U.S. foreign policy must change in Israel.
The perpetual war of the military–industrial complex has been perfected in Gaza. While the United States supplies food to starving Palestinians it also supplies weapons to the Israeli government that is starving Palestinian people.
“Israeli authorities are not only failing to facilitate the international aid effort but are actively hindering it,” said Oxfam Mideast Director Sally Abi Khalil early on in the conflict.
With seemingly unlimited resources, the US can supply both sides until Israel kills the final unarmed, malnourished Palestinian child.
Is that what it will take for other democracies around the word to demand an end to the killings?
U.S. foreign policy in Israel is wrong. Just like the U.S. foreign policy was wrong in Afghanistan, Iraq, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Cuba. U.S. policy must change in Israel.
Violently starving children doesn’t work as foreign policy.
After the unprecedented Oct. 7, 2023 terrorist attack in which 1,139 people were killed and about 250 abducted, Israel responded with massive missile and drone attacks against Gaza before a ground invasion with troops and tanks.
While Israeli civilians remain captive in the labyrinth of tunnels under Gaza, Israel has arrested more than 9,300 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.
Israel has killed more than 37,000 people, half of whom were unarmed children and their mothers, including innocent children murdered while seeking shelter in one of the oldest Christian churches in the world. Around 668 Israeli soldiers have died.
It doesn’t matter who started the fight, but it must stop. How many people must die, before the killing will end?
This isn’t a rhetorical question. What number is enough for you? Where do you draw the line, if not at 14,000 dead children? Take a moment and seriously consider what has to happen for you personally to demand an end to the slaughter in Gaza.
I drew the line when Israel bombed one of the two bakeries in the Nuseirat refugee camp, killing three bakers and worsening food shortages for hundreds of thousands of refugees. Not terrorists, not solders or even Hamas government officials. Children. Israel is intentionally starving children.
It appears half of Israel’s voters are comfortable with the current government killing every last Palestinian in the land.
Injustice in response to injustice is not justice. What’s happening in Gaza is not justice.
Just as the British sought to eradicate Aboriginal Australians and Americans waged war against native Americans, Israel appears dedicated to eradicating the native people inhabiting the region when the world’s Jews moved to Israel in the wake of World War II.
Within Israel’s first year, an estimated 700,000 Palestinians were expelled or fled from what is now Israel. These are the people in Gaza refugee camps – people displaced from their homes and property to make way for Jewish people from around the word. When Israel seized the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967, 300,000 more Palestinians fled, mostly into Jordan.
When attacked by terrorists, democracies don’t respond like terrorists. They don’t fire missiles indiscriminately into neighborhoods. Terrorists do that, not democracies. Terrorists blow up bakeries to starve civilians, not democracies.
If the U.S. can’t repudiate the senseless violence in Gaza on moral grounds, then a reasonable argument can be made that the U.S. simply can’t afford to continue to subsidize a wealthy country that no longer needs it.
In its history, Israel has received around $300 billion (adjusted for inflation) in U.S. economic and military assistance.
In 2020, Israel’s per capita GDP was $52,200, making it the 14th largest economy in the world. By comparison, Canada’s per capita GDP was $52,400 and the U.S.’ was around $70,200.
Because U.S tax dollars subsidizes Israel’s military and private defense industry, Israel is able to provide Israelis free college and free healthcare, including abortions.
Israel ranks as one of the top global arms exporters, subsidized by American tax payers.
US military aid to Israel exceeded $3.8 billion in 2023, and President Biden requested an additional $14.3 billion after the Oct. 7 attack.
How many dead children are enough? How many tax dollars are enough?
“For people to say that this (the Oct. 7 Hamas attack in Israel) is another 9/11 and then not to say, ‘My God, what have we learned? What will we do? What will come from that?’ After everything that we did following 9/11, and the regret and shame that so many of us carry from that,” said Matt Hoh, former USMC Captain who served in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Pentagon. “If we don’t take a stand against it, then when we look back on this and ask how it happened, we will have only ourselves to blame.”
Hamas is more than a government; Hamas is an ideology. The only way to defeat a bad ideology is to present a better ideology to replace it.
The U.S. spent more than $3 trillion to defeat ISIS and Al Quada and both groups remain because little effort was expended to replace them with something better.
The only thing happening in Gaza is the creation of more Palestinian militants – the surviving family members of dead and maimed children.
If a government were to kill your children, how would you respond?
Would you passively accept their deaths, acquiesce and support the government that killed them? Or would you fight that government with every fiber of your being for the rest of your life?
If a government killed your parents when you were a child, what would be your view of that government as an adult?
The future is crystal clear to anyone with eyes to see. Israel is only making the situation worse. Israel’s policy will result in the deaths of every Christian and Muslim currently living in Gaza.
Jew, or Christian, Arab or Muslim, children all look the same when they are dead.
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Pastor Jim Meisner, Jr. earned his M.Div. from the oldest HBCU seminary in the United States. He’s the author of the novel Faith, Hope, and Baseball, available on Amazon, or follow this link to order an autographed copy. He created and manages the Facebook page Faith on the Fringe.
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