Public Comment

The tension in the Middle East has reached new heights following Israel's bombing of southern Lebanon and Gaza. The attack comes in the wake of repeated attacks by Israeli police on Palestinian worshippers in the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in East Jerusalem. These events are taking place as Israel continues to impose a violent crackdown in the occupied West Bank, where they have killed 94 Palestinians this year alone. Israel's raids on the Al-Aqsa Mosque during Ramadan have sparked international condemnation. 

The escalating violence in Palestine is the result of "the larger settler-colonial enterprise" of the decades-old Israeli occupation. These tensions do not happen in isolation from the larger military occupation that Palestinians are forced to live under. It is time for President Biden to break his long silence and immediately suspend all economic and military aid to Israel and demand an end to the occupation and lift the siege of Gaza, the largest open-air prison in the world.