I have limited my previous comments about the war in Gaza because I have felt better qualified to write about other issues. However, I am qualified to write as a human being. I don’t see how any thoughtful, caring human can excuse the callous, cold-hearted decisions and actions that have led to the images we see from the war in Gaza. The starving children in hospitals and in their mothers' arms. The desperately hungry children crowded around food aid stations with outstretched arms, hoping to get some morsel or portion of food to take back to their families.
Last night on the evening news, I looked into the eyes of a little girl, six or seven years old, with her arms outstretched, hoping to get some of the soup being dipped from the big pot before it ran empty. Two little boys climbed into the empty pot, scraping the sides and bottom, desperate for anything left that might be edible. My heart broke…thinking that my country, the United States of America, supports and shares responsibilities for these cruel, heartless acts against helpless people.
Israel’s indiscriminate bombardment has destroyed 70% of all structures in Gaza. The UN estimates that 92% of the housing units have been damaged or destroyed. Most of the territory’s hospitals and primary health care facilities have been bombed. More than 1,500 health care workers have been killed, as well as 336 UN staff. Gaza’s infrastructure has been totally devastated, including almost 90% of water and sanitation facilities. Raw sewage now runs all over Gaza. Most of the roads have been destroyed. Gaza’s educational system has been obliterated.
Still, the people refuse to leave their homeland, so Israel is trying to starve them into leaving, or maybe it's just revenge for the Oct 7 atrocities by the Palestinian terrorist group, Hamas. As Bernie Sanders put in his speech on the Senate floor opposing the sale of weapons to Israel to be used against Palestinian civilians, "There is no military purpose in starving thousands and thousands of children. Let us be clear: This is not an effort to win a war; this is an effort to destroy a people."
I know that Congress will continue to fund the Israeli war against the Palestinian people. They feel it is in their political interest to do so because of the strength of the Israeli lobby in the U.S. They have done so in the past under the Biden administration and will continue to do so under the Trump administration, but "Not in My Name."
And it is not anti-sematic to oppose Israel's starvation strategy in Gaza. By May 2024, the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs Poll found that 30% of American Jews already agreed with accusations of Israel committing "genocide" in the Gaza Strip and the situation has only gotten worse since. It is not unpatriotic, but our patriotic duty, to oppose our government, Democrat or Republican, when we know in our heart it is doing something ethically and morally wrong. A July 2025 Gallop poll found that 60% of Americans oppose current Israeli actions in Gaza.
Israel claims it is only doing what is necessary to defend itself from Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist group that attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, killing 1,195 people, including 815 civilians, and taking 251 hostages.“ No one opposes Israel's right to defend itself. I don't feel any obligation to repeat that defense, as it seems to precede every statement about the war in Gaza.
As of 30 July 2025, over 62,700 people have been reported killed in the Gaza war according to the Gaza Health Ministry, as well as 217 journalists and media workers, 20 academics, and over 224 humanitarian aid workers, a number that includes 179 UN Relief Workers. Scholars have estimated that 80% of Palestinians killed are civilians. A study by a UN agency that verified fatalities from three independent sources found that 70% of the Palestinians killed in residential buildings or similar housing were women and children.”
The Israeli government claims it is targeting Hamas militants, but these acts are ethnic cleansing, at least, and according to a UN special inquiry, genocide of the Palestinian people. Israel claims that hospitals, schools, and sacred places, which they have systematically destroyed, were being used by Hamas. They accuse doctors of aiding Hamas by treating the sick and wounded, without regard to any affiliation. Even two prominent Israeli rights groups, B'Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, have said their country is committing genocide in Gaza.
Israel has also taken this opportunity, with unconditional U.S. support, to launch attacks on Lebanon, Yemen, and Iran, all of whom had supported Hamas in defending Palestine by launching missiles and drones against Israel. It’s easy to understand Israel’s aggressive defense in the face of the persistent denials of its right to exist as a nation by neighboring countries. However, how is this any different from Israel’s persistent denial of the Palestinian’s right to exist as a separate nation? Israel has adamantly opposed a “two-state” solution to the conflict. The difference is that Israel has the financial and military support of the United States.
Between late 2023 and early 2025, Israel released approximately 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees in exchange for 33 Israeli hostages freed by Hamas under a ceasefire deal. How are the Palestinian prisoners and detainees different from the Israeli hostages? Amnesty International, B'Tselem, and other human rights organizations have strongly condemned their detention as a violation of international law. The primary difference seems to be that there were a lot more detainees held by Israel than hostages held by Hamas, and the Palestinian detainees were not all captured at once, like on October 7, or being held under a constant bombardment and attack.
Millions more people, not only in Palestine or the Middle East but all around the world, will be taught to hate Israelis and Americans for generations, perhaps centuries, to come, because of the complicity of the U.S. with Israel in the annihilation of Gaza and attempted genocide of Palestinians.
I can't keep the president or Congress from doing it, but Not in My Name. The government cannot legitimately fund this war against humanity in the name of the American people and certainly not in my name.
John Ikerd
https://www.sanders.senate.gov/.../prepared-remarks.../
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REoVXbmyN5s
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Gaza_war...