Women Visit US Senators in Seeking a Ceasefire in Gaza
Report and photos by Phil Pasquini
Washington: In support of invoking an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, members of the American Palestinian Women’s Association, CODEPINK: Women for Peace, and Doctors Against Genocide descended on the Hart Senate Office Building November 16. The groups called on ten women senators to do everything they can to bring about a ceasefire in Gaza in ending the senseless slaughter there.
At each office, several activists spoke to attentive staff members imploring them to convey their messages, asking that the member vote in favor of an immediate ceasefire. They also provided a binder with photographs of victims in Gaza especially children, along with the names of 5,000 children killed to show compelling evidence of the horrific and brutal carnage the Israeli invasion has imposed upon so many innocent people.
A member of the American Palestinian Women’s Association made the urgent plea to the senators’ staff members that she could not believe that “We are here pleading for your humanity,” that seeing images of injured and dead children on TV and babies dying “We have to speak up, we cannot stand silent for this. We have to stop the bombing of the kids, our babies (paid for) with our tax money. Noting that every five minutes a child is being killed, it is in our politicians’ hands to stop the war now!”
Another doctor described Israeli fliers being dropped on residents’ homes in Northern Gaza warning them to leave or they could be considered as “colluding” with Hamas and subject to attacks and bombing. “There are many of us who know people who do not have that ability to move. They have family who are disabled, they have family who are elderly, they have newborn children.”
“I don’t understand the concept of providing aid to allow for our tax dollars to provide bombs to create the victims…and then we are going to ask people to stich them up to try and save them. This is idiotic. It is insanity.”
Another activist conveyed a message from a Gaza resident to staff members in telling of cooking on open wood fires, that having canned food or vegetables were now a luxury and that having drinkable water now “…is like a dream. I see many people now on the roads holding their packs, their eyes tearing up at the memories they are leaving behind at the destruction of all their efforts over the years. I see children injured with muddy feet. Mothers running bare feet with their babies.”
The writer went on to say: “Now I am on a roof when I look up at the night sky and see all the stars, I am enjoying them when I realize there is something abnormal about them. Normal stars don’t move around or turn off. I’m puzzled until I realize that my sky is full of unmanned war planes and drones. I wish that one day I will be able to stare at real stars in the sky without being bombed any second.”
The senators who were visited during the direct action are: Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Maria Cantwell (D-WA), Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV), Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), Maggie Hassan (D-NH), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), Kristen Sinema (A-I), Tina Smith (D-MN), and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA). Only Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) whose staff was contacted by telephone refused to meet with the activists.
(Phil Pasquini is a freelance journalist and photographer. His reports and photographs appear in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs and Nuze.ink. He is the author of Domes, Arches and Minarets: A History of Islamic-Inspired Buildings in America.)
