Editor’s Note: This is the fifth presentation in our series of statements delivered to Taos elected officials in support of Representatives Bush/Tlaib’s House Resolution 786 calling for deescalation and an immediate ceasefire in Israel and occupied Palestine. This is a letter to the editor submitted after the December 12th Town Council meeting.
By Lauren Willsie, Talpa, New Mexico
We are in a critical moment in human history. This is a moment we cannot take back.
Since October 7th we have day by day seen the unraveling of a massive deception. This deception is Israel claiming “self-defense” while committing a textbook genocide of the Palestinian people. People are beginning to pull the veil back and the objective reality is becoming clearer and clearer. This “conflict” did not appear from thin air—in fact, it extends back long before October 7th. We must take into context that the Palestinian people are under a brutal military occupation by Israel, including a land, sea, and air blockade. They have been suffering under an oppressive apartheid regime for the past 75 years since their displacement from their lands in 1948. Ever since then, the relentless oppression against them has only escalated.
If we don’t stand against this scale of violence being perpetrated against innocent civilians in Gaza, predominantly women and children, then we are consenting to constructing a world where no child is safe. If we do not uphold international law and protections against war crimes for innocent civilians, we are creating a world where no one is truly safe; a world where human life is no longer valued.
What happens when we’ve shown that the most powerful entities around the world don’t have to be accountable? We have become complicit. Some people say, “this is war” or “this is just what human history looks like,” but I believe we can say no. We can decide that we want a different future for humanity. We can decide that this type of suffering should never become normalized, a suffering of our own flawed design. We can decide that we want an equitable and just world for all living beings from this moment in history and onward.
We are not in Gaza, but our hearts are. Here in the United States, as Christmas music begins to chime in the supermarkets, so many of us are watching the horrifying imagery on glowing screens of merciless bombing of schools, hospitals, mosques, bakeries, churches, libraries, water supplies, entire multi-story residential buildings. One after another after another after another. The bombing of unimaginably crowded refugee camps where the displaced have been told to evacuate to. Nowhere is safe. No one can leave. Tall, guarded walls surround all of Gaza, and have for a long time. These walls will not allow aid trucks containing essential food, water, fuel, and medical supplies. We have seen Israel cut all internet connection to prevent documentation of war crimes they are committing, simultaneously making it impossible for people to contact family or call for paramedics. Israel cut off all food, water, fuel, internet and electricity to the people of Gaza. There is documented use of white phosphorous, illegal inhumane weaponry used on civilians that melts their flesh to the bone. We have seen the murders of journalists, aid workers, UN staff, doctors, teachers, poets, artists, mothers and their children, entire families. Wiped out.
With our tax dollars. Ethnic cleansing, collective punishment, and genocide—funded with money taken from our paychecks each week. All of this as we struggle to afford health care and make it day to day under the crushing weight of historic inflation and stagnant wages, while teachers are buying their own school supplies for their students.
What we need to ask ourselves is: Why is our representative Teresa Leger Fernandez resistant to co-sponsoring House Resolution 786 calling for a permanent ceasefire and a humanitarian aid to be allowed into Gaza?
What about upholding international law, refusing to further enable war crimes against humanity, and allowing innocent civilians caught in the midst of this to receive life saving humanitarian aid is so “concerning” to her? What is stopping her from adopting the resolution that her constituents are desperately calling for all over New Mexico. What is stopping her from listening to all the New Mexicans who are in the streets and urging her through emails and phone calls to her office? Furthermore, what is stopping her from listening to people from all over, from diverse cultural backgrounds, different faiths, different professions who have all come together urgently calling for the violence to stop? What is stopping her from listening to the rest of the nations on this planet, who are demanding that America call for a permanent ceasefire and stop supplying arms to Israel?
La Jicarita 
Where were you and the rest of the World when it was evident that Hamas, Hezbollah, the Arab Brotherhood, the Houthi and Iran were violating International Law time and again and again. While world leaders and you have watched in the comfort of y our living room on your TV like they were episodes of Gunsmoke or General Hospital. Their leadership should have been brought before the ICC years ago so the present tragedies they have bred could have been prevented. They must be tried just as the Butcher of Bosnia, Radovan Karaclzic, was. We pretend, as a nation, to rail against antisemitism. You are hypocrites. Terrorists organizations in the Middle East have been antisemitic for at least 4,000 years and still are so. It must end and Netanyahu is the man to do it, whatever his other failings as an imperfect human being. Hamas does not give one whit for their Arab brethren by hiding in or under hospitals, churches and schools and relying on civilian population and innocent adults and children to protect them because they know they will stir your sympathies and you will influence others. They have weaponized you and innocent civilians in their age-old antisemitic campaigns. Sorry to be so blunt.
There’s not much I can say to you, Bill, that will change your distorted perception of what is happening in Israel/Palestine right now. But again, as a Jew, I’d like to use the words of Lizzie Nutig in today’s La Jicarita post: “If we want to talk about antisemitism we can talk about how Israel’s use of Judaism to justify a literal genocide is antisemitic, and how Israel and Zionists have used Judaism to justify the violent displacement and imprisonment of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians over the last 70+ years is antisemitic. That’s why Jews across the world shout “Not in Our Name,” because the use of Judaism to justify violence, oppression, genocide, white supremacy, and settler colonialism is antisemitic.”