Opinion: Utah members of Congress, please speak out against the Gaza aid blockade
The Israeli government is again using food as a weapon of war in Gaza. Since March 2, 2025, Israel has imposed a blockade on all humanitarian aid. No food. No medicine. No fuel. No water.
One Israeli cabinet minister said this month about Gaza, 'They should starve.' Another said, 'Gaza will be entirely destroyed, civilians will ... leave in great numbers to third countries.'
Famine is rearing its ugly head. The U.N.'s World Food Program (WFP) ran out of food in Gaza on April 25. The World Central Kitchen (WCK) has closed down operation in Gaza as of May 8 due to lack of food. Meanwhile, WFP has 116,000 metric tons of food assistance waiting at the borders. WCK also has food trucks waiting in Egypt, Jordan and Israel, ready to enter Gaza.
The current situation has reached a breaking point. Sean Carroll, president and chief executive of the nonprofit American Near East Refugee Aid (ANERA), writing in The New York Times on May 6, 2025, stated:
'A full-blown humanitarian emergency in Gaza is no longer looming. It is here, and it is catastrophic. It's been more than two months since Israel cut off all humanitarian aid and commercial supplies into Gaza ... Two million Palestinians in Gaza, nearly half of them children, are now surviving on a single meal every two or three days.'
In addition, the Netanyahu government recently proposed what Ilan Goldenberg of J Street termed a Gaza 're-occupation plan':
'Netanyahu's plan is to force the entire Palestinian population into smaller and smaller areas of territory ... It will be a human catastrophe first and foremost for families trapped in Gaza — already suffering through bombing, starvation and repeated displacement — but it's a disaster for Israelis as well.'
The relatives of Israeli hostages held by Hamas certainly understand how disastrous this plan will be for Israelis. The Hostage and Missing Families Forum that represents the majority of relatives of those held captive in Gaza condemned the plan for 'giving up on the hostages' and 'choosing territory over hostages' against the wishes of the overwhelming majority of Israelis.
Former Israeli defense minister and IDF chief of staff Moshe Ya'alon was even more blunt when he called Netanyahu's plan 'a war crime.'
How does this relate to Utahns? Senator John Curtis put it this way during the recent Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on the nomination of Mike Huckabee to be U.S. Ambassador to Israel: 'Utah has a very special relationship with Israel.'
Senator Curtis cited cultural, spiritual and diplomatic reasons for this special relationship and specifically mentioned the BYU-Jerusalem campus.
It is precisely because of this special relationship that we speak out today. Friends don't let friends use starvation as a weapon of war.
Ninety-six members of the U.S. House of Representatives sent a letter last week to the Israeli ambassador to the U.S. decrying 'some of the worst humanitarian conditions in Gaza since October 2023' and concluding that 'leveraging humanitarian aid to pressure Hamas, as Defense Minister Katz has stated is the Israeli strategy, is unacceptable and constitutes an act of collective punishment against Palestinian civilians in Gaza.'
In the U.S. Senate, a separate letter signed by 25 senators said that 'we are witnessing a humanitarian catastrophe in the third month of Israel's full blockade of food, water, and medicine into Gaza.'
Unfortunately, none of Utah's congressional representatives signed either letter.
As Ilan Goldenberg wrote last week, 'Right now, we are still at a crossroads: Restoring the hostage deal and ceasefire framework is still possible — but it will take strong and broad outcry both in Israel and the United States, and a far tougher response from Trump, who will soon visit the region.'
We and our organizations are raising the outcry. Will the Utah congressional delegation have the moral clarity and commitment to speak out before it's too late?
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