1. United States
2. Va.
3. Letter

On March 20, 2025, Human Rights Watch found that the Israeli military forces occupying hospitals in Gaza have “caused deaths and unnecessary suffering of Palestinian patients while occupying hospitals in the Gaza Strip during the current hostilities, amounting to war crimes.” This includes denying hospital patients water, electricity, medicine, and various medical supplies that made the difference between life and death for them. These deaths included children on dialysis and chronically ill patients. Doctors have been reported begging the soldiers to be allowed to bring medicine and supplies to their patients but being denied. There were also reports of the military blocking ambulances from reaching the hospitals. On top of that, there were reports of forced evacuations placed on these patients which were rarely facilitated by the military, and when they were facilitated they only brought these patients to other hospitals that lacked any medical care for them due to the man-made blockade placed on Gaza. I also feel the need to emphasize that this report also had findings of Israeli soldiers shooting and killing civilians, firing on doctors, torturing medical workers, and mistreating the patients that they had in their custody while illegally occupying these hospitals. What is even worse is that Human Rights Watch reports that the Israeli government have not announced any investigations into these findings. There seems to be no interest from the government itself in upholding and protecting human rights in Gaza. I bring these findings up to you, once again, to urge you to support legislation blocking the shipments of offensive arms to Israel. There is no way that you, or anyone else, can support this by continuing to send weapons that will be used to murder countless civilians. Israel is breaking international law by committing war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza. Our country is complicit in this. We are complicit in this. Please be a part of the change before it is too late and there no Palestinians left in Gaza. If you help continue this, these Palestinians will either be murdered by soldiers, ethnically cleansed off of their land, or starve to death from the blockade. This will include innocent men, women, children, and the elderly. Source: Human Rights Watch. "Gaza: Israeli Military War Crimes While Occupying Hospitals." Human Rights Watch, 20 Mar. 2025, (https://www.hrw.org/news/2025/03/20/gaza-israeli-military-war-crimes-while-occupying-hospitals ).