Gaza is roughly 25 miles long and 6 miles wide. It is about twice the size of Washington D.C. It’s been inhabited since the fifteenth century B.C. It occupies the exact same amount of land as Las Vegas, but about 2 million people live in Gaza.

Picturing it now? Big population, not a lot of land. Virginia Beach is nearly four times larger than the Gaza Strip. It is exactly the size of Raleigh, North Carolina, with four times more people.

Okay. Now, drop 1,000 bombs a day on the Gaza Strip, on Vegas, on Raleigh.

On DC.

For 6 straight days, non-stop, drop 6,000 bombs with a total weight of 4000 tons. 18,000 tons of bombs have been dropped on the Gaza Strip since October 7^th.

We haven’t even begun to see the numbers of dead, of wounded. A four-day “pause” (they’re not even pretending it’s a cease-fire) in fighting will allow between ten and fifty hostages to be released before they resume bombing.

So far Israel has dropped 42 bombs per square mile. Roughly 30 tons of bombs dropped on about every 20 New York City blocks.

This is the absolute definition of genocide. This is the 21^st century’s definition of holocaust. This is an attempt at complete destruction.

Israel has now dropped more tons of bombs on the Gaza Strip than the Allies dropped on Tokyo in World War Two.

In Israel, the number of tragically killed by Hamas since October 7^th is roughly 1200 people.

According to the Norwegian Refugee Council, in Gaza, the number of people tragically killed by Israel is roughly 14,500. More than 4000 of them are children with another 1300 children unaccounted for.

Almost 50 percent of all homes in the Gaza Strip have been destroyed.

52 percent of schools have been bombed with more than 600,000 students denied access to education as a result.

114 health facilities and 15 hospitals have been bombed.

All water on the Gaza Strip is now unsafe.

62 percent of the population has left their homes either because of destruction or displacement.

All sanitation services have stopped with sewerage “flowing in the streets.”

Drinking water is nearly non-existent.

The World Health Organization reports, to date, more than 70,000 cases of severe respiratory diseases.

Israel has allowed 6000 gallons of fuel to be brought to the Gaza Strip since October 7^th, but the WHO reports that the United Nations estimate for enough fuel to sustain life on the Gaza Strip is 42,000 gallons per day. PER DAY.

This is not retaliation. This is not even war. It is an attempt on the part of Israel to completely annihilate the Palestinian People, and nowhere in scripture is such a reaction sanctioned.

I hesitate to be so pedestrian here, but let’s go to Wiki:

According to Rabbi Judah Loew of Prague, Jewish law forbids the killing of innocent people, even in the course of a legitimate military engagement.^[23]

Those few cases in the Bible in which this norm was violated are special cases. One example was when King Hezekiah stopped all the fountains in Jerusalem in the war against Sennacherib, which Jewish scholars regard as a violation of the biblical commandment.^[22]

According to Maimonides‘, on besieging a city in order to seize it, it must not be surrounded on all four sides but only on three sides, thus leaving a path of escape for whoever wishes to flee to save his life.^[23] Nachmanides, writing a century later, strengthened the rule and added a reason: “We are to learn to deal kindly with our enemy.”^[23]

“If your enemy be hungry, give him bread to eat, and if he be thirsty, water to drink! ” ~~ Proverbs (Mishlei) 25:21

By the way,  “Mishlei is the second book of the section in the Hebrew Bible called Writings, which contains guidance for living a wise, moral, and righteous life.”

Happy Thanksgiving.

Peace my friends.

Shalom.