December
27, 2023
To:
President Joe Biden
You’ve
often spoken of how much you care about children and how terrible it is when
they’re murdered. “Too many schools, too many everyday places have become
killing fields,” you said at the White House last spring on the one-year
anniversary of the school shooting in Uvalde. At the time of that tragedy in
Texas, you had quickly gone on live television, speaking gravely.
“There
are parents who will never see their child again,” you said, adding: “To lose a
child is like having a piece of your soul ripped away. . . . It’s a feeling
shared by the siblings, and the grandparents, and their family members, and the
community that’s left behind.”
And
you asked plaintively: “Why are we willing to live with this carnage? Why do we
keep letting this happen? Where in God’s name is our backbone to have the
courage to deal with it and stand up to the lobbies?”
This
year you’ve asked similar questions many times, as in the aftermath of
shootings at a grade school in Nashville, Michigan State University and the
University of Nevada.
The
massacre in Uvalde took the lives of 19 children. For nearly three months, the
ongoing massacre in Gaza has taken the lives of that many children every few
hours.
In
mid-November, after five weeks of Israel’s bombing of Gaza, the
director-general of the World Health Organization reported that children were
being killed at an average rate of six per hour, adding that “nowhere and no
one is safe.” Palestinian civilians of all ages continue to undergo slaughter,
with the death toll surpassing 20,000.
You
have continued to voice support for Israel’s military assault on Gaza and its
residents. After 10 weeks of the carnage, when you got around to expressing a
bit of concern about Israel’s “indiscriminate bombing,” you were meanwhile
still doing everything you could to greenlight and fast-track massive U.S.
shipments of weapons and ammunition to Israel so that the indiscriminate
bombing could continue.
Even
your belated and inadequate words on Dec. 12 about “indiscriminate bombing”
apparently caused you to have second thoughts. The next day, Voice of America
reported that “the White House appears to be walking back” your comment about
“indiscriminate bombing.”
Most
important, of course, are not words but deeds. As commander-in-chief, since
early October you have approved large-scale shipments to Israel of 2,000-pound
bombs — described by the New York Times as “one of the most destructive
munitions in Western military arsenals,” a weapon that “unleashes a blast wave
and metal fragments thousands of feet in every direction.”
In
a Dec. 21 video report based on analysis of “aerial imagery and artificial
intelligence” — headlined “Visual Evidence Shows Israel Dropped 2,000-Pound
Bombs Where It Ordered Gaza’s Civilians to Move for Safety” — the Times
indicated that “Israel used these munitions in the area it designated safe for
civilians at least 200 times.” Those 2,000-pound bombs have been “a pervasive
threat to civilians seeking safety across south Gaza.”
Since
the war in Gaza began 11 weeks ago, the Times reported, “the U.S. has sent more
than 5,000 2,000-pound bombs” to Israel. And after a long phone conversation
with Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu on Dec. 23, you told the press: “I did
not ask for a ceasefire.”
With
your ongoing help, Israel is continuing to murder children and other civilians
in Gaza just as methodically as the gunman murdered children at the elementary
school in Uvalde. And you have continued to provide weaponry for the murders
just as surely as the gun shop in Uvalde sold firearms and ammunition to the
man who went on to kill at the elementary school.
But
that is an unfair comparison — unfair to the Uvalde gun-shop owner, who did not
know the intended use of the weapons and ammo. But you know what the billions
of dollars’ worth of weapons and bombs gifted by the U.S. government are being
used for.
When
three 9-year-old students were among those shot to death at a school in
Nashville last March, you spoke about them the next day. “A family’s worst
nightmare has occurred,” you said. “Those children should all be with us
still,” you said. And you said: “We know the names of the victims.”
But
you don’t know the names of the children you’ve helped to murder in Gaza. And
there are so many.
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