U.S. Congress Can Stop Genocide – Why Won’t They?

We have to ask: if the United States has the power to stop a genocide, why won’t we?

By Rivera Sun

Gaza is being starved – deliberately, with cruel intention and shocking inhumanity.

The photos of skeletal children haunt me. At night when I close my eyes. At dawn when I rise. They should haunt us all – along with the unfathomable suffering the families of Gaza have endured over nearly two years of relentless bombings, forced relocation, war crimes, destruction of hospitals, targeting of doctors, ambulance drivers, and reporters.

These months of Israeli-caused famine are worsening the nightmare Palestinians have been desperately trying to survive.

Food and medical supplies are available, plentiful, and poised on the border waiting to go in. Israel, however, has set up a blockade of humanitarian relief and refuses to let more than a small, insufficient amount enter the area. When Israel does allow a few trucks in, Gazans are often corralled into fenced areas, and shot at. Over 1,000 people have been killed at aid centers in the past three months – simply for trying to get food or medical attention.

It is not just Israelis committing these horrors – US contractors are guilty of this atrocity, too. In addition, our government pays for the bullets, bombs, military equipment, and surveillance technology – we sent more than $17 billion to Israel in 2024. This genocide is our tax dollars at work.

Our legislators –and our president – have the power to end our complicity in this horror. They are able to pressure Israel into reversing course by introducing a bill tomorrow to end all military – and other – aid to Israel unless the blockade is lifted, humanitarian relief is allowed into Gaza, and the human rights violation and war crimes cease.

We have to ask: if the United States has the power to stop a genocide, why won’t we?

By ending military aid, the United States has stopped a genocide before. In the late 1990s, Indonesia had been engaged in a brutal genocide in East Timor for over two decades. Hundreds of thousands of East Timorese had been killed – nearly one third of the population. As international campaigns protested around the world, a phone banking effort in the United States pressured Congress and the White House to act. In 1997, the Clinton administration cut off all military aid to Indonesia. Five months later, facing a mass movement of Indonesians and no support from the US, the Suharto regime crumbled. The genocide ceased within six months and East Timor won full independence by 2002.

If it is in our power to act, we must. Our nation’s position on Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza is unconscionable. The track record of inexcusable crimes has been clear for over a year – as has the preceding apartheid, illegal settlements, brutal occupation, and human rights abuses that have gone on for far longer.

There is no excuse for continuing to send billions of tax dollars to a genocidal regime engaged in forced starvation of two million people. More than 59,000 people have already been killed, 140,000 injured, the entire population displaced, and their homes reduced to rubble.

How many more must die of forced starvation?

The ghosts of Gaza will haunt us for centuries to come – unless we act now.

Rivera Sun, syndicated by PeaceVoice, has written numerous books, including The Dandelion Insurrection and the award-winning Ari Ara Series. She is the editor of Nonviolence News, Program Coordinator for Campaign Nonviolence, and a nationwide trainer in strategy for nonviolent campaigns.