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Abigail A. Fuller teaches sociology at the University of Southern Maine and organizes with Maine Voices for Palestinian Rights and the Maine Coalition for Palestine.
Every day, I am shocked that we go about our lives as if the slaughter of tens of thousands of people, funded by our tax dollars, is not happening. Think about it: while you drove to work last week, a young father in Gaza returned from obtaining his 4-day-old twins’ birth certificates to find his wife and children killed by an Israeli airstrike. While I was buying groceries, a girl arrived at a hospital in Gaza with half her jaw blown off. The Olympic sprinters competed in Paris while Palestinian mothers gathered their children’s body parts in plastic bags.
We do mundane things while Israeli soldiers torture Palestinian prisoners and a doctor who treated children in Gaza tells CBS, “No toddler gets shot twice by mistake [in the heart and head] by the world’s best sniper.” The lowest estimate of the total people killed is 40,000 (including 16,000 children), with 10,000 bodies possibly still under the rubble. The medical journal The Lancet claims 186,000 people could eventually die, even if the war stops now, due to shortages of food and medicine and Israel’s destruction of Gaza’s water and sewage systems.
The stories are appalling, and they are there for all to see, online and on social media. This is the first mass slaughter that is being live streamed, as people say. So why do so many Americans fail to speak out against Israel’s destruction of Palestinian lives (and homes, schools, and hospitals), made possible by the military and diplomatic support of our own government?
Perhaps we turn away because we feel powerless; this is just another unavoidable episode in our endless wars. But these deaths are the result of choices our political leaders — and we — are making.
As citizens of this country, who elect people to represent us in government and make decisions on our behalf, we have a responsibility to act when our government’s actions conflict with our values and violate national and international laws. Since Oct. 7, the U.S. has provided Israel with over $6.5 billion in military aid. This may violate several U.S. laws that prohibit supplying weapons to a country that is likely to use them to violate human rights. United Nations experts have called for an immediate halt to arms transfers to Israel, and the International Court of Justice ruled that Israel must prevent genocide in Gaza.
What can you do? Throughout U.S. history, movements of ordinary people have stepped up to make change. It is only because brave workers used strikes, boycotts, and riots that we have a 40-hour work week, laws against child labor, and the right to bargain for wages and benefits. Women gained the right to vote in 1920 because people formed organizations to fight for it and refused to give up. Antiwar protests helped push the U.S. government to withdraw troops from Vietnam.
In Maine, you can attend one of the weekly standouts around the state and hold a sign calling for a cease-fire in Gaza. (You will also meet some kind-hearted and determined people.) Educate yourself by attending a film showing or an arts event or by soaking up the wealth of information online about the history of the Palestinian people. Call or write your senators or representatives and give them an earful (after all, they work for us). Follow Maine activists on social media and reach out to get more involved — to plan a rally, protest weapons manufacturers, or ride a bus to join a march in Washington, D.C.
I do all these things, even though I never know how much I am pushing the needle toward an end to this mass slaughter. The effect of any one individual act is hard to gauge. But I keep going, not only because I might make a difference, but because I have a responsibility to do so, and because speaking up in the face of horror is the only thing that keeps us truly human.
