Catherine Buntin is CAPA’s President.
From an American Nurse
We have done everything possible to protest our government sending weapons to Israel to no avail.
The only hope for stopping this genocidal war sits in your hands, the people of Israel. You can organize to say “Not in our Name” to Netanyahu and your extremist right wing government.
So far, the only protests in Israel have been organized around the remaining Israeli hostages. While that may be understandable, it is not the whole story while over 2,000 innocent Palestinians languish in your tortuous prisons. They too are hostages, and they are voiceless.
The Jewish faith does not condone ethnic cleansing. Your care and your voice must bring down this government which would annihilate another people. Hamas has said it fights to end the occupation, for their people to be free. They will not lay down their arms any more than Israel would lay down its arms. This appears to be a war of racist intent, one of white superiority. A war of power over the powerless and for a major land grab.
Killing civilians is a war crime, be it 120 innocent or 50,000 innocents. Hamas was wrong and what Israel has done is unconscionable.
Netanyahu does not intend to ever allow a two-state solution. He has demonstrated his intention of stealing land from several of your neighbors, including Lebanon and Syria, and Gaza and the West Bank, to create the “Greater Israel”. He is proud to show his new map of the future. I must ask, do you condone this?
He has also demonstrated that he will execute, at will, any leaders in other countries. Is this the world we want to live in– a lawless world where tyrants can take you out with drones from the sky, while you sleep?
The slaughter in Gaza is inhumane and the Israeli soldiers who have killed and maimed these people will live out their lives with deep emotional and spiritual scars. And how will the world see Israelis from now on? Will they care about your history, your pain, your suffering? Hardly. You have no moral ground to stand on now and neither do we, we who have supplied your bombs.
There are starving people next door to you. I weep—even want to scream—for the beautiful children starving and dying a painful death. And for their parents. Please care enough to bring down your government– You can stop this war.
M. Catherine Buntin, RN, MS, MPH