_{^{Palestinians carrying some belongings walk past ammunition containers left behind by Israeli troops as they flee Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, on Feb. 2, 2024. Photo: Mahmud Hams/AFP}}

_{Portland, Maine}

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As this column goes to press, the Israeli government has just charged members of the UN Relief and Works Agency in Gaza with being active in the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel. Philippe Lazzarini, UNRWA’s commissioner-general, has fired the people so charged and pledged a through investigation to determine the accuracy of Israel’s allegations. None of this news negates what is not a case of strange arithmetic, though it may be a case of strange fruit. The details follow. 

Since last October’s start of the current war between Israel and Palestine, the Israeli armed forces have killed over one percent of Gaza’s population, with 63,000 wounded. Forty percent of the dead are children. Add the women killed, and the proportion rises to 70 percent. Among those still living, everyone is food insecure, and one-half are starving. Ever since December, easily preventable contagions have been spreading. Almost all their homes have been reduced to rubble. Ever since the Israeli authorities began restricting food, fuel, and medical supplies to Gaza starting in 2007, anemia and stunted growth among Gaza’s children have been commonplace. In one particularly grisly incident in December, an Israeli detachment ran bulldozers over sick and injured people who were taking refuge from bombardment in a hospital, crushing them to death. Among the dead were children.

If you were Palestinian, how would you respond?   Imagine the same proportions in the United States: 9,300,000 wounded and 3,900,000 dead; of the dead, 1,500,000 children and 1,200,000 women; nationwide, all of us food insecure, with 165,000,000 starving. With almost all our hospitals flattened and almost no food, fuel, clean water, or medical supplies allowed in, how would we minister to our ill-fed, sick, and wounded? How would we deal with increasing disease? With almost all our homes destroyed, where would we shelter, now that it’s winter? Where would we put the corpses, and who would be left strong and available enough to bury them? As an American, how would you respond? 

Then there’s the West Bank. Ever since 1967, Israeli settlers have been steadily shoving Palestinians off the land, demolishing their homes, uprooting their olive orchards, and from time to time shooting to kill or merely blow away their knees. This has been going on under the protection of the Israeli armed forces, who have joined in the shooting every so often, and who arrest and detain Palestinians without a formal indictment or due process as a matter of routine. Those so detained have often spent years in prison. It should come as no surprise that from time to time, desperate Palestinians have replied with gunsmoke of their own, on a scale far smaller than what Israeli settlers and the IDF have wrought. 

In response, the UN General Assembly passed a series of resolutions in 1982, with only the United States and Israel voting no. Here are excerpts from those resolutions:  

_{·         That Israel desist from the removal and resettlement of Palestinian refugees in the  territory occupied by Israel since 1967 and from the destruction of their shelters.}  

_{·         That Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territory, including Jerusalem, and in the    occupied Syrian Golan, are illegal.}  

_{·         That all measures and actions taken by Israel in the occupied Palestinian territory  are in violation of the Geneva Convention.}  

_{·         That Israel’s practices in the occupied Palestinian territory, its diversion of water  resources, its depletion of natural and economic resources of the occupied territories,  and its displacement of the population of those territories, are without legal validity.}  

_{·         That the Israeli occupation is contradictory to the basic requirements for the social  and economic development of the Palestinian people.   That hunger constitutes an outrage and a violation of human dignity.}  

_{·         That historical injustices have contributed to the poverty, marginalization, social  exclusion, and instability that affect many people in the world.}  

_{·         That no derogation from the prohibition of racial discrimination, genocide, and  the crime of apartheid is permitted.} 

Lest all the foregoing seem like special pleading, consider this: how many of you have donated to Oxfam, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Doctors Without Borders, or the International Red Cross? All five of these organizations see the Israeli government’s actions in Gaza as war crime, ethnic cleansing, or genocide.  Meanwhile, the United States continues its unrestricted weapons shipments to the Israeli armed forces, all paid for with American taxpayers’ money. It all adds up.  As was once written long ago, where our treasure is, there lie our hearts also.  

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_{John Raby is a retired history teacher and conscientious objector who is currently co-chair of Peace Action Maine. From 2014 to 2021, when he lived in New Hampshire, he was active with New Hampshire Peace Action and wrote the clean energy policy for New London, New Hampshire. He centers his activism around war and peace, environmental, and social justice issues.}