Guest Editorial: Why we must speak up for a ceasefire in Gaza now.

Some village residents are petitioning the Croton Board of Trustees to endorse a call for a ceasefire along the lines of a recent UN resolution, which the U.S. vetoed.

by Michelle Celarier

Pixabay

The images are haunting. Children with no limbs. Parents cradling dead babies wrapped in shrouds. Desperate people facing gunfire as they struggle to get food. Mass graves. A teenaged boy burned alive while still attached to an IV drip. A dystopian landscape of bombed out buildings. 

Almost 21 months into Israel’s attack on Gaza, no one can avoid seeing its ugly reality—and that’s true even though many mainstream Western media outlets severely limit coverage of this manmade tragedy, as the BBC recently did by refusing to air a documentary about doctors working in Gaza. 

With the seemingly limitless financial and political backing of the United States government and its Western allies, Israel has now reportedly killed more than 55,000 people in Gaza, including an estimated 15,000 children. The tally could grow even higher once the bodies under the piles of rubble are counted, and disease and death from starvation add to the total. The sad truth is that we may never know the full extent of the casualties.

Yet even though Israel has assassinated the top Hamas leaders in Gaza (and elsewhere) and degraded the group’s capabilities, Israel won’t stop the military offensive it began after Hamas attacked the country on October 7, 2023, leading to the deaths of some 1,200 Israelis. According to news reports, Israel is still continuing to kill dozens of Palestinians almost daily. Israeli leaders have even openly encouraged the illegal ethnic cleansing (which they call “forced expulsion”) of the entire enclave—the plan that President Trump advanced earlier this year. And with no end in sight in Gaza, Israel recently began an unprovoked and illegal war with Iran, one in which Trump has now ensnared the United States.

There are plenty of Americans who support this. They argue that Hamas is an existential threat to Israel and must be totally eradicated, whatever the cost. But others believe that as long as Palestinians do not have equal rights with Israelis in the land, the Palestinians will continue to resist—whether inside Israel or beyond its borders, with or without Hamas.

That debate aside, it's hard to believe that most people are not appalled by what is happening. And the evidence is growing that they are. Recent polls by both Pew Research and Gallup show that a majority of Americans now have a negative view of Israel --a sharp contrast to past years. And a majority of U.S. citizens, including those from both the right and left side of the political spectrum, are opposed to our involvement in Israel’s war with Iran—what could turn into another forever war in the Middle East or even the beginning of World War III. (A 2023 European Commission poll found that Europeans think Israel is a bigger threat to world peace than Iran.)  

Many, however, are afraid to speak out. They know they risk their jobs, their friends or their familial relationships. These are not idle concerns. We have read about journalists, academics and government employees who have been fired, book tours and awards that were canceled, and the highly publicized attempts to deport several students along with the successful efforts at ousting members of Congress critical of Israel. 

The targeting of these people is an organized effort of several groups, including AIPAC, Canary Mission, StopAntisemitism, Betar and The Esther Project, which was created by the same people (The Heritage Group) that gave us Project 2025. According to a report in the New York Times, The Esther Project labels pro-Palestinian activism, which includes many Jewish Americans, antisemitic and claims the protesters “are providing ‘material support’ for terrorism, a broad legal construct that can lead to prison time, deportations, civil penalties and other serious consequences.” One pro-Israel group even called for a federal investigation of a beloved children’s YouTube host for simply showing concern for Gaza’s children. 

Such attacks are an affront to the constitutionally protected freedom of expression that Americans hold dear. Moreover, history has taught us the steep price of silence. We grew up learning about the horrors of Nazi Germany during World War II and its citizens’ willingness to go along with their government even as they watched their Jewish neighbors being arrested and Jewish-owned shops being vandalized during Kristallnacht. We know pastor Martin Niemoller’s famous poem that begins "First they came for the socialists and I did not speak up because I was not a socialist.” As the poem goes, the Nazis then came for the trade unionists and next the Jews. Niemoller ends by saying “And then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me.”   

It is beyond time to speak up for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, which would also bring home the remaining Israeli hostages. While our tax dollars help create Gaza’s killing fields and the U.S. is now embarked on an illegal war with Iran, the rise in both antisemitism, Islamophobia and Palestinian hate we have seen at home since October 2023 is horrifying. The murder of a Palestinian American child in Illinois in 2023 and the recent murders of two Jewish employees of Israel’s embassy in Washington, D.C., are examples of how tragic this conflict has become here in the U.S.

In one small effort to break the silence, some of us are petitioning the Village Board of Trustees of Croton on Hudson to endorse a ceasefire for Gaza along the lines of the latest UN ceasefire resolution, which the U.S. vetoed. It was the fifth time since October 2023 that the U.S. has vetoed a Gaza ceasefire resolution, typically with the preposterous claim that it would impede ceasefire negotiations. As has been widely reported, Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is the main impediment to a ceasefire as he has scuttled the negotiations again and again. 

Some of our neighbors have argued that our village board is not the right place for this petition and suggest that it should be directed to our state and federally elected representatives instead. Others have said they believe the subject is a moral matter that should be taken up by the faith leaders of our community. Those are worthy considerations. Yet the petition’s signatories believe it’s also important for our elected village officials to take a stand, to speak up for peace as a first step. Over 100 municipalities across the U.S., including neighboring Beacon, N.Y., have already done so. 

Even though this should have been done yesterday, today is sooner than tomorrow.

(To add your voice, you can sign the petition at this link: https://www.ipetitions.com/petition/calling-for-an-immediate-permanent-ceasefire)

  

Michelle Celarier is an award-winning journalist whose work has appeared in The New York Times, New York Magazine, The New York Post, and Fortune, among other publications. A resident of Croton-on-Hudson, NY, Celarier has worked for decades as a writer and editor covering the world of finance in the U.S., Europe and Russia.

***********************************************************************************************************

Editor’s Note: The Chronicle strives to publish Guest Editorials representing the wide diversity of viewpoints in Croton. To discuss a possible submission, or to submit a piece for consideration, please get in touch at TheCrotonChronicle@gmail.com

To share this post, or to share The Croton Chronicle, please click on these links.

Comments policy: No personal attacks or hate speech, please be polite and respectful at all times.