Nicholas Kristoff prophetically warned: “We should not kill Gaza children to try to protect the children of Israel.” (New York Times, October 21, 2023) But that’s exactly what happens. More than 43,000 people were killed, massacred, crushed and burned by Israel in Gaza. Most of them were innocent women and children.

Pope Francis speaks belatedly but now powerfully about the atrocities in Gaza. In September 2024, Francis said, “Israel’s attacks in Gaza and Lebanon were immoral and disproportionate.” “The Israeli military has gone beyond the rules of war,” he added.

Recently, the Pope went further and said, “According to some experts, what is happening in Gaza amounts to genocide. “We must carefully investigate it to determine whether it meets the technical definition formulated by lawyers and international organizations.”

I am disturbed by the use of technocratic terminology to describe the horrific deaths of innocent people. Phrases like “collateral damage” for those killed in war strike me as morally bankrupt, heartless, and soulless.

As a child in the 1950s, I found myself immersed in television images of war from World War II. That was the first time I saw the film liberating the death camps in Europe. I was nine years old when these heinous crimes of mass murder entered my consciousness. These horrific images show how we all know and think about the Holocaust. They opened the door that led me to study history and government.

When I entered Congress in 1977, I learned about the Armenian Genocide, the systematic destruction of the Armenian people and their identity between 1915-17. I was the lead sponsor of the resolution condemning this genocide.

In 1939, Hitler ordered Goering to “send men, women and children of Polish origin and language to death, cruelly and without compassion.” The Führer continued: “After all, who is talking about the extermination of the Armenians today?”

I can imagine Putin thinking along the same lines about the “Red Famine” ordered by Stalin, which caused more than four million Ukrainians to starve to death between 1932-33. Today it is known as the Holodomor. When I travel to Ukraine, I take my traveling companions to visit the Holodomor memorial in Kiev, as well as Babyn Yar in Kiev, a valley where Nazi Germans killed 33,000 Jews in September 1941. In Krakow, we embark on a journey of honor on our way to Ukraine. In memory of those who died in the Auschwitz and Birkenau death camps.

Now Pope Francis has asked us to carefully investigate and determine whether Israel’s war in Gaza meets the technical definition of genocide formulated by lawyers and international organizations.

The prosecutor of the International Court of Criminal Justice has already conducted this investigation. As a result, court prosecutor Karim Khan requested an arrest warrant for Prime Minister Netanyahu and Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant in May because “there were reasonable grounds to believe that they bore responsibility for war crimes against humanity, including the starvation of civilians.” weapons of war and deliberately carrying out attacks against civilian populations.” Mr Khan said these crimes were committed “as part of a widespread and systematic attack on the Palestinian civilian population”.

This is the same court that issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin and another Russian official, saying they bear individual criminal responsibility for the abduction and deportation of Ukrainian children following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The lawyer of the International Court of Criminal Justice unanimously decided to issue the arrest warrants.

Today, Palestinians in Gaza are in desperate need of vital basic needs such as water, food, shelter and medical care. Hunger and disease destroy families and neighborhoods. Gaza is in ruins.

Israel’s theory of “more harm than truth” is the modus operandi of the Netanyahu government. This theory can be traced back to when Hamas and Israel fought in 2008-09. The United Nations report on the conflict described Israel’s campaign as “a deliberately disproportionate offensive designed to punish, humiliate and terrorize the civilian population, radically reducing the local economic capacity to both work and support themselves, and forcing them into hardship.” ” reveals that. Thereupon there is a growing sense of dependency and vulnerability.”(UN Report and Washington Post 11/10/23)

Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesman Daniel Hagari explained to the Washington Post that the IDF’s emphasis is “damage, not accuracy.” The necessary response to military provocations from Lebanon, Gaza and Syria was said to be ‘disproportionate’ strikes aimed at only collaterally striking the enemy’s capacity to launch rockets or other attacks. On the contrary, as a deterrent in the future, the aim should be to inflict lasting damage, regardless of civilian consequences.” This doctrine has persisted over the years, leading Palestinian American scholar Rashid Khalidi to observe: “Let’s be clear, this is actually less of a strategic doctrine and more of a clear outline of collective punishment and possible war crimes.” (From reports by Washington Post reporters) Ishaan Tharoor and Sammy Westfall (11/10/23)

The whole world is watching the massacre in Gaza, and hundreds of millions of viewers are watching the slaughter of innocents. Netanyahu and his army are committing war crimes against innocent civilians.

There is no excuse for ignoring war crimes today. The collection of evidence of war crimes by human rights investigators has been facilitated by space technology, iPhone recordings, the sharing of stories through mediums such as zoom, and other more advanced devices.

Vasily Grossman (1905-1964) was a Ukrainian Jew who lived and died in the Soviet Union, where he was persecuted and his work suppressed. He wrote: “It was a terrible sight to see Stalingrad surrounded by smoke, dust and fire, but it was even more terrible to see a six-year-old child crushed by a falling beam. “There is a power that can raise huge cities from their ashes, but no power in the world can lift the eyelashes of light from the eyes of a dead child.”

What happened in Israel on October 7 was horrifying. Hamas and its leaders such as Yahya Sinwar, Hassan Nasrallah and Ismail Haniyeh were hunted down and killed. But Netanyahu still denies the remaining hostages and their families a ceasefire and an end to the war. Their nightmare continues.

President Biden has armed Israel and our bombs are killing Gazans. The USA is complicit in Netanyahu’s genocide. Pope Francis must continue to speak forcefully to demonstrate his moral persuasion as a witness to this crime against humanity.

A year ago, on November 6, more than 500 Jewish protesters and their allies seized the Statue of Liberty and disrupted business in Gaza, demanding a ceasefire. They were joined by rabbis, elected officials and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors and children.

The protest was organized by the Jewish Voice of Peace, which issued a statement calling for a ceasefire and an end to US funding of Israel’s bombing of Gaza. In his own powerful words, “Never again means never again for anyone.”

David Bonior represented Macomb County and Michigan in the House of Representatives from 1977 to 2003. He served as Democratic whip from 1991 to 2002.