Isabella Cronin
With support from Dina Alsaffar and Trish Siplon
As the world approaches one year since witnessing newfound horrors in Gaza, the West Bank, and now Lebanon, here are four things you need to know to understand what is happening.
First, the extent of Israel’s onslaught against the Palestinian people goes well beyond the numbers being reported. The number of Palestinians who have been killed, are missing, injured, and even kidnapped are far more than what we are being shown (Google The Lancet).
The United States is just as guilty for being the supplying hand in this mass slaughtering. The right to freedom is just that, a right. Yet our democracy, which preaches freedom for all, is supplying billions of dollars to assist in killing families and children and destroying infrastructure and all forms of livelihood. Often America puts ethnicity and nationality before humanness; this is a problem.
Second, because the implications of this genocide are not just a “Middle East Problem,” they affect you too. The common belief among our society is that the Middle East is always at war, and that the deaths of civilians are just collateral damage in a warring region that will never know peace.
This could not be further from the truth. Israel has committed crime, violence, and destruction, even before the events of October 7 (which they were informed about a year in advance), with your U.S. tax dollars.
This genocide has even affected the U.S. Presidential election; the Uncommitted Movement is strong and Arab-Americans have repeatedly made it clear that they will not vote for Trump or for Harris because she will only continue to play Biden’s game in the Middle East.
Third, have you considered the profoundly negative environmental impacts that Israel has created in Palestine? Water and sanitation infrastructure has been decimated, allowing a great spread of communicable diseases like polio in the Gaza Strip.
Olive trees, lemon trees, and strawberry fields have been destroyed because Israel has been dropping 80,000 tons of bombs on Gaza, which has exacerbated the threat of starvation and malnutrition in Palestine. This is a war crime. This is also just one of the many genocidal tactics Israel continues to implement.
Israeli forces allow settlers to block and attack aid trucks and destroy what is being carried. To make matters worse, parachutes of aid are sent into the sea where people have drowned trying to get to them. Other parachutes have been dropped directly onto people, including children, crushing them to death.
Finally, remember that these are human beings. Maybe they are not your family members or people you have connections with, but they are someone else’s everything. I grew up in New Hampshire and have no familial ties to Palestine, but I watched people I grew close to become consumed by this genocide when studying in Jordan. My friends and colleagues were checking their phones during every free minute to see if their family, friends, or anybody they knew were still alive.
After years of consistent destruction and genocidal tactics employed by Israel in the Occupied Territories, it is about time you paid attention, whether you have any personal connections or not. You are a human being, so are they.
With everything unimaginable that they’re facing, if you, Saint Mike’s students, faculty, and staff, do not feel heartbroken and deeply shattered by the injustices happening in Palestine, Lebanon, and around the world, then it’s not them I feel sorry for—it’s you. What a terribly numbing state to be in.
Of all the actions you can take, at the very least, let your heart reject this injustice. Do not become so morally apathetic, selfishly ignorant, and desensitized, that this means nothing to you.
Do not let your hearts get so dull and rotten, that the images of dismembered bodies and crushed bones mean nothing to you.
Do not let your souls become so cold that the cries of fathers and mothers pulling their children from under the rubble, that the explosions of bombs and pocket pagers fully annihilating all forms of life, mean nothing to you.
We are Saint Mike’s—we care about justice and dignity, don’t we? Check yourself.
Check your heart—is it dead?
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