1. United States
2. Wash.
3. Letter

I write to you today as an ordinary citizen with an extraordinary concern, springing from the depths of my conscience, born out of a tremendous sense of humanity and justice. I write in a desperate plea for a ceasefire, an end to the human suffering that ravages the landscape in Palestine, a situation largely exacerbated by the seemingly ceaseless flow of our nation’s financial and military support to Israel. The images and stories trickling out of that region, of innocent lives truncated and futures extinguished, churn the stomach and strike a low, mournful note on the strings of one’s soul. What of the legacy we want to leave for future generations? What kind of a world do we envisage where investment in pain and suffering becomes the norm? Our country is renowned for standing as a beacon of freedom, a proponent of human rights, and a crusader of justice. And yet, here we are, toeing the very antithesis of the values we espouse by partaking, by virtue of our funding, in the humanitarian crisis blighting Palestine. I call on your conscience, as fellow humans, to end the financing of arms to Israel. These weapons, which should be tools of protection, are turned into messengers of death and destruction, specifically against the Palestinian civilians caught in the crossfire. This is not only a plea for a ceasefire but a demand for us to abolish crimes against humanity that we are indirectly facilitating. Such actions contradict our core national values, and one must demand an immediate stop to them. Every dollar we use to fund this campaign of destruction signifies assent to these atrocities rather than the fostering of peace and justice, the very essence of what it means to be human.