Today marks two years since Hamas and other armed groups attacked and killed approximately 1,200 people in Southern Israel, more than 800 hundred of them civilians, including 36 children, and took 251 people hostage. Today, families continue to grieve from those horrific events and reel as their loved ones are still being held in captivity.
And today marks two years of horror in Gaza: repeated displacement, wide-scale destruction of civilian infrastructure, deliberate starvation, more than 65,000 people killed, including over 18,000 children, and over 200,000 injured, in what Amnesty International has concluded is a genocide.
It is a collective failure and stain on humanity that this immense suffering, constant fear, and destruction continues.
We must not look away. We must not be desensitized to seeing children left maimed and parentless. We must not accept that Israeli and Palestinian lives are used as bargaining chips. We must not abandon people who are at risk. We will not rest until this genocide ends, until those being held hostage are back home, and until unimpeded humanitarian aid is delivered to those in Gaza. Â
The truth is that we can’t stop war crimes or a genocide with a single email, a protest, or a social media post. We know this. But we also can’t stop it without these things. We can’t stop it without people like you – alongside millions of others – who are still willing to feel. Still willing to act, speak out, and let those with the power to stop this suffering hear from you.
The United States has enormous influence over what happens in Gaza, and as such, those living in the United States have an enormous responsibility to put pressure on those with influence. There are many ways you can act, in support of individuals at risk like Dr. Abu Safia, journalists Nidal al-Waheidi and Haitham Abdelwahed, or to directly pressure your policy makers and those companies enabling this violence.
Below are just two ways you can continue to show up and to say that you refuse to look away from the anguish of Palestinians and Israeli families. That you choose humanity.
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Call for a permanent ceasefire.
The Israeli government continues to drop bombs and kill, forcibly displace, and deny humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza. Meanwhile, Palestinian armed groups are still holding hostages in Gaza two years after they were seized. They must be released unconditionally. Every moment of inaction costs more lives and deepens the horrors civilians are facing. An immediate ceasefire is a moral imperative.
Urge your leaders to demand an immediate and lasting ceasefire >>
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Stop U.S.-made weapons from being used in war crimes.
Civilians in Gaza are being killed by U.S.-made bombs, and Boeing is profiting. Amnesty has documented that Boeing-manufactured weapons have been used in Israeli airstrikes that have killed entire Palestinian families and children — enabling Israel’s genocide.