We are dismayed by the Biden administration’s recent refusal to honor its own 30-day deadline and continue to provide lethal military aid to Israel, in spite its failure to substantially improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza.
As members of the Hawaii Advocacy Team of the Friends Committee on National Legislation (Quakers), we are committed to working for a just, peaceful and sustainable world free of violence, inequality and oppression. We strongly urge the U.S. government to immediately cease lethal shipments of weapons, munitions and tank shells to Israel and its “Defense Forces” (IDF). These arms are being used to kill and injure scores of innocent civilians daily in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon.
We also urge the U.S. Senate to pass, without delay, Senate Joint Resolution of Disagreement (S.J. Res.) 111, introduced by U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Sept. 25, and cosponsored by Hawaii’s U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz.
This resolution calls for the U.S. government to halt proposed arms sales to Israel of more than $20 billion, in violation of the Arms Export Control Act of 1976. These sales include Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs), tank shells, 120mm tank rounds, high-explosive mortar rounds and up to 50 new F-15IA fighter aircraft. The sales of JDAMs and 120mm tank rounds are particularly concerning, given the IDF’s indiscriminate use of them in Gaza.
Our reasons for supporting this ban are two-fold: First, halting the sale of these weapons to Israel would significantly decrease the killing of innocent civilians. Second, it would begin to put pressure on Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli government to negotiate a cease-fire and permanent end to hostilities with Hamas and the people of Palestine, and perhaps contribute to peace in the broader Middle East.
By providing more than $17.9 billion in military aid to Israel for its military operations in Gaza since Oct. 7, 2023, the U.S. government already is complicit in the killing of more than 43,000 Palestinian men, women and children — the vast majority of them civilians. This amount does not include the cost of rebuilding Gaza afterwards, which by some reports is estimated at more than $60 billion.
By restricting humanitarian aid to Gaza and the West Bank, including basic needs like food, water and medical care, Israel is committing war crimes. Scores of journalists, doctors and health workers already have been killed by Israeli forces over the past year.
Most hospitals in the occupied territories have been destroyed. Gaza itself has been reduced to rubble, and almost its entire population is now on the brink of starvation.
Hawaii’s U.S. Sen. Mazie Hirono and U.S. Rep. Ed Case, please join Sen. Schatz in publicly supporting this joint resolution, and in banning all further offensive military aid to the Israeli government until it ceases using it to cause extraordinarily high levels of civilian casualties, in violation of both U.S. and international law.
Please also work along with Schatz and congressional colleagues in the spirit of aloha to put pressure on Israel to fully cooperate with U.S. government-supported international efforts to maximize the flow and distribution of humanitarian assistance to Gaza, as well as to bring about peace and justice in the Middle East.
For without real justice for Palestinians and all the other innocent victims of this horrific conflict, there can be no real peace for them, or for any of us.
Nina Allan is a Ph.D. candidate in cellular and molecular biology at the University of Hawaii, John Murphy is a retired attorney on Maui and Michael Sukhov is a social science researcher at UH-West Oahu; this was co-signed by Roman Leverenz, a retired state social worker.
