As Israel attacks Gaza City in preparation for a planned takeover of the entire Gaza strip, members of Massachusetts’ all-Democratic congressional delegation are condemning Israel’s actions and the impact they fear they will have on Palestinian people.
“Sustainable security for Israel and the assured welfare of the Palestinian people requires that there be governance in Gaza that is consistent with Israel’s security, that ensures Palestinians’ welfare,” Rep. Jake Auchincloss, who is generally one of the most pro-Israel members of the delegation, told GBH News. “And the prime minister [Benjamin Netanyahu] has put forward no proposal, has architected no plan, to achieve that.
“The resulting humanitarian conditions are totally unacceptable,” he added. “Hamas has the culpability but Israel has the responsibility. Starvation is not acceptable.”
Asked about Netanyahu’s denials that starvation is occurring in Gaza, Auchincloss said, “I trust Cindy McCain” — the director of the UN’s World Food Program — ”more than I do Benjamin Netanyahu.”
In statements to GBH News, Reps. Ayanna Pressley and Jim McGovern — who are more regularly critical of Israel’s actions — focused on ongoing U.S. support for Israel’s war effort.
“The United States is complicit in these horrors and the key supplier of offensive weapons to Israel,” Pressley said. “The United States must use every diplomatic option available to pressure the Netanyahu government to reverse course, immediately end the genocide, and urgently rush aid in to Gaza. We are talking about a man-made crisis, forced starvation, airstrikes targeting doctors, journalists, aid workers, innocent civilians from infants to elders. This must end now.”
“Netanyahu has crossed one red line after another. He has starved and indiscriminately bombed innocent civilians of Gaza — in clear violation of international humanitarian law,” McGovern added. “America should spend not one more penny to fund his war crimes, nor should we provide diplomatic cover or his illegal and immoral plan to occupy the Gaza Strip.”
Rep. Katherine Clark, who as minority whip is the second highest-ranking Democrat in the House, has supported Israel’s right to defend itself. In a statement to GBH News, she called the events in Gaza “horrific.”
“Benjamin Netanyahu is acting purely for the sake of his own political power at the staggering cost of even more innocent lives,” Clark said. “Israelis and Palestinians have the right to a secure future. That future can only be built through a permanent and lasting ceasefire, the return of the remaining hostages, and an immediate surge of humanitarian aid to Gaza.”
In a previously released statement, Rep. Bill Keating said that Israel’s planned occupation of Gaza City “will only endanger hundreds of thousands of innocent Palestinians who will again be displaced by this conflict, worsen the humanitarian situation, and further threaten the remaining hostages.”
Also in a previously released statement, Rep. Seth Moulton said he’s stressed since the start of Israel’s war in Gaza that a political endgame for the region is necessary to defeat Hamas.
“A military occupation of Gaza is not an endgame — it’s a dead end,” Moulton wrote. “[T]he extremists in Netanyahu’s government see full occupation as a way to cling to power, expel Palestinians, expand settlements, and pave the way for annexation. That is not a plan for peace.”
Local advocates in Massachusetts lamented the ongoing war in Gaza — including Jeremy Burton, the head of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston.
“It’s impossible to capture the range of emotions in our community in a single conversation — from heartbreak to outrage, from fear to hope,” Burton said. “What we all feel is the heavy toll of this war: the unbearable suffering of innocent people, the strain on communities in Israel and around the world, and the unrelenting agony for the families of the hostages still in captivity and all those civilians suffering in Gaza — alongside the deep unease about what comes next, and the impact future choices will have on countless lives. We share the apprehension of the hostages’ families that every day this war continues puts the safe return of their loved ones further at risk.”
Eli Gerzon, a member of the Boston chapter of the group Jewish Voice for Peace, offered a harsher assessment of Netanyahu’s plan to take over Gaza City and the rest of the Gaza Strip.
“It’s the same basic plan that he’s had for almost two years now — which is commit genocide, commit ethnic cleansing — and this is a new packaging of that,” Gerzon said.
Gerzon, who is Jewish and says they lost 44 family members in the Holocaust, noted that a recent Gallup poll found that just 32% of Americans support Israel’s actions in Gaza, a new low. It’s split intensely on party lines, with 71% of Republicans approving compared to just 8% of Democrats.
They also called on any politician opposed to Israel’s current behavior to devote more energy to altering it, including support for Israeli boycotts and halting U.S arms sales to Israel.
“The fact that ... people are saying negative things about a live streamed genocide, about a mass intentional starvation, that is good,” Gerzon said. “But we need to stop the genocide. We need to stop the mass starvation.”
