If there is something unseemly about Palestinian solidarity activists in the United States – and especially attending elite universities – showing either slight or no concern, or, worse still, vigorously defending the righteousness of killing Israeli children, young people, and older pensioners by Hamas terrorists (to call them freedom fighters is no drain the word of any meaning and a slap in the face to those who are), what can we say about these same “militants,” cheering on from the safety of their campuses or their comfortable homes that the people of Gaza press their fight against Netanyahu’s military blitzkrieg, to become fodder in an escalating, one sided war.

In this clash, Gazans, who did nothing to trigger this war, are quickly piling up as collateral damage and have absolutely no chance of winning against an aggressor that possesses a superior military capacity by a high order of magnitude. Moreover, Gaza, which was unlivable before the bombing began, will quickly become, if fighting continues at even greater intensity as Netanyahu promises, a city of ruins.

Thus anybody with a bit of common sense, anybody who decries the unnecessary loss of life, anybody unbitten by the peculiar bug of anti-imperialist solidarity that rests on the notion that the Israeli lives don’t matter should insist that the Biden administration and their representatives in Congress call for an immediate ceasefire on both sides, convey expressions of grief to the families in Israel and Gaza who have lost loved ones, provide humanitarian aid to the residents of Gaza, and initiate negotiations between representatives of both sides to end the ongoing conflict and reach a mutual agreement on a two state solution that provides a viable state for the Palestinians and security assurances and measures that satisfy the Israelis.