The cries of these innocents’ ring in our ears

“Hunger is all-consuming. We wake up hungry and go to bed hungry. From a truck that passes by, we have water for breakfast and water for supper. When they are available, we have some boiled lentils in the middle of the day.” 39-year-old widow Mahasin al-Zaneen and her eight children live in a makeshift tent in Gaza City. Her husband, a school principal, died of Covid in 2021. The family has moved ten times since the war began 20 months ago. The eldest child, twenty, was a medical student then. Now she weighs less than ninety pounds.

The 2.1 million people in Gaza are facing famine. According to the UN, half a million are starving. Since Hamas’ horrific attack on October 7, 2023. fifty-five thousand Palestinians have been killed. Fifty thousand children have either been killed or wounded. Another one dies every thirty minutes. 90% of homes have been damaged or destroyed. People live in makeshift tents amid the rubble. And despite calls from many in Israel, including military leaders who say it’s time to stop, the bombing and the killing continues.

Somewhere in the world there are always people suffering. Sudan and Ukraine come to mind. But what is happening in Gaza is happening as a result of US policy. The Trump administration has abandoned America’s support of the rights of the Palestinian people and sided with the hard liners in Israel who are openly working for their removal of Palestinians from their own land. For eleven weeks beginning in March, Israel blocked any aid from get-ting in. Now limited aid is being distributed by an American group who lack the needed vi-sion and expertise, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. The former UN-coordinated system had 400 aid distribution sites. GHF has four, all set up in the south near Israeli military units. In the chaos, some eighty people have been shot by Israeli forces in their desperate at-tempt to get food. The clear aim here is to force people into a few pockets under Israeli con-trol. UNRWA, the lead UN agency providing relief, and other charitable organizations have refused to participate in something that is so clearly at odds with basic humanitarian princi-ples.

On Wednesday (June 4), a UN Security Council resolution calling for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza and the release of all remaining hostages, was vetoed by the United States. All of the other fourteen member nations supported it.

A second set of recent findings that should weigh on the conscience of every American con-cern the Trump administration’s dismantling of the US Agency for International Develop-ment. Food that American farmers had been paid to supply the hungry was stopped enroute and left to rot. Programs that provided life-saving vaccines and medicines were suddenly halted. Partnerships built over many years between US aid workers and locals were forfeited. The extent of the impact here is mind-boggling and certainly hard to measure. But here are the best estimates: The President’s Emergency Plan for AID Relief (PEPFAR) operated through USAID since 2003 saved an estimated 26 million lives. Because of the freezing of aid to this program “an adult life will be lost every three minutes, and a child will die every 31 minutes.” By now that means “23,000 adults and 2,400 infants would have died.” And be-cause of cuts to USAID’s tuberculosis prevention and response program, it’s estimated that there will be another death every seven minutes that would otherwise have been prevented. That’s 10,000 now and counting … In total, in the first three months, the administration’s dismantling of USAID has likely resulted in some 300,000 unnecessary deaths.

Most Americans would say that they care about suffering in the world. But we should be scandalized over these policies and demanding their reconsideration. We are complicit in this needless suffering and cannot afford just to look away. Along with the precious lives of our fellow human beings, something essential for us is at stake, too, namely our souls and the soul of our country.

Steve Bullington

Adrian