Dear NWOPC friends,

Nov. 1, 2023

Dear Congresswoman Kaptur:

The public silence from your office about the horrors unfolding across the Middle East is deeply troubling.

Please break that silence by becoming a co-sponsor of HR 786, the resolution introduced by Rep. Cori Bush that calls for an immediate ceasefire and humanitarian corridor in the Gaza Strip.

As you know, the United Nations and hundreds of humanitarian groups worldwide are calling for a cease fire and allowing aid into Gaza. The few aid trucks that Israel allows into Gaza are not allowed to travel to northern Gaza. Bombs continue to rain down while 40% of all housing in Gaza has been destroyed. Cell phone and internet communications will not reliably be available for the planet to bear witness as 2.2 million people are dislocated and decimated. Yet the carnage will not remain invisible. The world will soon see what Israel, abetted by the United States as financier and weapons supplier, has enabled.

Gaza’s hospitals are within hours or days of becoming darkened morgues from lack of fuel and electric power, or from being bombed because they’re in the way of Israel’s military objectives. If hospitals are forced into darkness, newborns in incubators will suffocate and thousands of seriously injured others of all ages will die without antibiotics, transfusable blood, anesthesia, pain killers, sterile bandages, food, drinkable water and urgent specialized physician care. Dialysis patients will die within hours. Complicated pregnancies will end in catastrophe. Many of Gaza’s 20,000 seriously injured will see treatable injuries deteriorate into amputations, terminal infections, permanent maiming and death sentences.

Outside the hospitals, there will be epidemic cholera, dysentery, cryptosporidium and many other gastrointestinal diseases, usually contained by public health measures, sanitary sewers, and timely medical intervention. When contracted by starving Palestinians, they will add to the mass deaths. Imagine thousands of children dying from dehydration from completely curable diarrhea in a collapsed city without drinkable water, hospitals, and medicines.

There is a grave danger of wars being rekindled across the region. We might even be drawn into conflict with other nuclear-armed states such as Russia, China or North Korea.

The only way to stop the hostilities from mushrooming into a possible world war is to put in place an immediate ceasefire to pause the warmaking and give cooperation and diplomacy a chance to work. The political leaders of Israel will not accept an interruption of the invasion without a clear signal from the U.S., as Israel’s sponsor, to do so. A ceasefire needs your co-sponsorship as a senior member of the House. Standing by as massive aerial bombing and a ground invasion proceed will paint the United States as wholly complicit in the nightmarish overreach of human misery that is ongoing.

Congresswoman Kaptur, the genocidal onslaught on Gaza shocks the conscience of the entire world. We are urging you in the strongest possible terms to co-sponsor the ceasefire resolution immediately. The whole world is watching.

Thank you.

Respectfully,

NORTHWEST OHIO PEACE COALITION

Terry J. Lodge, tjlodge50@PROTECTED

Susan Kuehn, smkuehn@PROTECTED

PEOPLE FOR PEACE & JUSTICE SANDUSKY COUNTY

Josie Setzler, josiesetzler@PROTECTED