Jewish Voice for Peace-LA Demands Congress Support a Ceasefire in Gaza

By Estee Chandler and Marcy Winograd

“Many of us in JVP-LA are descendants of Holocaust victims and survivors…”

Jewish Voice for Peace Los Angeles or JVP-LA condemns in the strongest possible terms Israel’s genocide in Gaza, home to 2.3 million people, nearly half of them children, terrorized by Israel’s relentless bombing of hospitals, UN refugee centers, ambulances, schools, homes and refugee camps. 

As Jews marching in protest with our southern California Palestinian sisters and brothers, we are heartsick watching the state that purports to represent us — world Jewry — deny water, food, medicine and fuel to Gazans imprisoned in a narrow coastal enclave where Israel controls ingress and egress. 

Despite atrocities committed by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, international law makes it clear that no claim of self-defense can justify the commission of war crimes or genocide.

As an organization that supports freedom and equality for all in Palestine, we call on our congress members to sign House resolution, H.Res.786, for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, to vote against President Joe Biden’s $14 billion weapons package for Israel and to read the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, a treaty signed by the U.S. in 1988 and one Congress is obligated to uphold.

JVP-LA notes the Center for Constitutional Rights or CCR has issued a letter “of potential legal liability” before the International Criminal Court to all members of Congress who fail to uphold this treaty by voting for additional weapons to Israel to continue its crimes against humanity.

In a letter, dated Nov. 3, 2023, the center said the aid package will provide funds to Israel to “support its ongoing war crimes against Palestinians, who are confined to the Gaza Strip, and to support apartheid and ethnic cleansing, and the underlying crimes of forcible transfer and deportation …”  

We wholeheartedly agree with the Center for Constitutional Rights and challenge claims that Israel’s collective punishment in Gaza will make the world safe for Jews. 

Quite the contrary.

Since Israel pledged to “open the gates of hell” in Gaza, the Israeli government has issued a global warning, cautioning Israeli travelers to avoid “displaying any outward signs of their Israeli or Jewish identity when traveling anywhere in the world.”

Israel — a state founded on the crimes of dispossession, displacement and erasure — has made the world less safe for Jews. Its genocide in Gaza is a continuation of the Nakba that began in 1947-1948 when hundreds of  of thousands of Palestinians fled terrorist militias to seek refuge in Gaza.

As Israel turns Gaza into a graveyard, sending orphans screaming into the night, the Israel lobby in Los Angeles — AIPAC, Anti-Defamation League, Democratic Majority for Israel — pronounces, “We stand with Israel” in a revolting endorsement of genocide.

No war or violence has ever killed the desire for liberation from occupation and subjugation — and neither will this one inflicted by the Israeli and U.S. governments on civilians in Gaza.

To end the cycle of violence in Israel-Palestine, one must end Israel’s occupation of Palestine, an occupation fueled annually by nearly $4 billion in U.S. taxpayer money.

Shamefully, only one California lawmaker has signed on to legislation in support of a ceasefire in Gaza. That legislator is Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA-13), also the lone vote in the House against the disastrous U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. Not one southern California congress person has become a signatory to this urgent ceasefire resolution; instead 57 members of Congress, including Rep. Nanette Barragán, representing San Pedro, who signed a letter to Secretary of State Anthony Blinken in support of  a “humanitarian pause.”

What is a “humanitarian pause”? A piece of bread before the next bomb?

Many of us in JVP-LA are descendants of Holocaust victims and survivors, and so it is with profound urgency that we say, “NEVER AGAIN. NOT IN OUR NAME. CEASEFIRE NOW”

Estee Chandler is the founding organizer of JVP-LA and serves on the JVP national board of directors. Marcy Winograd is a founding member of JVP-LA and a former congressional peace candidate who ran to represent San Pedro and Wilmington.