Between Saturday, October 7 and Wednesday, October 25, at least 6,500 Palestinians (including 2,700 children), 1,400 Israelis, and 30 Americans have been killed. Many more have been wounded and traumatized, and 1.4 million people in Gaza have been displaced with their homes destroyed.

Israel’s government has been dropping around a thousand bombs a day on 2.2 million trapped Palestinians in Gaza—over half of whom are children. This includes white phosphorus bombs, an illegal incendiary weapon that burns through skin down to the bone.

This collective punishment of Palestinian civilians is a moral outrage and an egregious violation of humanitarian law.

The answer to war crimes is not war crimes.

Saying that there are no innocent civilians in Gaza and calling Palestinians “animals,” Israeli politicians have openly broadcast their collective punishment of civilians. The Israeli government has cut off water, food, fuel, medicine, and electricity to Gaza, while refusing to accept Palestinian Americans from Gaza or to allow the delivery of adequate humanitarian aid into Gaza.

Unfortunately, many U.S. political leaders are silent and refuse to call for an end to the violence. Instead they want to send massive amounts of weapons to Israel’s military, while dehumanizing and disregarding Palestinian civilians. The Biden administration, most of Congress, and U.S. State Department officials refuse to pursue de-escalation and facilitate a ceasefire.

But morally courageous Democrats just introduced the Ceasefire Now Resolution in Congress.

The resolution urges the Biden administration to call for an immediate de-escalation and ceasefire in Israel and occupied Palestine, to send humanitarian aid and assistance to people under siege and trapped in Gaza, and to save as many lives as possible in the region.

In announcing the Ceasefire Now Resolution, Representatives Cori Bush (MO-01), Rashida Tlaib (MI-12), André Carson (IN-07), Summer Lee (PA-12), and Delia C. Ramirez (IL-03), alongside Representatives Jamaal Bowman (NY-16), Bonnie Watson Coleman (NJ-12), Jesús “Chuy” García (IL-04), Jonathan Jackson (IL-01), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY-14), Ilhan Omar (MN-05), Ayanna Pressley (MA-07), and Nydia Velázquez (NY-07) are some of the only members of Congress calling for a ceasefire. Since the resolution's introduction, six more Democrats have co-sponsored it.

The hate and racist rhetoric coming out of Washington D.C. is pushing incendiary, hateful, and dehumanizing anti-Palestinian and anti-Muslim rhetoric that must be called out. A 6-year-old boy—Wadea Al-Fayoume—was stabbed to death in Chicago for being Palestinian American.

In recent days, hundreds of thousands of people rallied in cities across the U.S. for a ceasefire. Hundreds of Jewish Americans have been arrested while protesting to end this unfolding genocide against Palestinians. We must keep showing massive public support for ending the violence.

Please sign onto the Ceasefire Now Resolution if you agree: The U.S. government must urgently save Palestinian, Israeli, and American civilian lives. We must bring Americans in Israel and occupied Palestine safely home, and push Israel’s government to stop the siege on Gaza and ensure humanitarian aid to Gaza.

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In endorsing the resolution, Stefanie Fox, Executive Director of Jewish Voice for Peace Action, said: “We call on every member of Congress who values the preciousness of human life to join them in demanding a ceasefire now.”

Another endorser of the resolution, Rachel Gilmer, Co-Director of the Dream Defenders, said: "Every member of congress who does not sign onto this resolution is complicit in genocide. The question is simple: will you support a ceasefire and humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza or the continued massacre of innocent people?”

The only Palestinian American in Congress, Rep. Rashida Tlaib said that her colleagues are trying to silence her voice “because I want the violence to stop, no matter whether it’s toward Israelis or toward Palestinians.” She said: "I cannot believe I have to beg our country to value every human life, no matter their faith or ethnicity. We cannot lose sight of the humanity in each other."

Right now the focus is on ending the violence and saving as many lives as possible. In the long-term, we must keep building the movement to end the Israeli government’s apartheid system against Palestinians. Everyone in the region deserves to live safely, in freedom and with equal rights. No one is safe with the current status quo.