Opinion: On Palestine, or the Violence of Colonization

Since October, it has greatly troubled me that the Deerfield community has largely been silent on the Israel-Palestine conflict. My own action is overdue, and I hope the following article offers a jumping-off point for us to shake off our reticence. I understand mine is a strong opinion, but I believe it to be founded in a universal and fundamental care for humanity and human life, as well as an opposition to colonialism—the root of modern strife in Palestine—and the violence it necessitates. 

A Brief History of Zionism and Palestine

Zionism, the movement behind the creation of the Jewish state of Israel, is a colonial project, and it always has been. In Theodor Herzl’s 1896 Der Judenstaat, widely agreed to be one of Zionism’s founding documents, Herzl expressly predicated Zionism as a form of colonialism and even debated whether colonizing Argentina or Palestine would work best.[1] Zionism pertains to not just the right of Jews to self-determination—a right that should be universally recognized—but the means to achieve a homeland through colonization.[2]

 Many Jews at the time rejected Zionism: from Jewish anarchists to ultra-Orthodox Rabbis, criticism of Herzl’s colonial proposition proliferated at the turn of the 20th Century.[3] Indeed, much of the international force behind Zionism, Herzl recognized, came from antisemitism itself. “The anti-Semites will become our most dependable friends, the anti-Semitic countries our allies,” he wrote in his late-19th-century diary.[4] These anti-semitic supporters of Zionism wanted a Jewish state not for the sake of Jewish equality, but to rid their own territory of Jewish people. 

For many hundreds of years leading up to World War I, the geographic region of Palestine was inhabited almost entirely by Arabs—most of them Muslim, some of them Semitic Jews. In 1916 the United Kingdom, through a series of agreements dubbed the McMahon–Hussein Correspondence, promised the Arabs a unified state stretching from Aleppo to Aden in return for an Arab revolt against the Ottoman Empire.[5] The Arabs successfully upheld their end of the deal: the Sharifian Army turned the tides against the Ottomans and led the capture of Damascus. Britain, however, betrayed the Arabs by signing multiple covert treaties including the 1917 Balfour Declaration, which promised a home for Jews in Palestine and directly contradicted Britain’s previous promise to the Arabs.[6] 

Thus, under British rule, Zionist colonization of Palestine began, precipitating a bloody and brutal century-long string of violence; in each conflict, Israel’s control over historic Palestine increased. In 1917, 97% of Palestinian land was inhabited by Arabs.[7] When the British Mandate expired in 1948, Zionist settlers declared an independent state and began the Nakba, or ‘catastrophe,’ an ethnic cleansing campaign that violently displaced 770,000 Palestinians of their land and killed 15,000.[8] By the end of the offensive, the newly recognized state of Israel arrested control over 78% of Palestine.[9] The land they stole has never been returned, an Arab state never formed, and Israel has continued to occupy and encroach further upon the remaining Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.[10] Today, 80% of Gazans, still subject to vast strife, are already refugees of the Nakba.[11] 

Zionist colonization is the root of the ongoing conflict in Palestine in the same way that every colonial enterprise requires violence. Violence is inevitable not only on the part of the colonized—who will always cling to their land and resist occupation violently—but on that of the colonizers too, who must enforce their occupation with the sword and gun. The colonizers are the instigators. In the words of French Afro-Caribbean philosopher Frantz Fanon, “Decolonization is the encounter between two congenitally antagonistic forces that in fact owe their singularity to the kind of reification secreted and nurtured by the colonial situation. Their first confrontation was colored by violence and their cohabitation—or rather the exploitation of the colonized by the colonizer—continued at the point of the bayonet and under cannon fire.”[12] The embarkation of colonization is the original violent act. To assume Zionism could complete its conquest without violence is to absurdly propose that Arab Palestinians would willfully cede all their rightful territory to invading settlers. 

Many early Zionists outwardly recognized this: In 1922 Zionist leader Ze’ev Jabotinsky—who also defined Zionism as colonization—wrote, “Every indigenous people will resist alien settlers as long as they see any hope of ridding themselves of the danger of foreign settlement. That is what the Arabs in Palestine are doing.”[13] 

He continued, “Zionist colonization, even the most restricted, must either be terminated or carried out in defiance of the will of the native population. This colonization can, therefore, continue and develop only under the protection of a force independent of the local population – an iron wall which the native population cannot break through. This is, in toto, our policy towards the Arabs.”[14] 

Zionists knew that their invasion of Palestine would be nothing if not bloody and violent. They continued regardless. 

Who Started it?

There was no ceasefire on October 6, and Hamas’ attack did not start this ‘war,’ because the conflict has been raging continuously ever since the colonization of Palestine in the 1900s. I could trace Hamas’s violence back to the original and explicit violence of Zionism, but for more recent provocation, one needs only to turn to the humanitarian disaster Israel perpetuates in Gaza, which has existed as an open-air prison ever since Israel withdrew from the strip in 2005.

Gazans are subject to the stifling oppression of a complete Israeli blockade; the vast majority of their drinking water is unfit for human consumption, and they suffer from nearly 50% unemployment.[15] The Israeli military has supplemented this desolation with a policy often described as ‘mowing the grass’ by bombing Gaza continuously to ‘cut back the weeds.’[16] Between 2008 and 2020, they killed nearly 6,000 Palestinians.[17]

The occupation of both Gaza and the West Bank is apartheid, and not just in my judgment: numerous international organizations, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Israel’s own B’Tselem all qualify Israel as an apartheid state. 

Current Events

On October 7, 2023, in response to Israeli occupation, blockades, illegal settlements, and imprisonment of thousands of Palestinians, the terrorist group Hamas launched an attack across the Gazan border into Israel. The Israeli Defense Forces—a nuclear superpower and one of the most powerful militaries in the world—despite harboring a high-tech, multibillion-dollar defense system along the border and possessing precise details of the attack many months in advance, suffered a near complete intelligence and defense failure.[18] A group of a few thousand Hamas militiamen managed to enter Israel, where they killed 1200 and took around 250 hostages.

Within the day, Israel responded by launching one of the most brutal bombing campaigns in modern history. In the first week, over 6,000 bombs were dropped on Gaza, equivalent to the most brutal year of the United State’s bombing of Afghanistan in 2019.[19] As of April, Israel has unleashed the equivalent firepower of five Hiroshima-level nuclear bombs on the crowded population in Gaza.[20] They have broken international law by demolishing hospitals, schools, and civilian infrastructure, often in remarkably targeted attacks.[21] Israel’s bombing campaign and later ground invasion have killed over 34,000 Palestinians, including 14,000 children.[22] Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant ordered, “a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.”[23] Through widespread violence against civilians and Gallant’s self-described mass starvation plan, Israel has made Gaza, in the words of UNICEF, “The most dangerous place in the world to be a child.”[24] 

At its best, the Israeli army neglects to maintain standards for avoiding civilian deaths. At its worst, it has precisely targeted civilians, schools, and hospitals; murdered hundreds of journalists and healthcare workers; and even opened fire on civilians gathering to receive much-needed aid.[25] In one particular event, Israeli soldiers handcuffed, tortured, and killed 30 Palestinians, then left their bodies to rot in a school building.[26] Last week, another collection of nearly 400 mass graves was discovered under Gazan hospitals, where evidence suggests many were executed, tortured, or buried alive by Israel’s military.[27] Also recently, an Israeli precision missile struck members of Chef José Andres’ World Central Kitchen (WCK), who were traveling in a clearly marked aid convoy that had communicated its non-combatant status with the Israeli military. When volunteers fled to another vehicle in the caravan to seek shelter, they were hit again, then again. Israel killed seven WCK volunteers.[28]

Genocide

The Israeli government is, by its own accounts, committing genocide of the Gazan population. There are too many to name here, but the nonprofit Law for Palestine has compiled a list of over 500 instances of genocidal rhetoric and incitement on the part of Israeli officials [29] I invite you to explore the full collection, but I’ll list some particularly enlightening examples below. 

 In October, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced, “You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible,”[30] invoking a biblical passage wherein God directed Israel to “go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep.”[31] This is a direct call for genocide and unconditional butchery from the very top of Israel’s government. 

“Bomb without distinction!” echoed Israeli Knesset member Revital Gottlieb, on Twitter in October.[32] 

“Those are animals, they have no right to exist. I am not debating the way it will happen, but they need to be exterminated,” Israel Minister of Education Yoav Kisch said of the Palestinian people on Israel’s Channel 14 the next week.[33]

“There are no innocent people in the Gaza Strip,” Member of the Israeli Knesset Avigdor Lieberman said in November, inciting collective punishment and inculpating 1.1 million Gazan children.[34]

Blatant as they may be, you don’t even need to heed these words to see the crimes Israel commits; most importantly the Israeli military’s actions are genocidal, through mass civilian murder; the bombing and blocking of humanitarian aid; and the dismantling of Gaza’s health and infrastructure systems. The Israeli military has followed through on a systematic destruction of Gaza, turning the strip onto, in the words of one reporter, “An uninhabitable moonscape.”[35] My description of Israel’s invasion as genocidal is not unique: in March, A UN report found “reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating the commission of the crime of genocide against Palestinians as a group in Gaza has been met.”[36] Prominent Israeli historian Raz Segal goes even further, calling it, “A textbook case of Genocide.”[37] That was back in October; since them, 32,000 more Palestinians have been killed. 

Hamas and Netanyahu

Why do I primarily offer depictions of Israeli crimes, when Hamas commits them too? I hope and trust that the vast majority of my audience already knows Hamas as a brutal terrorist organization—only a fringe 4% of Americans believe Hamas’ attack was acceptable to any extent [38]—but I fear we haven’t yet come to similar conclusions about Israel’s actions, nor have we recognized Zionist colonization as the source of both atrocities. 

The United Nations affirms the right for a people to resist apartheid, “By all available means, including armed struggle.”[39] Armed struggle, of course, does not justify the killing of civilians on the part of Hamas (indeed, nothing does), but if we are to condemn Hamas’ cruelty—and we unequivocally should—we must also offer tenfold criticism of Israel’s actions. After all, the Israeli army has killed, tortured, and imprisoned exponentially more civilians than Hamas has, and they continue to do so to this day; as an American, my tax dollars are spent funding Israel’s atrocities, not Hamas’s. 

Moreover, the monetary support Hamas used to launch its attack in October was explicitly greenlit by Israel’s government. “Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and sending money to Hamas,” Prime Minister Netanyahu said in 2019, “This is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.”[40] The Israeli PM has followed through, encouraging the continued funding of Hamas by Qatar.[41] 

By propping up Hamas, Netanyahu destabilizes the revolutionaries of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and divides Gaza from the West Bank, hampering the creation of a peaceful and unified Palestinian front. Indeed, Netanyahu’s priority is not, as he claims, the safety of his citizens, nor even the extermination of Hamas. Instead, he seeks primarily to dismantle Palestinian statehood at any cost, even if it means funneling millions of dollars into the terrorist group determined to attack his own country. 

Propaganda

The Israeli military weaves tenuous lies to cover up their ongoing slaughter. With a critical eye, these are quite facile to debunk, but Israel’s word is often taken at face value, wreaking havoc on Palestinian support. 

When Israel, with no corroboration, claimed 12 UN workers had participated in Hamas’ attack, the international community rushed to halt funding to The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), one of the few aid organizations able to provide lifesaving aid to besieged Gaza.[42] A recent independent UN review found no evidence for these accusations has ever been shared by Israel,[43] and further investigation by the UN has testified that Israel tortured UNRWA staff to extract false incriminations through “beatings, sleep deprivation, sexual abuse, and threats of sexual violence against both men and women.”[44] This treatment is, of course, a war crime. 

At the moment, half of Americans don’t even know that Palestinian deaths outnumber those of Israelis, despite the exponential gap in mortality.[45] This is disturbing; as a public, we are incredibly misinformed on the topic of Gaza. I see this as an intended effect, not a media failure; the American public becomes blind to the atrocity we actively fund. If you have ever looked back at genocides, war crimes, or apartheid of the past and thought, ‘How could we have let this happen?’ This is how. Fueled by ignorance, misdirection, and apathy, Israel’s annihilation continues. As Americans, we fund it. 

The United States

Not only has the United States continued to hand Israel’s military $3.8 billion annually, but President Biden has also spent the last months supporting their genocide with nearly unwavering conviction. Though Congress itself has continued to authorize billions of dollars in military aid, Biden has even bypassed Congress to approve bomb sales to Israel.[46] The White House has, in its own words, drawn “no red lines” for Israeli aggression, giving no conditions for the money and militia we hand them.[47] Internationally, the U.S. remains the most staunch defender of Israel’s genocide, acting as the sole veto for three UN ceasefire resolutions so far.[48] 

In all likelihood, at any moment since the start of Israel’s invasion, Biden could have ended the massacre by telling Israel to stand down, or else the U.S. would withdraw monetary and military support. Even if Israel planned to continue the current slaughter without the ideological and material backing of the United States, the absence of American weapons and investment would drastically limit their destruction and killings in Gaza. There’s a precedent for U.S. curtailment of Israeli aggression too: in 1982 Ronald Reagan ended an Israeli bombing operation in Lebanon through a quick phone call to then Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin. Raegan labeled Israel’s campaign a “holocaust.”[49] Contrastingly, at the time a young Joe Biden “said he would go even further than Israel, adding that he’d forcefully fend off anyone who sought to invade his country, even if that meant killing women or children,” Begin recalled.[50] Even Begin—the person leading the bombing of civilians—found Biden far too comfortable with the civilian death. To the present, Biden has demonstrably shown little interest in using any of his leverage to do the same as Reagan. On the same day he called Netanyahu to ask for a temporary ceasefire, the American president authorized the sale of more bombs to Israel, where they will proceed to fall, like thousands before them, on the starving population of Gaza.[51]

Conclusions: Our Power

This is where I stand after much research, introspection, and grief. In May, along with hundreds of thousands of Americans disgusted with our participation in Israel’s massacre of the Palestinian people, I will vote uncommitted in my Democratic primary. My only and final request, Deerfield, is that we not shy away from speaking our minds. Let’s remind our government and institutions that they exist for our sake, not the other way around, and that when we collectively want the imperialism of the American military-industrial complex to end its carnage, it shall end.

 Above all else, remember that every other human’s life is just as sacred as yours or mine, no matter how different they may look, no matter how far away they live. Israelis are humans. Palestinians are humans. Humans deserve life, joy, and freedom from colonization, and they ought to—no, they must—work to grant all others the same. The oppression and slaughter of innocent civilians, not only in Palestine but around the globe, should be a pain felt sharply by all of us. 

Works Cited 

1. Herzl, Theodor. The Jewish State (Der Judenstaat). Dover Publications, 2006. 
2. COHEN, STUART A. “Ideological Components in Anglo-Jewish Opposition to Zionism before and during the First World War: A Restatement.” Jewish Historical Studies, vol. 30, 1987, pp. 149–62. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/29779843. Accessed 30 Apr. 2024.
3. Wheatcroft, Geoffrey. “Zionism’s Colonial Roots.” The National Interest, no. 125, 2013, pp. 9–15. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/42896509. Accessed 30 Apr. 2024.
4. Massad, Joseph. “Zionism, Anti-Semitism and Colonialism.” Al Jazeera, Al Jazeera, 24 Dec. 2012, www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2012/12/24/zionism-anti-semitism-and-colonialism. 
5. McMahon, A. H. “Correspondence between Sir Henry McMahon, His Majesty’s High Commissioner at Cairo, and the Sherif Hussein of Mecca: July 1915-March 1916.” Google Books, 22 pages, books.google.com/books/about/Correspondence_Between_Sir_Henry_McMahon.html?id=9uxNtgEACAAJ. Accessed 29 Apr. 2024. 
6. Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. “Balfour Declaration”. Encyclopedia Britannica, 17 Mar. 2024, https://www.britannica.com/event/Balfour-Declaration. Accessed 29 April 2024.

7, 9-10. “Animated Map of Israel Taking over Historic Palestine – Palestine Remix.” Al Jazeera, remix.aljazeera.com/aje/PalestineRemix/maps_main.html. Accessed 29 Apr. 2024. 

8. “About the Nakba – Question of Palestine.” United Nations, United Nations, www.un.org/unispal/about-the-nakba/. Accessed 29 Apr. 2024. 
9. Frelick, Bill. “No Exit in Gaza.” Human Rights Watch, 11 Apr. 2024, www.hrw.org/news/2024/04/01/no-exit-gaza. 
10. Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth. Grove Press, 2004. 

13-14. Jabotinsky, Ze’ev. “‘The Iron Wall.’” Jewish Virtual Library, www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/quot-the-iron-wall-quot. Accessed 29 Apr. 2024. 

15. OCHA. “The Gaza Strip: The Humanitarian Impact of 15 Years of Blockade.” UNICEF Middle East and North Africa, June 2022, www.unicef.org/mena/documents/gaza-strip-humanitarian-impact-15-years-blockade-june-2022. 
16. Taylor, Adam. “The History of Israel ‘Mowing the Grass’ in Gaza .” The Washington Post, 14 May 2021, www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/05/14/israel-gaza-history/. 
17. McCarthy, Niall, and Richter, Felix. “Infographic: The Human Cost of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.” Statista Daily Data, 12 May 2021, www.statista.com/chart/16516/israeli-palestinian-casualties-by-in-gaza-and-the-west-bank/. 
18. Bergman, Ronen, and Adam Goldman. “Israel Knew Hamas’s Attack Plan More than a Year Ago.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 1 Dec. 2023, www.nytimes.com/2023/11/30/world/middleeast/israel-hamas-attack-intelligence.html?campaign_id=307&emc=edit_igwb_20231201&instance_id=109019&nl=israel-hamas-war-briefing&regi_id=64680187&segment_id=151409&te=1&user_id=1e9c9142246ac5796beabc2f49486341. 
19. Loveluck, Louisa, et al. “As Gaza Civilian Death Toll Soars, Secrecy Shrouds Israel’s Targeting Process – the Washington Post.” The Washington Post, 5 Nov. 2023, www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/11/05/israel-strike-targets-gaza-civilians-hamas/. 
20. “Israel Hits Gaza Strip with the Equivalent of Two Nuclear Bombs.” Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, 2 Nov. 2023, euromedmonitor.org/en/article/5908/Israel-hits-Gaza-Strip-with-the-equivalent-of-two-nuclear-bombs. 

*This is old data, which I have updated with current statistics

21. “Gaza War: ‘direct Hits’ on More than 200 Schools since Israeli Bombing Began .” United Nations, 27 Mar. 2024, news.un.org/en/story/2024/03/1148031. 
22. AJLabs. “Israel-Gaza War in Maps and Charts: Live Tracker.” Al Jazeera, 28 Apr. 2024, www.aljazeera.com/news/longform/2023/10/9/israel-hamas-war-in-maps-and-charts-live-tracker. 
23. Fabian, Emanuel. “Defense Minister Announces ‘Complete Siege’ of Gaza: No Power, Food or Fuel.” Times of Israel, 9 Oct. 2023, www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/defense-minister-announces-complete-siege-of-gaza-no-power-food-or-fuel/. 
24. Nichols, Michelle. “Gaza ‘Most Dangerous Place in the World to Be a Child’ – UNICEF.” Reuters, 23 Nov. 2023, www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/gaza-most-dangerous-place-world-be-child-unicef-2023-11-22/. 
25. Graham-Harrison, Emma, and Julian Borger. “112 Dead in Chaotic Scenes as Israeli Troops Open Fire near Aid Trucks, Say Gaza Officials.” The Guardian, 1 Mar. 2024, www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/29/more-than-a-hundred-dead-after-israeli-troops-opened-fire-near-aid-trucks-say-gaza-officials. 
26. Al Jazeera Staff. “Palestinians Demand International Inquiry after Mass Grave Found in Gaza.” Al Jazeera, 2 Feb. 2024, www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/2/1/palestinians-demand-international-inquiry-after-mass-grave-found-in-gaza. 
27. “Bodies Recovered at Mass Graves in Nasser Hospital Bear Signs of Torture, Mutilation & Execution.” Democracy Now!, 25 Apr. 2024, www.democracynow.org/2024/4/25/gaza_mass_graves_war_crimes. 
28. “ Israeli Strike Kills Seven World Central Kitchen Workers.” Al Jazeera, 2 Apr. 2024, www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2024/4/2/israeli-strike-kills-seven-world-central-kitchen-workers. 

29, 30, 32-34. “Law for Palestine Releases Database with 500+ Instances of Israeli Incitement to Genocide – Continuously Updated.” Law for Palestine, 5 Mar. 2024, law4palestine.org/law-for-palestine-releases-database-with-500-instances-of-israeli-incitement-to-genocide-continuously-updated/. 

31. “Bible, King James Version.” University of Michigan, quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/k/kjv/kjv-idx?type=DIV2&byte=1195551. Accessed 29 Apr. 2024. 
32. Debre, Isabel. “Gaza Has Become a Moonscape in War. When the Battles Stop, Many Fear It Will Remain Uninhabitable.” AP News, AP News, 24 Nov. 2023, apnews.com/article/palestinians-gaza-israel-bombing-destruction-hamas-reconstruction-f299a28410b70ee05dd764df97d8d3a0. 
33. Farge, Emma. “UN Expert Says Israel Has Committed Genocide in Gaza, Calls for Arms Embargo.” Reut, 26 Mar. 2024, www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/un-expert-says-israel-has-committed-genocide-gaza-calls-arms-embargo-2024-03-26/. 
34. Segal, Raz. “A Textbook Case of Genocide.” Jewish Currents, 13 Oct. 2023, web.archive.org/web/20231125093604/https://jewishcurrents.org/a-textbook-case-of-genocide. 
35. Silver, Laura. “Majority in U.S. Say Israel Has Valid Reasons for Fighting; Fewer Say the Same about Hamas.” Pew Research Center, Pew Research Center, 21 Mar. 2024, www.pewresearch.org/2024/03/21/majority-in-u-s-say-israel-has-valid-reasons-for-fighting-fewer-say-the-same-about-hamas/. 
36. “Right of Peoples to Self-Determination/Struggle by All Available Means – Ga Resolution – Question of Palestine.” United Nations, 14 Dec. 1990, www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-184801/. 
37. Weitz, Gidi. “Another Concept Implodes: Israel Can’t Be Managed by a Criminal Defendant.” Haaretz.Com, Haaretz, 9 Oct. 2023, www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-10-09/ty-article/.premium/another-concept-implodes-israel-cant-be-managed-by-a-criminal-defendant/0000018b-1382-d2fc-a59f-d39b5dbf0000. 
38. Mazzetti, Mark, and Ronen Bergman. “‘Buying Quiet’: Inside the Israeli Plan That Propped up Hamas.” The New York Times, 10 Dec. 2023, www.nytimes.com/2023/12/10/world/middleeast/israel-qatar-money-prop-up-hamas.html#:~:text=For%20years%2C%20the%20Qatari%20government,payments%2C%20he%20had%20encouraged%20them. 
39. Abdulrahim, Raja, et al. “Major Donors Pause Funding for U.N. Agency as Scandal Widens.” The New York Times, 27 Jan. 2024, www.nytimes.com/2024/01/27/world/middleeast/pause-funding-gaza-unrwa.html. 
40. Nichols, Michelle, and Tom Perry. “Israel yet to Show Evidence UNRWA Staff Are Members of Terrorist Groups, Review Finds.” Reuters, 22 Apr. 2024, www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/review-says-unrwa-has-robust-neutrality-steps-issues-persist-2024-04-22/. 
41. Diamond, Jeremy. “Un Agency Accuses Israel of Detaining, Coercing Staffers into False Confessions about Ties to Hamas.” CNN, Cable News Network, 4 Mar. 2024, www.cnn.com/2024/03/04/middleeast/un-israel-confessions-allegations-intl/index.html. 
42. Silver, Laura. “Majority in U.S. Say Israel Has Valid Reasons for Fighting; Fewer Say the Same about Hamas.” Pew Research Center, Pew Research Center, 21 Mar. 2024, www.pewresearch.org/2024/03/21/majority-in-u-s-say-israel-has-valid-reasons-for-fighting-fewer-say-the-same-about-hamas/. 
43. Lee, Matthew. “The Biden Administration Once Again Bypasses Congress on an Emergency Weapons Sale to Israel.” AP News, 30 Dec. 2023, apnews.com/article/us-israel-gaza-arms-hamas-bypass-congress-1dc77f20aac4a797df6a2338b677da4f. 
44. Holland, Steve, and Jeff Mason. “US Not Drawing Red Lines for Israel, White House Says.” Reuters, 27 Oct. 2023, www.reuters.com/world/us-not-drawing-red-lines-israel-white-house-2023-10-27/. 
45. Kelemen, Michele. “U.S. Vetoes Call for Cease-Fire in Gaza for a Third Time.” NPR, NPR, 20 Feb. 2024, www.npr.org/2024/02/20/1232763327/u-s-vetoes-call-for-ceasefire-in-gaza-for-a-third-time. 
46. Hasan, Mehdi. “Biden Can End the Bombing of Gaza Right Now. Here’s How.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 21 Feb. 2024, www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/feb/21/biden-stop-gaza-bombing-genocide-israel. 
47. Smith, David. “Joe Biden’s Reluctance to Call for Ceasefire May Leave Him at Odds with His Party.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 22 Dec. 2023, www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/dec/22/joe-bidens-reluctance-to-call-for-ceasefire-may-leave-him-at-odds-with-his-party.
48. Kelemen, Michele. “U.S. Vetoes Call for Cease-Fire in Gaza for a Third Time.” NPR, NPR, 20 Feb. 2024, www.npr.org/2024/02/20/1232763327/u-s-vetoes-call-for-ceasefire-in-gaza-for-a-third-time.
49. Hasan, Mehdi. “Biden Can End the Bombing of Gaza Right Now. Here’s How.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 21 Feb. 2024, www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/feb/21/biden-stop-gaza-bombing-genocide-israel.
50. Smith, David. “Joe Biden’s Reluctance to Call for Ceasefire May Leave Him at Odds with His Party.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 22 Dec. 2023, www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/dec/22/joe-bidens-reluctance-to-call-for-ceasefire-may-leave-him-at-odds-with-his-party.
51.  Hudson, John. “U.S. Approved More Bombs to Israel Day of World Central Kitchen Strikes – the Washington Post.” The Washington Post, 4 Apr. 2024, www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/04/04/world-central-kitchen-us-weapons-israel/.