Speak Out Now Against Netanyahu's Final Solution for Gaza

The world is asking why major Jewish organizations, and congregations around the country, aren't speaking out about genocide. It can't be hidden. The failure to condemn Israel's crimes against humanity is a glaring breakdown of moral responsibility, casting a dark shadow and is a growing source of antisemitism.

I have overheard neighbors, who are not political, talking about what Israel is doing in Gaza. An acquaintance during a conversation suddenly asked, "Are you Jewish?" A Christian friend asked me, "Why aren't the Rabbis speaking out?"

Gaza has more children missing limbs per capita than any other place in the world.

Contemplate this fact as children are preciously guided through Jewish education culminating in the Bat Mitzvah for girls and Bar Mitzvah for boys. As new adults they will grow up with a history different from their parents, grandparents, and great grandparents. Rather than being survivors of the Holocaust, they will inherent a legacy of Jewish people committing mass murder, starving millions, and violently carrying out ethnic cleansing. Growing up, secular or religious, they are living at a time when Israeli politicians, religious fanatics, and a majority of ordinary citizens have supported the commission of genocide as exigent to the survival of the Jewish State.

Omer Bartov, an Israeli professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Brown University, wrote in The New York Times:

My inescapable conclusion has become that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people. Having grown up in a Zionist home, lived the first half of my life in Israel, served in the IDF as a soldier and officer, and spent most of my career researching and writing on war crimes and the Holocaust, this was a painful conclusion to reach, and one that I resisted as long as I could. But I have been teaching classes on genocide for a quarter of a century. I can recognize one when I see one.

In the future, who among today's Jewish children will be able to say my parents protested, my rabbi spoke out, they supported resolutions to end America's backing of genocide at this crucial moment when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's murderous regime is planning a final solution for Gaza.

Reports by leading Israeli human rights organizations B'Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights Israel concluded that their country is committing genocide.

B'Tselem produced a detailed study titled, "Our Genocide":

An examination of Israel's policy in the Gaza Strip and its horrific outcomes, together with statements by senior Israeli politicians and military commanders about the goals of the attack, leads to the unequivocal conclusion that Israel is taking coordinated action to intentionally destroy Palestinian society in the Gaza Strip. In other words: Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

Whitewashed words and bleached language cannot erase the genocide being committed by Israel and underwritten by the United States. Nor can it hide behind a smokescreen of deflections such as "Israel has the right to defend itself" or "Hamas started the war."

It is morally and ethically irresponsible for mainstream Jewish and Christian groups not to condemn Netanyahu's continuation of the war as genocide. A group of some 600 retired Israeli security officials, including former heads of intelligence agencies, have written to U.S. President Donald Trump asking him to force Israel to immediately end the war in Gaza.

"It is our professional judgement that Hamas no longer poses a strategic threat to Israel," the officials said.

Yet the bombing and starvation continue. And the record numbers of child amputees in Gaza will continue to climb. Making matters worse Netanyahu has announced plans for a new full-scale invasion of Gaza designed to inflict even more pain and suffering for no logical reasons other than the acceleration of ethnic cleansing and furthering the genocide.

No matter how many lies are told, genocide cannot be koshered in the name of support for Israel. Synagogues and their national organizations must loudly condemn crimes against humanity and demand the United States halt arms shipments to Israel.

Even Eyal Zamir the current Israel Defense Forces chief of staff thinks the plan to continue and expand the war is disastrous. But he is powerless as long as Trump supports Netanyahu and Congress continues to approve the sale of 1,000-pound bombs and other weapons used in the commission of war crimes.

In order to reset the record, major Jewish and other religious organizations should take out full-page ads in newspapers around the country calling for an immediate cease-fire to enable the United Nations and others to bring in unlimited food, water, medical supplies, and other essentials. In return, the surviving hostages and thousands of Palestinians unlawfully held in Israeli prisons must be released without delay.