Yolo residents gathered on Tuesday October 15 outside Congressman Mike Thompson’s office in Woodland for the 52nd time to demand a ceasefire and an end to US arms sales. The vigil has been held every single week since Israel launched its October 2023 unparalleled violent attacks on Gaza and since many of its government and military officials publicly declared their intention to commit genocide in Gaza.
As of October 1, 2024, 42,126 people have been recorded killed by Israel, including nearly 16,765 children, with death tolls likely to be far higher given the many buried under rubble. The level of civilian deaths surpasses that of any other major conflict in the 21st century and is now expanding into the occupied West Bank and Lebanon. As well as indiscriminate bombing, Israel has also been found guilty by the UN and human rights organizations for deliberately blocking humanitarian aid and for committing countless war crimes. The International Court of Justice ruled in January that there is case for a plausible genocide and demanded a ceasefire, while the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories has said that Israel was unequivocally committing genocide in Gaza. Israel’s government has even shown callous disregard for its own hostages, ignoring the pleas of many hostage families for negotiations that have proved to be the only way to secure their release.
Yet in spite of the mountains of evidence—livestreamed every day and verified by every international human rights and UN agency—Congressman Mike Thompson has refused to do the one thing that could stop the genocide: to stop arms sales to Israel and require the country to abide by international law. Instead he has voted to continue to approve arms sales, including on April 20 when he voted for the Israel Security Supplemental Appropriations Act that allocated an additional $26.38 billion of our tax dollars as military aid Israel, facilitating the replenishment and procurement of advanced weapon systems and munitions. In this vote, he also violated two federal laws—the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (ratified by Congress in 1988) and the 1997 Leahy law that requires cutting off aid where there is “credible information’ that it has led to ‘a gross violation of human rights.”
“The horrific death toll of so many people, especially children, caused by Israel in Gaza and now Lebanon are the responsibility of the US government and those that support it such as Congressman Mike Thompson,” said Davis resident Deema Tamimi. “Not only has he refused to hold Israel accountable for its deliberate contraventions of humanitarian law, he continues to fund the bombs that cause children to be torn apart limb to limb that we witness every day.”
Fellow resident Nick Buxton added: “Thompson says he wants peace and wants Israel to limit civilian casualties, so why has he allowed Israel to cross every red line in this escalating war and never pushed for Israel to face any consequences for its war crimes. In November 2023, we asked Congressman Thompson how many Palestinian deaths would be justified in the name of Israeli ‘self-defense.’ A year later, the answer is abundantly clear: there is no limit. Palestinian life clearly does not count. As Yolo residents, we believe all lives are equally of worth. We demand an end to US-sponsored genocide.”
The war between Israel and Hamas is many things but the one thing it is not is genocide. The co-option of the word genocide undermines the arguments of those who deplore the devastation of Gaza.
It will be interesting to see if these 52 demonstrations have any effect on the congressman’s vote count.
I think the Gaza situation is more complex than simple rhetoric allows. One thing though that really bothers me, a few months ago I was reading Martin Gilbert’s seminal work on the Holocaust and the vivid (and disturbing) descriptions of Jews forced to drink from puddles and their own urine to survive and then I read in the NY Times about children in Gaza forced to drink from puddles to survive, the juxtaposition there is quite troubling.
It’s not co-option if it accurately reflects what has been going on in Gaza. Israel has demonstrated it doesn’t care how many civilian Palestinian non-combatants it kills. Tens of thousands of civilian non-combatants have died including thousands of woman and children. It has been doing a good job of killing off the entire Palestinian civilian population that was living in Gaza. If it was any other nation doing the killing there would be hell to pay. Israel has been seeking revenge far in excess of the number of Jewish hostages that Hamas kidnapped. It’s overkill on a vast scale.
“Israel has been seeking revenge far in excess of the number of Jewish hostages that Hamas kidnapped.”
I see Walter left out the 1300 Jews were savagely killed on Oct. 7 by Hama terrorists.
41,802 Palestinian and 1,706 Israeli deaths starting Oct 7, 2023
Who attacked who first David? Who had Hamas infested and embedded within and under their city. How was Israel going to rid Gaza of Hamas terrorists without collateral damage?
Absolutely. There is a long term issue however and this is what gets Israel in trouble every single time. Let’s go back to 1967, three Arab countries attack Israel, Israel ends up conquering territory. But then they make a series of errors – holding on the territories, the green line separation, building settlements and making the situation more complicated and so they go from being in the right – defending themselves to getting themselves in trouble – overreaching and inflaming the situation. I don’t know how to fix this, but clearly what they are doing isn’t working.
“Hell to pay?”
About the same number were killed in Aleppo as in Gaza yet there was little outrage expressed locally.Nor was the word genocide thrown around to describe all the killing.
One death is too many and the sooner the killing stops the better. Still the use of the word genocide inaccurately depicts the horrors of Gaza. What it does is it demeans the Jewish experience and squelches dialogue locally between groups suffering from the depredations of war on the other side of the world.
Just because genocide wasn’t used to describe one tragedy doesn’t mean it should not be used in another tragedy. People react differently to different events. Should we prohibit usage of the word ‘genocide’ just because some feel it silences further dialogue?
Israel should have sent in ground troops to surgically kill Hamas terrorists. Civilian casualties could have been minimized. Massive indiscriminate bombing of populated areas usually results in massive civilian casualties.
Perhaps you are an international human rights lawyer, in which case your denial of genocide might carry some weight. But given that the highest international court in the world, the International Court of Justice, has agreed there is a case for it being genocide, that the UN special rapporteur on human rights has declared that genocide is happening, and the fact that most human rights lawyers and institutions say it is happening, I am not sure on what basis you categorically deny it. https://www.bu.edu/articles/2024/is-israel-committing-genocide-in-gaza/
The UN Convention defines genocide as any of five “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” These five acts include killing members of the group, causing them serious bodily or mental harm, imposing living conditions intended to destroy the group, preventing births, and forcibly transferring children out of the group. Victims are targeted because of their real or perceived membership of a group, not randomly