Palestine Tet – 13 – “Pauses” – there is no pause in the missile strikes against Gaza – and “Cease-fires”. Despite claims of humanitarian concern for Gazan civilian casualties, Colorado Congressman Jason Crow refuses to support a cease-fire

Palestinians in Gaza burying their dead children. The Biden Administration supports a “humanitarian pause” but Israel’s missiles rain down on Gaza civilians with even greater intensity, rendering “the pause’ irrelevant. There is no pause.

At a meeting in Aurora Colorado with U.S. Congressman Jason Crow representing Colorado’s 6th District heard testimony from local Palestinian-Americans who had lost “family members’ from the Israeli bombing of Gaza. Some forty Palestinians and their supporters were present.

Several of the participants related the tragedies that befell their families as U.S. made Israeli missiles, including phosphorous explosives poured down from the sky like an explosive hail storm. Trying to control their emotion, Colorado Palestinians related the extermination of whole families from the air strikes.

A young man, a peace activist I have known and worked with for a time related how 31 members of his extended family had been wiped off the face of the earth over three days, 11 one day, 5 the next, 15 the third until he has no family left. All these relatives were civilians with no connection to any resistance movement, Hamas or otherwise, just huddled together, terrified until obliterated by Israeli missile attacks. For another participant, a woman in her forties, the family losses were even higher, some 80 members of her extended family on both side murdered – that is the current word by the way – by Netanyahu’s aerial storm troopers.

How does on give condolences to people who have lost 31 or 80 relatives? How does one find non-existent “closure” after such war crimes in the name of Israel’s favorite excuse for cold-blooded mass murder, self-defense?

Besides sharing family tragedies in Gaza. the Palestinians and their supporters,  present hope to convince Crow to go beyond the Biden Administration’s support for a “humanitarian pause” in the fighting in Gaza and take the lead on supporting an immediate cease-fire.

Responding to increasingly militant worldwide calls for an immediate cease-fire, White House spokesman John Kirby clarified that, despite throwing some crumbs to “a humanitarian pause, the Biden Administration still would put no pressure – none whatsoever on Israel’s increasingly genocidal bombing campaign against Gaza. ‘We’re not drawing red lines for Israel. We’re going to continue to support them,” he is quoted as having said.

In the aftermath of a United Nations General Assembly non-binding vote calling for an immediate humanitarian truce between Israel and the Palestinian armed group Hamas, and with world public opinion in their favor, concerned members of Congress introduced a similar measure. A bevvy of senators and members of the House of Representatives, among them Cori Bush, Rashida Tlaib, Summer Lee, Ayanna Pressley, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar introduced a congressional resolution urging “an immediate de-escalation and ceasefire in Israel and occupied Palestine”.

The Aurora meeting requested that Congressman Crow join this effort. After emphasizing his concern about the humanitarian crisis in Gaza needed to be addressed and listening sympathetically (or seemingly so) to the tragedies of Colorado Palestinians whose family members, all civilians, had been killed in Israeli Gaza bombing Crow categorically refused to support a ceasefire. The reason given: We (the Biden Administration) cannot trust Hamas to honor a cease-fire, a line of reasoning developed by Madame Warmonger herself and assiduously picked up by most in Congress, Democrat or Republican. Despite his credible show of personal sympathy, Jason Crow was no different than the rest of the AIPAC corrupted gang of thieves called congressmen and women.

The Aurora meeting requested that Congressman Crow join this effort. After emphasizing his concern about the humanitarian crisis in Gaza needed to be addressed and listening sympathetically (or seemingly so) to the tragedies of Colorado Palestinians whose family members, all civilians, had been killed in Israeli Gaza bombing Crow categorically refused to support a ceasefire. The reason given: We (the Biden Administration) cannot trust Hamas to honor a cease-fire.

The “we-can’t-trust-Hamas-to-honor-a-ceasefire argument” the volume of which has reached such shrill pitches that it has become a mantra is little more than emotional propaganda. It is a cynical way to slander the Palestinian Resistance, to deny its legitimacy and the ongoing sufferings of the Palestinian people against 75 years (actually it is longer that this) of Zionist occupation, ethnic cleansing and genocide. The argument plays well with Israel’s long held public relations campaign of playing the victim and charging “anti-Semitism” to those critical of Zionism’s cruel track record.

Making the case that a humanitarian pause is a pathetic alternative to an immediate cease-fire and in favor of the cease-fire, a participant, (1) representing Front Range Jewish Voice for Peace, noted:

A pause is not a cease-fire, the latter having much more traction for peace and a much stronger legal standing based on international law. A “pause” by its very nature, is far less productive and unstable, as it suggests that an armed conflict will start up again. A “pause” – meant to cool global opposition to the genocide – might have been agreed to but the missile strikes against Gaza intensify. There is no pause, no pressure on Israel from Biden whatsoever to even slow down missile strikes.

The advantages of implementing a cease-fire are many:

• With a “pause” the parties can and do rearm for the next round or are more likely to. It is not impossible to do so with a formal, internationally U.N. Security Council approved cease-fire, but is much more difficult as there are mechanisms in place (peacekeepers to limit such activities.

• The most obvious, it will put an end to the bloodshed, the trauma the massive physical destruction of infrastructure and property in Gaza. It will permit tens of thousands of Israelis to return home to the areas of conflict in both the north and south of Israel and to reorganize life among the Israeli towns near Gaza

• An immediate and sustained humanitarian truce, a cease-fire, reduces the prospect of the war expanding beyond its present participants, still a dangerous possibility.

• A ceasefire changes the momentum from escalating war to escalating peace. It is an vital confidence building measure needed as a precondition for any future peace negotiations

• Recent polls indicate that 66% of Americans overwhelmingly support a cease-fire, including a full 80% of Democrats and more than 50% of Republicans). In this respect the people are ahead of the President and Congress

Don’t you think it time for the President and Congress to catch up?

It must have been a busy day for Congressman Crow.

The Aurora meeting with Colorado’s Palestinian Community was (at least) his third of the day dealing with Israel’s war against Gaza. Earlier he had met with the mainstream Zionist leadership of Colorado’s Jewish Community, later he did a zoom with J-Street’s chair, Jeremy Ben-Ami at which some 500 people, liberal-Zionist Jews participated. In that discussion, as later in Aurora, Crow openly opposed supporting an immediate cease-fire opting for the empty “humanitarian pause” instead, an approach that Ben-Ami supports as well.

J-Street considers itself “pro-Israel-pro-Peace” (meaning it defends Israel but supports a two-state solution that includes a Palestinian state), but since the war between Israel and Palestine has morphed into nothing short of a genocidal air campaign against what are overwhelmingly Palestinian civilians, its “pro-Israel” tendency has far overwhelmed its “pro-Peace” claims. As Israel’s bombing campaign intensifies despite the claims of “a humanitarian pause” – there is no pause in Israel’s savagery and the Biden Administration’s on-going support for it – J-Street’s claim of concern for the fate of both Israelis and Palestinians rings increasingly hollow, as does, unfortunately the concern expressed by Jason Crow.

Today,  with a longtime Quaker friend, member of the Mountain Friends Meeting Place, I’m heading to the office of U.S. Senator Michael Bennet. She will hand a statement in support of an immediate ceasefire from the Friends Committee on National Legislation, one of the most effective organizations lobbying for peace I know of. And I shall deliver Jewish Voice for Peace’s statement to the same effect along with a personal statement. I expect to hear the same old worn cliches, that is to say, lies, how Israel is “defending itself” by killing a thousand Palestinian Gazans a day, mostly women and children and how “we” have to stand up to “Hamas” and how “Hamas” is evil but the rest of the Palestinian people are ok and other such drivel. But maybe Bennet’s office will surprise me. I doubt it.

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1. Myself.