Feed Gaza Now

Whatever our faith and whatever our politics, we can surely agree on this:
We would not suffer our own children to go without food and water for a single day. Not one day.

It is through no fault of their own that the children of Gaza are not our children.
The children of Gaza merely lost the lottery our own children won.

In recognition of our own good fortune, we must stand up for the less fortunate.

Feed Gaza Now

The Second World War revealed a scale of depravity in the human race that we might prefer to deny we are capable of (above all, the mass slaughter of millions of Jews, as well as of thousands of homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, Roma, and others).

After that war – in recognition that unfathomable evil had succeeded in flourishing among us, that the goodness in most people had not been impediment enough – we chose the checks and balances of a rules-based order.

We chose the Geneva Conventions.
We chose the United Nations.
We chose world courts to intervene when our conduct is destabilized by war.

We chose to formalize in law that combatants and civilians are distinct, so that in our rage and grief at our own losses we do not obscure the humanity of the group. We collectively agreed that we do not inflict on a whole people penalties they have not deserved and to which we are not entitled by justice.

We most uphold the pillars of the new order we chose.
We must insist that the responsibilities and resolutions put forth in those laws and by those institutions are observed.

Nobody is above those laws. Actions outside of those laws are beneath humanity.

Feed Gaza Now

Individuals perpetrated the massacre in Israel on October 7th 2023.
An entire population did not.

We do not punish all men if one of them commits rape.
We do not punish all children if one of them is a bully.

And yet we are punishing all the children of Gaza right now, as evidence of their emaciation rolls in and we do nothing.

Children make up half the Gazan population. The majority of those children are under 14 years in age.

They are not terrorists. They are unwritten stories, their identities barely begun to form.

They might become the doctor who stabilizes your husband's heart attack during an airport layover.

They might become the poet you turn to in the turmoil of a failed relationship, or the toymaker who never fails to prompt a giggle from your grandchild.

They might become nobody of any renown at all except to those who love them, which is everything.

Every one of those children has a right to their unfurled future.

Feed Gaza Now

There is simply no time to get self-defensive.

All of us fortunate enough to be outside of Gaza will have many opportunities in the future to:

Point fingers and pass the buck.
Contend that we are being unduly criticized.
Advocate for our own identity group.

In the meantime, none of the angry or hurt feelings we might feel will kill us. Our feelings are not imminent and excruciating bodily harm.

They will not shrink our organs or reduce us to bones. They will not force our parents to witness our final breath as we weigh in their arms almost as insubstantially as when we were first born.

Whatever other identities we might have, there is one identity above all that connects us, here outside Gaza: we are alive and likely to stay that way.

We have the luxury of time, and of time to waste in arguing. The civilians and the hostages in Gaza do not.

Accusations, deflections, and illusions: enough already. A thousand times, enough. They are not solutions. They are the penchants of people who don't get things done.

Those interested only in shifting the blame or in denying reality must be drowned out and overruled by those of us putting our differences aside and coming together for as long as it takes to:

Feed Gaza Now

Article 55 of the fourth Geneva Convention asserts that Israel is legally responsible (as the belligerent occupying power) for insuring the supply of food, water and medical aid to the occupied population.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has twice reminded Israel of that responsibility, most forcefully on March 28th 2023, when Israel was unanimously ordered to do more to remove obstructions to aid.

We must not keep quiet until Israel fulfills its responsibilities under international law to prevent famine in Gaza.

We must not simply take Israel at its word. We must demand from our representatives that any claims of compliance with international law are independently verified. (Trust, but verify.) The cost of presumption is complicity.

We must further urge all humanitarian agencies and entities of influence in the region to work with Israel to the full extent of their powers, and to get this done.

Feed Gaza Now

Starvation is predictable.
Starvation is inevitable.
Starvation is barbaric.
Starvation is still preventable - at least, if we act now.

Where were you and what did you do?

Feed Gaza Now is a grassroots campaign to reject silence and inaction over the famine taking hold among the civilian population in Gaza and (by implication) the hostages despicably still held there.

This is a judgement-free space in which personal identities and political opinions may be set aside, as we unite around a single focus: to prevent a grotesque humanitarian catastrophe among the innocent.

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