There wasn’t much appealing to me about the prospect of dragging heavy boxes around Chicago in the lingering cold of early spring. My father and I had volunteered to deliver Passover meals on behalf of a local charity organization, and this was distribution day. The meals were destined for needy Holocaust survivors and Soviet Jewish immigrants. Chore as it was, the meal delivery left a lasting impact on me. I can still picture the old eyes of the needy recipients, the foreign words that I knew spoke of a need fulfilled. But the kind, dignified manner of this exchange is something I’d taken for granted.
It is easy to forget that there’s something fundamental to our relationship to food that goes beyond just the physical need to be sustained. When we are fed, we need to be fed with dignity.
On March 7th, as many Americans sit down to eat, President Biden will deliver his State of the Union Address. He will deliver his desperate appeal to capture the votes of his disillusioned constituents. I’m afraid I’ll have lost my appetite. My attention will be on Gaza, where President Biden’s inaction has left hundreds of thousands in a state of desperate hunger.
“For ten dollars, I have to die to get a bag of flour.” A young man, gaunt and bloodied, hauls a sack of flour on his shoulder as he struggles past the body of another soul killed in Israel’s relentless assault. “We must die in Gaza and be humiliated for a bag of flour.”
Death and humiliation over a bag of flour is no exaggeration. al-Rashid Street to the west of Gaza City became a mess of flour, bullets and blood on February 29th, in what is now called the Flour Massacre. As a crowd of starving Gazans rushed a late flour convoy, IDF soldiers opened fire at them, killing over 118 and injuring over 760 more.
This is the current State of the Genocide – Palestinian civilians are murdered while seeking life-sustaining aid, a food crisis enabled by my government. The Flour massacre, which President Biden has ignored, put the number of Gazans killed since October 7th past 30,000 souls. Without a ceasefire, more are sure to follow. Already, sixteen children have died in Gaza of starvation alone according to UNICEF. UN officials report that a quarter of Gaza’s residents, 576,000 people, face imminent famine conditions.
The ways in which Gazans stay fed can only be described as degrading. After walking for hours through the ruins of their former homes, after being kept hungry and waiting for delayed aid convoys, they must receive their food at the barrel of a gun. After the Flour massacre, Palestinians were seen using their hands to scoop up spilled flour from the ground in the immediate aftermath. Some Gazans have ground grain and pellets meant for livestock into flour. Some are left foraging for nutrition-poor weeds. On social media, mothers and fathers plead for assistance, a humiliation made even worse when those pleas are ignored.
For five months, I’ve watched in abject horror the disaster that has unfolded, and I’ve seen it met with weakness and cold indifference from my elected officials. As of today, the end of the fifth month of this catastrophe, I have watched as congress authorized the transfer of tools of war to the far-right government of Israel. I have watched as congresspeople in Illinois weaponize the fears and traumas of my Jewish community against my Palestinian neighbors, who constitute the largest Palestinian community outside of occupied Palestine itself.
How many more family members of my Palestinian neighbors will be forced to humiliate themselves just to stay alive? At what cost will Senator Duckworth finally respond to the pleas of her constituents and call for an immediate ceasefire to allow sufficient aid into Gaza? When will Senator Durbin take responsibility for his support of a ceasefire and refuse to fuel Israel’s campaign of vengeance with money and weapons? When will President Biden listen to those of us who voted for him in 2020, and put real monetary and military pressure on the Netanyahu government to end what has clearly gone on for far too long?
Chicago is better than this. I know how our diverse communities come together for those in need. I swell with pride to see Muslims, Jews, and people of all backgrounds march together in the hundreds and thousands. I’m proud to be part of a city where workers, unions, and advocacy groups join together in vigil to remember those in Gaza who have been lost. I won’t be watching Biden’s address over a comfortable dinner on March 7th; instead I will stand vigil with my neighbors. As President Biden delivers the State of the Union, we will choose instead to stand for Gaza’s dignity, and we will reflect on the state of the genocide.