The people of Gaza have been held in an open air prison for 16 years. They have been deprived of their freedom, subjected to round after round of Israeli airstrikes and shot in the streets for protesting. On Oct. 7th, a coalition of Palestinian resistance forces led by Hamas launched an unprecedented attack against Israel. Roughly 1300 Israelis were killed and nearly 200 are still being held hostage. The Israeli retaliation has been brutal; Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, ordered a “complete siege” of the Gaza strip, saying “no electricity, no food, no water, no gas.” The UN now reports that over 4000 Palestinians have been killed, including 11 journalists and 28 healthcare workers. Many in the Macalester campus community have lost friends and loved ones in the past week, and we are all grieving. 

At the same time, we know that there will be no just or lasting peace until apartheid and occupation end and there is freedom, equality and justice for everyone. Jewish safety is inextricably linked to Palestinian safety; none of us will be free until we all are. Israel is gearing up to carry out unspeakable violence and destruction. Over 1 million Palestinians have been displaced in Gaza, including some who were bombed on their way South through routes that Israel promised would be safe. Gazan hospitals are being deprived of resources they need to treat the sick and wounded by Israeli bombardment and several Gazan hospitals and schools have been bombed. Statements from Israeli leaders in the days after the attack describing Palestinians as “human animals,” claiming civilians are “responsible” for the attack because “they could have risen up,” and promising to inflict revenge that will “reverberate for generations” make clear that this response is not about Israeli safety. As Israel prepares for an imminent ground invasion, Prime Minister Benjamin Netenyahu declared that the country was engaged in a war between the “children of light and the children of darkness, between humanity and the law of the jungle.” As Jews, we know genocidal rhetoric when we see it.

We all must make a choice. Will we stand for collective punishment or stand up for our collective humanity? Will we as Americans be complacent in the face of the indiscriminate killing of Palestinians with our tax dollars or demand better from our government? “Never again” is now.

A Very Brief History of the Conflict

To see the real origins of this conflict, we must look back to the early Zionist movement and the formation of the state of Israel and the Nakba. The Zionist movement for a Jewish national homeland in Palestine began at the end of the 19th century. While Zionists started immigrating to Palestine in increasing numbers, leaders of the movement courted powerful people in powerful countries. They achieved a major victory with the Balfour Declaration, which pledged Britain’s support for a Jewish state in Palestine and was included verbatim in the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine. The Zionist community in Palestine, made up mostly of Jews from Eastern Europe, organized over the next two decades to create what Palestinian historian Rashid Khalidi calls a “para-state,” complete with militias trained by the British during the Arab revolt in 1936-1939. 

In the wake of the Holocaust, the UN announced a plan to partition Palestine, with roughly half of the land going to Jews and half to Palestinians, a proportion that did not match the population. With hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees in Europe who could not go back to where they came from (often because their homes were no longer there), UN support for a Jewish state outside of Europe solved the “Jewish question” without forcing world powers to reckon with the history and reality of antisemitism. 

Well before the UN plan would have gone into effect, Zionist militias began dispossessing Palestinians of their land in both Jewish and Palestinian territory as drawn by the partition plan. British soldiers refused to intervene. Neighboring Arab countries waited until Israel officially declared independence on May 14, 1948, to launch an invasion to defend the people of Palestine. The UN estimates that roughly 750,000 Palestinians were displaced by the end of the war in what Palestinians refer to as the Nakba, or “catastrophe.”

Today, after numerous other conflicts, Palestinians are mostly confined to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Israel has maintained a military occupation of the West Bank, illegal under international law, since 1967. One of the most prominent features of the occupation is a regime of Palestinian home demolitions. Human Rights Watch found that Israel issues 100 times more home demolition orders than building permits to Palestinians living under direct control in Area C of the West Bank. The situation in Gaza is worse. Israel and Egypt have jointly maintained a siege of Gaza since 2007, heavily restricting the flow of goods like water, food and fuel. Gazans have lived in an open air prison for 16 years, with almost no one allowed in or out.

Who is involved?

The major Palestinian organization that led the attack against Israel is a group called Hamas, a militant Islamist force that has been in control of the Gaza strip since 2007, when Israel ended its direct occupation. Although the founding documents of Hamas are rife with antisemitism, Israel largely “turned a blind eye” to its rise, even partially funding it in the early days, because military leaders saw it as less of a threat than the more secular Palestinian Liberation Organization. Current Israeli leaders have described Hamas as an “asset” in recent years because it hurts the Palestinian cause on the international stage. While Hamas is the main group involved in this attack, it is not the only group. The leftist Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, two leftist militant groups, were also involved in the fighting. Additionally, in the West Bank, the organization Lions Den from Nablus has been engaged in fighting Israeli forces in the Nablus area, as settler-violence has increased in the past weeks and days. 

On the Israeli side, far-right Netanyahu was recently reelected, alongside a coalition of extreme Zionists and ultra-orthodox. This new coalition is the most far-right in Israeli history and includes, for the first time, followers of the extremist Meir Kahane, who in the 70s and 80s, “preached genocide against Palestinians and carried out terrorist attacks.” Ministers in the government include Bezalel Smotrich, the Minister for Finance and self-described “fascist homophobe,” who denies Palestinian people’s existence, telling Arab members of Knesset they were “here by mistake, it’s a mistake that Ben-Gurion didn’t throw you out in 1948;” and Itamar Ben-Gvir, the Minister of National Security and member of the Jewish Power Party, who has been convicted of multiple charges, including “supporting a terrorist organization and incitement to racism,” for his association with Kahanist organizations. This government has escalated attacks in the West Bank (more on that below), pushed an anti-democratic and highly controversial judicial reform agenda and taken legal steps towards total annexation of Area C of the West Bank.

Why Now

The Hamas-led attack was an unprecedented level of violence for the Israeli public, who have never been this vulnerable during a conflict before. For Palestinians, who have faced much worse in the “Hundred Years’ War” on their people, this attack was by no means unprovoked. Food, electricity and clean water shortages are nothing new for the 2 million Gazans who have been cut off from the world in Gaza by a land, air and water blockade jointly maintained by Israel and Egypt since 2007. After decades of bombings and siege, the median age of a Palestinian in Gaza is just 18 years old. The UN predicted in 2012 that the Gaza strip would be completely unlivable by 2020.

The desperate situation is not unique to Gaza. Culminating in a deadly pogrom in Huwara in late February, violence from Israeli settlers in the West Bank has been on the rise with the backing of Israeli military and police. Since 2022, settler violence has forced over 1000 Palestinians out of their homes in the West Bank. Resistance by the Lions Den in the fall of 2022 led to a multi-week siege of the city of Nablus. As another 1000 Palestinians faced forced eviction in Masafer Yatta, Minister Ben Gvir outlawed the Palestinian flag. Related to Hamas’s stated reason for their attack, Israeli police once again brutalized Palestinian worshippers at al-Aqsa Mosque, one of the holiest sites in all of Islam, this past Ramadan.

In the face of ever-worsening conditions, Palestinians had their backs against the wall. As Israel has continued to jail political dissidents, Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg insightfully answered the question “where is the Palestinian Gandhi?” with this: “They’re in Israeli jail.” International law has not protected them, non-violent resistance has not protected them, the Oslo accords have not protected them, Israeli normalization with Arab governments has not protected them.  With all of these avenues closed off, Israel should not be surprised that caged people would try to break free. 

Conclusion:

This conflict is now expanding beyond just Gaza and Israel. In a spiral of retaliation, the Israeli army has bombed Lebanon and Syria in response to attacks from groups within these countries in defense of the people of Gaza. Of course, there are new developments every day. We have been disappointed by calls from US officials for Israel to simply follow international law given that it’s already been broken: the ongoing collective punishment of all people in Gaza and confirmation from Human Right Watch that Israel has made use of banned white phosphorus chemical weapons in Lebanon and Gaza are both war crimes. 

We urge you to call your representatives and demand an immediate ceasefire and end to the deadly siege of Gaza. If we have learned anything from the history of this conflict, it is that Israel will not be restrained in its retaliation. Israeli leaders have said as much themselves. To paraphrase Eva Borgwardt, the political director of IfNotNow, 1000 Israeli deaths is too many. How many Palestinian deaths will be too many? Never again is now.

To materially support urgent relief to Palestinian civilians on the ground, we also ask you to donate to the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund (PCRF) and Doctors Without Borders (MSF), and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees.