On War and Genocide: An Open Letter to My American and Israeli Brothers and Sisters

To my dear American and Israeli brothers and sisters. This is a hard letter to write, but I feel it has to be written. Like you, I wish to live in a peaceful and harmonious world where every living being is able to flourish and we can all look forward to a prosperous future—for ourselves and our children. I feel it has to be said that, at present, both the American and Israeli states are making our world less peaceful and harmonious, and because of the actions of your leaders, you are becoming increasingly less secure.

The purpose of government is to provide security in exchange for certain freedoms, but your security is currently being threatened by your very own leaders, who claim to have your best interests at heart but whose policies prove otherwise. From saber rattling rhetoric to genocidal actions that threaten millions of human beings, it is removing any hope of a peaceful and prosperous future for the family of inhabitants that calls Earth home.

It is hard for the global community to take the U.S. seriously with outright hypocrisy falling out of the mouth of President Biden and decisions being made ostensibly to bring about peace clearly having the opposite effect. On multiple occasions, Biden has accused Putin of enacting a genocide on the Ukrainian people, saying “Your family budget, your ability to fill up your tank, none of it should hinge on whether a dictator declares war and commits genocide a half a world away.” The national security adviser Jake Sullivan tempered Biden’s claim. “We have seen war crimes. We have not seen a level of systematic deprivation of life of the Ukrainian people to rise to the level of genocide.” Members of the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee, while visiting The Hague, claimed Putin “tried to erase a culture, a people and a religion, and that is the definition of genocide.” Now, who in their right mind is going to deny that Putin’s invasion and bombardment of Ukraine isn’t horrific? Certainly, war crimes have been committed. Whether the International Criminal Court (ICC) would find they amounted to genocide is unknown. What is beyond doubt is that the absolute obliteration of north Gaza, and now the south, is far more egregious than anything Putin has done thus far and, according to Ray Segal, the program director of genocide studies at Stockton University, is a “textbook case of genocide.” Again, whether the ICC would find it to be genocide is unknown. And unknown it may remain because neither Israel nor the U.S. is signed up to the ICC. One thing is clear: if Russia is guilty of genocide, then Israel certainly is.

Over 10,000 civilians have been killed in Ukraine in almost two years of fighting, with 560 children murdered. Some may accuse me of whataboutism, but in the context of genocide, consistency is surely important. In less than two months, 15,500 civilians have been killed in Gaza with 6,000 children murdered. Just try filling up your tank in Gaza: even if you have a budget, there is no gas, nor food or water, to buy. One of the reasons Putin has been issued an arrest warrant by the ICC is that he is accused of having personal responsibility for the abduction of children from Ukraine. Again, this is surely a war crime. But how can we issue an arrest warrant for Putin and not Netanyahu, who was in charge, when multiple children were shot dead by Israeli snipers and 700 Palestinian children are arbitrarily sucked into Israel’s prison system every year. On the one hand, the U.S. expects global citizens to believe they are interested in a peaceful settlement, while on the other hand they are handing over to the Israeli state 2,000-pound bunker bombs. How can the international community trust the U.S. when they are unable to treat the two cases with any kind of equivalence? If Putin is guilty of genocide, how can it be that Netanyahu is not also genocidal? Emmanuel Daoud, an attorney at the ICC who has filed genocide lawsuits against both Putin and Netanyahu, stated “Whether war crimes are committed in Ukraine or Palestine, the culprits should be held to account.” If only the world’s superpower was able to see what the rest of the world sees.

People may disagree that Israel is carrying out genocide and that this could be difficult to prove, but according to the ICC, genocide includes the specific intent to destroy, in part or in whole, a group of people by killing its members; causing serious bodily or mental harm to the members; deliberately inflicting conditions calculated to bring about its destruction; or imposing measures to prevent births within the group. As a global citizen, it is hard not to call the willful destruction of life in Gaza and the ongoing oppression in the West Bank genocidal, but let’s look at some facts. A week after the Oct 7^th Hamas atrocities, the Israeli president Isaac Herzog said “It’s an entire nation that is out there that’s responsible. It’s not true, this rhetoric about civilians not aware, not involved. It’s absolutely not true, they could have risen up, they could have fought against that evil regime which took over Gaza in a coup d’etat.” This seems to show an acceptance to collectively punish the Palestinian people for the war crimes committed by Hamas, which is itself a war crime. The Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich went further by calling for voluntary emigration of the Palestinian people from Gaza to other Arab countries, saying “The State of Israel will no longer be able to accept the existence of an independent entity in Gaza.” This genocide is not something that started on Oct 7^th.

In 2018, The Israeli Knesset passed a law stating “Israel is the historic homeland of the Jewish people and they have an exclusive right to national self-determination in it.” People in the West Bank are also suffering and have been oppressed for decades; the current situation of hundreds of thousands of illegal Israeli settlers forcibly removing Palestinians from their land—with the assistance of the IDF—is a war crime. The settlements are not the end game though. The far-right Israeli government wishes to “gradually” annex the entire region—home to around three million Palestinians—and this was discussed with former President Trump. In 2019, the coalition Zionist party stated quite clearly that “The prime minister will work towards the formulation and promotion of a policy whereby sovereignty is applied to the Judea and Samaria [West Bank].” The United Nations has categorically stated this is illegal, yet it continues with full U.S. support. All of this should be unsurprising as Netanyahu has long been clear in his intent. In 2003, while finance minister, he said “We have a demographic problem, but it lies not with the Palestinian Arabs, but with the Israeli Arabs.” He is concerned with the survivors of the 1948 Nakba outvoting Jewish Israelis and has said that a rise in the Arab population will undermine the democratic fabric. It sounds more like he is frightened of democracy itself. To counter this, the Israeli government has reduced child benefits, which disproportionately affects Arabs, with almost half of Arab children living below the poverty line.

All of the above is leading to very real antisemitism, and the full support of the U.S. government in what is arguably genocide can only fuel what is being called the Anti-American century. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) found a 388% increase in antisemitic incidents in the weeks following Israeli hostilities, while The Council on American–Islamic Relations (CAIR) found a 216% increase in calls for help. In Europe, hate speech targeting Muslims and Jews has risen since the Hamas attacks. The collective punishment of all Palestinians will not make Israeli and American citizens safer. It will do the opposite.

As if the full support for genocide in Gaza wasn’t enough, the U.S. is also helping to perpetuate a war in Ukraine that clearly needs to end in peace talks. The same is true in Palestine. By arming Taiwan, a country the U.S. government doesn’t officially recognize, the U.S. is further antagonizing China, posing a serious threat to global security. The U.S. is the only country capable of bringing about lasting peace as it did in Northern Ireland and the Balkans. Biden’s hawkish stance is now turning off young voters and making a return of Trump increasingly likely, and this spells disaster for our species and all the others on our planet. With the military accounting for around 6% of global CO₂ emissions, it is clear we cannot tolerate continued fighting; we have to find peaceful resolutions. Violence begets violence, but it also begets vast profits.

The U.S. is the leader the world has, whether the world wants it or not, and we need leadership on the climate and ecological crises. For too long, the U.S. has ignored the existential threat that business as usual poses. Successive governments draped in blue and red have failed to treat the crises seriously, but a return of Trump from 2024 until 2028 will effectively end any fast-shrinking chance humanity has of avoiding disastrous warming that poses a serious threat to U.S. security and could kill a billion of the poorest humans by 2100.

So, what can you do about this? One solution is mass protests in both Israel and the U.S. calling for an immediate ceasefire. Anything less shows the complicity of the general population, and this will lead to even more antisemitism, Islamophobia, and distrust in the leadership of the U.S. and for its people. Another demand is for the U.S. to stop funding Israel unconditionally and to require them to immediately work together with the Palestinian Authority to bring about a two-state solution. It would be in your interests to instead fund the redevelopment of Gaza and build the economy within Palestine, so there would be far fewer people ready to commit atrocities like those of Oct 7^th. When it comes to the climate and ecological crises, Americans need to get realistic about the cause. It’s not just fossil fuels; it is capitalism itself. Serious conversations need to be had about systemic change, otherwise we are all complicit in the genocide of the Global South.

The United States has a long history of helping to bring about peace when it is in its interest. Peace in the Middle East and Eurasia and systemic change are clearly in the interests of the population—whether it’s in the interests of the military-industrial complex and billionaires is another thing completely. I apologize to you if this causes offence, because few governments escape criticism, but the U.S. is the sole country with the power to affect the changes we so badly need, and that government is of the people, by the people, and for the people, lest we forget. This is an opportunity for the U.S. government to prove it cares more about freedoms and peace than about profits. The world is watching and silently pleading that you pressure your government to act as a rational statesman, not a bellicose, belligerent bully.