Operation Cast Lead, an Israeli aerial assault and massacre of Gazans that began on December 27, 2008, lasted for twenty-two days. The Israeli military deployed its navy, air force, and army against the people living in Gaza, using U.S.-supplied weapons and killing 1,387 Palestinians, of whom 320 were children.
I remember a doctor at the Al Shifa hospital, after a ceasefire was declared, shaking with anger and remorse as he told me that, for twenty-two days, the world watched while the incalculable affliction of Gaza went on and on. Most of his patients, he said, were women, children, and grandparents.
Carrying our press passes from Counterpunch, I walked with Audrey Stewart, a human rights worker, into Gaza at the Rafah border crossing, which at the time was the only Gazan border crossing not controlled by Israel. We were sandwiched between correspondents working for The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. A human rights activist in Cairo had arranged for Audrey and me to stay with a family in the residential area the crossing opened into. Overnight, bombs exploded like clockwork, once every eleven minutes, from 11:00 p.m. to 1:00 a.m. and then again from 3:00 a.m, to 6:00 a.m. Yusuf, a bright child and the family’s oldest, explained to us the difference between explosions caused when an Apache helicopter fired a Hellfire missile and the sounds of 500-pound bombs dropped by F-16 fighter jets. Yusuf was seven years old.
We have no excuse, none whatsoever, for not raising our voices resoundingly, thunderously, clamoring for a ceasefire.
When the ceasefire was declared, Yusuf’s mother sank into a chair and murmured, “Can you imagine? This is the first time I breathe in all these twenty-two days. I was so frightened for my children.” Yusuf wasted no time organizing neighborhood children who soon were dragging a large tarp through alleys and along roadways, collecting twigs and branches they could bring to their families for fuel.
Meanwhile, Mohammad, Yusuf’s younger brother, playfully imitated an airplane flying in circles, after which he would dive into his father’s lap as we all shared breakfast, seated in a circle.
Four years later, following another Israeli aerial attack against Gaza, I had a chance to visit the same family again in Rafah. Yusuf and Mohammed were proud of how their father had organized relief work to help children traumatized by the bombings and siege. Gaza’s access to food, fuel, basic medicines, and even clean water for washing or drinking would continue to constrict under Israeli pressure over those years in which the brothers would eventually become husbands and fathers themselves, still assisting the family efforts to share resources and care for increasingly desperate neighbors.
This month, Mohammad was killed. On October 12, while he was sleeping, his building was attacked by an Israeli warplane. The building collapsed, crushing him. I don’t know if his own children were with him, but countless others took hours or days to die in the rubble, as the region starved for fuel with which a rescue effort might have been undertaken. Over 10,300 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli attacks since October 7. Four thousand, one hundred and four Gazan children, utterly innocent, have suffered tortuous deaths in just a month of atrocities.
Calling for a “pause” in the bombing rather than a full ceasefire is hideously cruel and unmistakably futile. Do they expect that allowing some relief to go in, and a few of the maimed and wounded to go out, will solve anything once the bombing and the starvation blockade resume?
President Joe Biden must call for a ceasefire, writes Professor Emeritus Mel Gurtov, “in order to save lives, including those of the hostages and Gaza’s population.” Who will benefit if the slaughter continues? Certainly, the weapon manufacturers’ profits will soar, assured of a sustained intensification of violence across the region and perhaps across the world.
On November 12, launching at 8:00 p.m. Central time, the Merchants of Death War Crimes Tribunal, which activists have spent the last year preparing, will officially convene. It aims to hold four major military contractors—Boeing, Lockheed Martin, RTX (Raytheon), and General Atomics—accountable for any war crimes and crimes against humanity they may be found to have committed.
I hold myself accountable for not having done more to stop the ongoing, and now horrifically intensified, carnage enacting monumental collective punishment on innocent Palestinians, including the children who make up half of Gaza’s population.
Recently, former U.S. President Barack Obama admitted that “nobody’s hands are clean . . . . All of us are complicit to some degree.” We all, and not just the leaders we’ve failed to restrain, have unforgivable blood on our hands, but I’m mindful of young Afghans who repeatedly told us on multiple solidarity trips over the past decade, that “blood doesn’t wash away blood.”
We have no excuse, none whatsoever, for not raising our voices resoundingly, thunderously, clamoring for a ceasefire. Now.