by Israel? The doctors are animals? And on it goes. 

The United States government’s credibility on democracy and the rule of law has always been shaky. By supporting Israel’s war crimes and the ongoing illegal settlements and the theft of Palestinian lands in the occupied West Bank, U.S. credibility has dissolved completely. Yes, war crimes. Amnesty International (AI) and Human Rights Watch (HRW) have detailed war crimes, from the use of white phosphorous to the bombing of schools and hospitals. AI and HRW, along with the Israeli human-rights organization B’Tselem, had already documented Israel’s crimes of apartheid. Israel has murdered over 100 members of the United Nations staff in Gaza. And we are to believe the Israeli ambassador to the UN, who says that those staff members, too, are Hamas? Absurd and criminal. 

Opinion submissions published in Student Life have denounced antisemitism and declared Israel’s innocence and victimhood. We should all denounce antisemitism. But innocence and victimhood? That tests the limits of credulity. In 1948, the Israeli state was created through the seizure of Palestinian land, the killing of 15,000 people, and the removal of 700,000 Palestinians from their homes, many pushed into Jordan and Lebanon, others crowded into the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. The result? A wealthy and powerful military state with control over Palestinians in Gaza and in the West Bank. That does not sound like innocence and victimhood. Nor does it sound like democracy. Despite what we are told, there is no democracy for Palestinians in Gaza or the West Bank, nor for Palestinian citizens of Israel. There is no reason the U.S. should be aiding Israel and abetting war crimes. 

Yet the massacre of innocents goes on. Children with their legs amputated. A mother weeping with the body of her child in her arms. Men consoling orphans, shocked and traumatized, trembling in fear, covered with the dust from bombed-out buildings. Bodies lined up on the floor. Families murdered by Israeli F-16s while trying to seek safety. What kind of humanity — or perverse hatred, cruelty, depravity, or racism — must one embrace to justify this killing? We are told that Israel had no choice. No choice? How about ending the illegal settlements in the West Bank? How about ending the embargo on Gaza? Of course, this is not how settler colonialism works. 

The end goal, it appears — as voiced by Israeli officials themselves — is to complete what was started in 1948: the displacement of all Palestinians from what was, in 1947, known as Palestine. This looks like genocidal intent. Read the Genocide Convention yourself, which cites acts committed with the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group” and the creation of “conditions calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.” 

It’s curious that WashU’s lawyers have stayed silent. Do we not teach the rule of law? And WashU’s doctors? Crickets. WashU med students take an oath with the words “I will empower the unheard” and “advocate for healthcare as a human right.” Nowhere does it say “I will turn my head in silence while hospitals are bombed and doctors and patients are killed by a government that is enabled by our own.” 

Cease fire now. Stop military aid to Israel. Exchange the prisoners for the hostages. And yes, from the river to the sea, may all peoples in the land once known as Palestine someday live in freedom. Per veritatem vis.

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