To the Massachusetts Congressional delegation,

It is with great sorrow and frustration that we write to express our disappointment over your continuing Congressional support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza; its dispossession of Arab lands in the West Bank; and its continued and relentless regional provocations against Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Islamic Republic of Iran.

As your constituents and as citizens of the United States, we feel obligated to remind you of your Congressional responsibility to uphold elementary moral principles and basic human rights in your voting.

Therefore, we call on you to heed the following demands—all of which are well established and well-founded in both U.S. and international law:

1. A Permanent Ceasefire

According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), there have been at least 34,262 Palestinians killed in Gaza and another 77,229 injured (as of April 25, 2024). CARE International, a relief agency working in Gaza, estimates that approximately 70% of those killed are women and children—i.e., non-combatants.

Since the war began, Israel has conducted itself in a manner that fundamentally contradicts the principles of international humanitarian law—the law governing armed conflict. For instance, Human Rights Watch (HRW) has documented that Israel has intentionally employed starvation as a method of warfare: “Since the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, attacks in Israel, the Israeli government has deliberately blocked the delivery of aid, food, and fuel into Gaza, while impeding humanitarian assistance and depriving civilians of the means to survive.”

As a result, according to the estimates of the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification group, “100% of Gaza’s population” is at imminent risk of famine. Though the casualties continue to rise and the medical situation becomes more dire by the moment, Gaza’s healthcare system is virtually inoperable. An investigation by the World Health Organization (WHO) has revealed that the two largest hospitals in the Gaza Strip—Al-Shifa Hospital and the Nasser Medical Complex—are now an “empty shell,” with most of the buildings being “extensively damaged or destroyed,” and with the “majority of the equipment [being] unusable or reduced to ashes.”

The WHO has described events such as these not as one-off punctual events, but, rather, the “systematic dismantling of health care” in Gaza: “Of the 36 hospitals that used to serve over two million Gazans,” they concluded, “only 10 remain somewhat functional, with severe limitations on the types of services they can deliver.”
Though Israel’s litany of horrors and war crimes could be adduced at great length, our government’s opposition to them could not: in fact, the case is precisely the opposite. At every step of the way—whether at the United Nations or by bypassing Congress via executive privilege—our representatives have continued to stalwart any attempt at providing a resolution to this conflict.

Therefore, as your constituents, we demand that you go on public record to vote and call for a permanent ceasefire, so that the Palestinians may freely exercise their “right to life, liberty, and security of person” (Article 3, U.N. Declaration of Human Rights) and that humanitarian aid can flow into Gaza.

2. Arms Embargo Now

It is now resolutely undeniable that U.S. arms to Israel have been used to commit harrowing, horrendous, and heartless war crimes in the Gaza Strip:

For instance, on December 5, 2023, Amnesty International (AI) reported that “US-made Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAM) were used by the Israeli military in two deadly, unlawful air strikes on homes full of civilians in the occupied Gaza Strip,” which killed 43 civilians—19 children, 14 women, and 10 men. Moreover, on March 19, 2023, Human Rights Watch and Oxfam submitted a memorandum to the Biden administration strongly criticizing Israeli conduct in Gaza—some of the more salient points have been highlighted below:

• “Human Rights Watch documented a strike by Israeli forces on a marked
ambulance outside al-Shifa Hospital on November 3, 2023, which reportedly
killed 15 people and injured 60.”
• “Human Rights Watch documented strikes on or near several major hospitals between October 7 and November 7, including the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital, the Indonesian Hospital, and the International Eye Care Center.”
• “Human Rights Watch determined based on verified video and witness accounts that Israeli forces used white phosphorus in military operations in Lebanon and Gaza on October 10 and 11, 2023, respectively.”
• “An Oxfam analysis has found that a significant portion of its water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) infrastructure that Oxfam and its WASH partners installed or rehabilitated over the period 2017-2023 has been damaged or destroyed by Israeli bombardment, rendering much of it inoperable.”

However prominent these war crimes may be in recent months, these weapons sales have occurred against the background of an ongoing brutal occupation and apartheid that has lasted over 50 years, further punctuated by periodic high-tech massacres U.S. representatives and pundits shamefully gloss as “military operations,” or exercises in “self-defense.” In light of these facts, continued arms sales to Israel is not only an act devoid of conscience, but an act devoid of legality.

Under the Leahy Law, the U.S. is forbidden to provide “U.S. foreign aid and Defense Department training programs” to “foreign security, military and police units credibly alleged to have committed human rights violations,” according to Amnesty International. The case for ending weapon sales couldn’t be clearer. Therefore, as your constituents, we demand that you go on public record to vote and call for an end to all weapons sales to Israel, so that, again, the Palestinians may freely exercise their “right to life, liberty, and security of person” (Article 3, U.N. Declaration of Human Rights).

3. Restore UNRWA Funding

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) was founded in 1950 to “carry out direct relief and works programs” for Palestinians displaced in the aftermath of the 1948 war.

As it was originally conceived, UNRWA was intended only as a temporary institution, one that would later be dismantled once the refugee problem was adequately solved; however, in the absence of a such solution, UNWRA is now responsible for overseeing the following critical needs of some 5.9 million refugees in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

On March 23rd, as part of a $1.2 trillion spending package, Congress voted to “[strip] funding from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East [...] through March 2025,”—a bill which, as one news source observed, included “the $3.8 billion the U.S. sends to Israel every year.”

UNRWA functions as the life-line for Palestinian refugees, providing immediate relief in the form of food, aid, and shelter for those whose lives have been destroyed by war and displacement. Additionally, UNRWA enacts the functions of a state that would exist were it not for the rejectionist U.S. and Israeli governments, who foreclose every possible avenue for Palestinian statehood and, by consequence, any possible resolution to the refugee question.

Therefore, as your constituents, we demand that you go on public record to vote and call to restore funding to UNRWA, so that the Palestinians may freely exercise their “right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services” (Article 25, U.N. Declaration of Human Rights).