HPAD members & supporters,

This letter below will be sent to President Biden, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, Majority Leader Charles Schumer, and The Jerusalem Post. We invite you to add your signature to the letter, and to share it within your own networks.

You can add your name to the letter at this link.

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Historians for Peace and Democracy (H-PAD) calls for an immediate ceasefire in the fighting between Israel and Hamas, no additional military aid to Israel, and humanitarian aid to Palestinians living in Gaza. H-PAD formed in January 2003 to resist the U.S. invasion of Iraq. We are moved once more to state our grave concern about the current war in the Middle East and U.S. participation in it.

We wish to make the following points:

• International law must be taken seriously and applied equally. Just as the slaughter of more than 1,200 Israelis and others by Hamas-led fighters on October 7 is a condemnable war crime, so is the Israeli army’s ongoing bombing of hospitals, schools, and residential areas along with the shutting off of food, fuel, and water to Gaza. Two wrongs of whatever scale do not make a right.

• The causes of this conflict are many and of long-standing, and endlessly argued. They can, however, be said to include, inter alia the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their land in the Nakba of 1948; the refusal of subsequent Israeli governments to fully commit to a two-state or one-state (not based on religion or ethnicity) solution; the continuing encroachment of Palestinian lands by Israeli settlers.

• The belligerent role of the United States must be recognized and condemned. It has over many decades made Israeli intransigence possible, bolstered with annual tax-payer contributions to its defense systems worth $3.8 billion. The U.S. government’s continued infusion of weapons facilitates the ongoing murder of Palestinians and increases the possibility that we will get drawn into an expanded and protracted war in the region.

• The signers of this letter do not passively accept our country’s war-making. We demand that our government actively work for an immediate cease-fire, the end of all bombing, and the recognition of the right of Palestinians to defend themselves and form their own state.

In the name of peace and democracy, we urge all Americans and people throughout the world to participate in public discussions of these issues because they genuinely and painfully concern all of us.

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Best wishes,
Margaret Power and Van Gosse, H-PAD Co-Chairs