Help Protect Palestinian Families

Palestinian families whose homes were damaged by Israeli aircraft strikes displaced to a United Nations school in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, on May 17, 2021. Photo by Abed Rahim Khatib / Shutterstock.com.

By Ellen Rosser
Middle East Peace and Justice Action Committee

June 2021

Let's not forget how the recent Israeli-Palestinian fighting began. Israel sought to evict two Palestinian families from the home they had lived in for 70 years in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in East Jerusalem, homes that were built by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNWRA) while Jordan was still in charge of East Jerusalem. When protests by Palestinians and sympathetic Jews took place in Sheikh Jarrah, the Israeli police attacked the protesters. The protests then spread to the Al Aqsa Mosque compound, and the Israeli police, for the first time, attacked worshipers inside the mosque itself. 

Subsequently, protests occurred in the Israeli cities with large Palestinian populations, such as Jaffa, Haifa, and others. Then on May 10, Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza began shooting rockets into Israel, including into Tel Aviv. Israel responded by attacking Gaza from May 10 to May 21 with precision missiles. 

Rockets from Gaza during that time killed ten Israelis and two Thai workers. Israel killed 254 Gazans, including 66 children, and injured thousands more during its attacks. Israel relied heavily on US-made weapons to accomplish its slaughter. Israel’s bombs destroyed hundreds of residential buildings and housing units, leaving over 72,000 Gazans homeless. The World Health Organization reported that Israeli strikes and shelling damaged at least 18 hospitals and clinics in Gaza, including Gaza’s only COVID-19 laboratory. Israel targeted and destroyed much of the road leading to Al-Shifa Hospital, Gaza’s largest hospital. 

Israeli bombs have severely damaged much of Gaza’s infrastructure, leaving thousands of Gazans without clean drinking water. The New York Times reported on May 18 that fetid sewage waste runs through the streets of Gaza. James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, reported simultaneously that Gazans were running out of food. Because of Israel’s 13+ year total blockade of Gaza, Palestinians living there have no way to escape Israel’s relentless bombing campaign.

Furthermore, Israel destroyed the high rise that housed the offices of the Associated Press and Al Jazeera and another building in which the Nawaa Online Media Network, a news platform affiliated with women’s rights groups and youth organizations, was located. Another Israeli bomb killed a Palestinian journalist. The Middle East and North Africa spokesman for the Committee to Protect Journalists stated: “It’s difficult to reach any conclusion other than that the Israeli military wants to shut down news coverage of the suffering in Gaza.” (Elian Peltier, "An Israeli Airstrike Killed a Palestinian Journalist" New York Times, May 19, 2021. Also read Sara Boboltz, "AP President 'Shocked and Horrified' at Israel Bombing of Gaza Media Building" HuffPost, May 15, 2021).

In the UN Security Council, the United States blocked four resolutions calling for a cease-fire before Israel finally announced a cease-fire for 2 am May 21. Why was the US complicit in the war crimes in Gaza? 

Please email or call your senators and ask them to introduce a bill requiring that aid to Israel be cut if Israel violates international laws or the U.S. Leahy Law on Human Rights, which forbids using US funds to provide military assistance to foreign security force units that violate human rights with impunity.

And please immediately call or write your representative and ask them to sign onto the McCollum bill to protect Palestinian children, H.R.2590. 

If you have questions or ideas, contact the Middle East Peace and Justice Action Committee leaders at: MPEJAction@wilpfus.org.