Brad Lander in The Nation: “When I’m elected to Congress, I’ll assist the Block the Bombs Act to guard extra Palestinians from being killed by Israel.”
Civil protection groups perform operations to get well the our bodies of 5 members of the Abu Nida household who had been trapped below the rubble of a constructing destroyed in Israeli assaults on the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood within the Gaza Strip on February 9, 2026.
(Khames Alrefi / Anadolu by way of Getty Photographs)
Final week, The Nation took the bizarre step of turning its entire home page over to protection of the continued calamity in Gaza. Whereas the world’s consideration has turned away, Israel’s bombs are nonetheless falling, paid for by US taxpayers. Starvation persists, as support solely trickles in.
Final month, Israel recovered the stays of Ran Gvili, the ultimate hostage held by Hamas in Gaza, a step I welcomed with an aching coronary heart, offering in the end some small measure of closure to the grieving households of October 7. However the stays of 1000’s of Palestinians nonetheless lie within the smoldering wreckage of Gaza, whereas their grieving households face winter in makeshift tents. The place is any measure of closure, or security, and even only a roof, for them?
Over the previous two years, I’ve struggled to mourn each Israelis and Palestinians killed since October 7—to acknowledge their equal humanity, but in addition the very unequal magnitude and period of the devastation. In that effort, I’ve ceaselessly joined weekly vigils in Union Sq. with Israelis for Peace, demanding an finish to the struggle in Gaza and the return of each hostage. We’ve heard from each Palestinians and Israelis whose lives have been ripped aside. Individuals like Maoz Inon, whose mother and father had been murdered by Hamas on October 7, and Aziz Abu Sarah, whose brother was killed by settlers within the West Financial institution. “Our futures are intertwined”—we chant—“Israel and Palestine.”
Our futures are intertwined right here within the US as properly—the place Congress continues to be complicit in Israel’s destruction of Gaza, offering unconditional assist for Netanyahu’s unchecked aggression. American working households battle to grasp why their tax {dollars} are paying for the two,000-pound bombs which have leveled the hospitals and faculties of Gaza, when there isn’t ample funding for reasonably priced healthcare, higher faculties, or reasonably priced housing right here at house.
That’s the reason, as a candidate for New York’s tenth Congressional District, I’m asserting my assist for HR 3565, the Block the Bombs Act, sponsored by Consultant Delia Ramirez. This invoice bans the Protection Division from promoting Netanyahu’s authorities the catastrophic weaponry it has used to commit a genocide in Gaza (and sure, after spending a variety of time with the phrases of Raphael Lemkin, the Polish Jew and Holocaust survivor who developed the time period, I’m fairly certain he would think about it one).
When I’m elected to Congress, I’ll be a part of 60 of my colleagues in cosponsoring this invoice and combating for its passage. The Block the Bombs Act will defend extra Palestinians from being killed. I consider it is going to push Israel to stay as much as the Jewish and democratic values that I lengthy for it to uphold. It’s a important step to start to rebuild the circumstances wanted for real peace and stability within the area.
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It’s also mandatory for starting to revive any modicum of credibility in US international coverage. As Mark Carney forthrightly declared at Davos, Trump’s narcissistic takeover of Venezuela and threats to Greenland have prompted a “rupture” to the putatively liberal international order.
However Trump’s actions sit atop a longer-term hypocrisy in American international coverage—that we act in multilateral coalitions and abide by the rules-based, worldwide order… besides after we don’t. The 2 most salient current examples of our doing as we please: the Iraq Struggle, and unconditional assist for Israel’s destruction of Gaza.
If we intention to rebuild a US international coverage that’s grounded in human rights, that respects sovereignty, that builds multilateral coalitions to finish endlessly wars, one vital place to start out is by ending US complicity within the genocide in Gaza.
I consider that the values I maintain as a proud Jewish New Yorker—most notably that each human being is created b’tzelem Elohim, in God’s picture—give me a specific obligation on this second to talk up louder for the lives of Palestinians. As I confessed last Yom Kippur, and, as I felt studying The Nation protection final week, I’ve not at all times finished so to the extent these Jewish values require.
We are able to take inspiration on this agonizing work from the outstanding instance of Maoz Inon and Aziz Abu Sarah. Regardless of heartbreaking losses, or possibly due to them, they’ve devoted their lives to constructing peace collectively throughout borders and backgrounds in Israel and Palestine. From their grief, as a substitute of despair or rage, they’ve shaped a partnership, grounded within the recognition of intertwined fates.
Their compelling sense of equal humanity doesn’t stop them from recognizing the completely unequal scale of struggling, or the political buildings that perpetuate it. Their brave instance reminds us that, whereas we’re too usually torn aside by non secular or nationwide identification, the actual dividing line is between peacemakers and people who perpetuate struggle. Between those that name for extra violence and people courageous sufficient to reject it.
To this point, the US has been on the flawed aspect of that dividing line. We should work to alter that. To construct a simply and protected future for Israelis and Palestinians, and to maneuver towards a US international coverage that aligns with our ideas and our pursuits, it’s time to dam the bombs.
From Minneapolis to Venezuela, from Gaza to Washington, DC, it is a time of staggering chaos, cruelty, and violence.
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