It’s tragic and heartbreaking to read about the current violence in Israel-Palestine, which was started by right-wing “settlers,” backed by U.S.-based groups, who have long, violently sought to take Palestinian land for their own homes and have physically attacked Palestinians, including women and children, most recently at a site sacred to Israeli Jews and Palestinian Muslims. These attacks have long been enabled by the Israeli Defense Forces, which does nothing to protect Palestinian civilians, and in recent years has fired across the Gaza border at nonviolent protesters.

Mourners carry the bodies of Palestinians who were killed in overnight Israeli airstrikes that hit their homes, during their funeral in Gaza City, on Sunday. Abdel Kareem Hana/Associated Press

The U.S. should exert its political and financial muscle to cut off the $3.8 billion we send to Israel every year until Israel changes its tune. The ineffectual hopes and prayers of Joe Biden and past U.S. administrations that the violence cease, and for the moribund two-state solution, are not enough.

Biden has long been an Israel sycophant, saying he’s a Zionist and loves Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and Secretary of State Antony Blinken complain about repressive regimes in China and Russia. But out of the other side of their mouths, they say, Israelis have “the right to defend themselves …,” apparently, no matter what they do. Talk about hypocrisy!

But, drip, drip, drip, things are slowly changing, as witnessed by the recent Human Rights Watch report on Israeli apartheid.

David Plimpton
Cape Elizabeth