Abigail A. Fuller teaches sociology at the University of Southern Maine and is an organizer for Maine Voices for Palestinian Rights and Maine Coalition for Palestine.
Every day I am shocked that we go on with our lives as if the slaughter of tens of thousands of people, funded by our tax dollars, is not taking place. Think about it: While you were driving to work last week, a young father in Gaza, returning from picking up the birth certificates of his four-day-old twins, found his wife and children killed in an Israeli airstrike. While I was grocery shopping, a girl arrived at a Gaza hospital with her jaw half-shattered. Olympic sprinters competed in Paris while Palestinian mothers collected their children’s body parts in plastic bags.
We do mundane things while Israeli soldiers torture Palestinian prisoners and a doctor who treated children in Gaza tells CBS, “No toddler is accidentally shot twice (in the heart and head) by the best sniper in the world.” The lowest estimate of the total death toll is 40,000 (including 16,000 children), with 10,000 bodies possibly still lying under the rubble. The medical journal The Lancet claims that due to food and medicine shortages and Israel’s destruction of Gaza’s water and sewage systems, 186,000 people could ultimately die even if the war ends now.
The stories are horrific, and they’re there for all to see, online and on social media. This is the first mass death to be live-streamed, people are saying. So why aren’t so many Americans raising their voices against Israel’s destruction of Palestinian lives (and homes, schools, and hospitals), made possible by the military and diplomatic support of our own government?
Maybe we turn away because we feel powerless; this is just another inevitable episode in our endless wars. But these deaths are the result of the choices our political leaders – and we – make.
As citizens of this country who elect people to represent us in government and make decisions on our behalf, we have a responsibility to act when our government’s actions conflict with our values and violate domestic and international laws. Since October 7, the US has provided over $6.5 billion in military aid to Israel. This may violate several US laws prohibiting arms sales to a country likely to use those weapons to violate human rights. United Nations experts have called for an immediate halt to arms sales to Israel, and the International Court of Justice has ruled that Israel must prevent genocide in Gaza.
What can you do? Throughout U.S. history, movements of ordinary people have fought for change. It is only because of courageous workers’ strikes, boycotts, and revolts that we have a 40-hour work week, laws against child labor, and the right to negotiate wages and benefits. Women won the right to vote in 1920 because people formed organizations to fight for it and refused to give up. Antiwar protests helped push the U.S. government to withdraw troops from Vietnam.
In Maine, you can attend one of the weekly events across the state and hold up a sign calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. (You’ll also meet kindhearted and determined people.) Educate yourself by attending a film screening or an art event, or soak up the wealth of information about the history of the Palestinian people on the internet. Call or write your senators or representatives and let them know (after all, they work for us). Follow Maine activists on social media and get more involved—plan a rally, protest against gun manufacturers, or ride the bus to a march in Washington, D.C.
I do all these things even though I never know how much I am contributing to ending this mass slaughter. The impact of a single act is difficult to estimate. But I keep going, not just because I might be able to make a difference, but because I have a responsibility to do so and because raising our voices in the face of horror is the only thing that makes us truly human.
