Sisters of Mercy of the Americas

I call on the United States and all parties involved in the negotiations, to work for the immediate release of all these victims of the deadly October 7, 2023 attacks, and to restore the ceasefire to prevent further loss of life. The further devastation of Gaza will have dire implications for any future civil society development in the region and will likely exacerbate existing tensions for another generation.

—Bishop A. Elias Zaidan, chair of USCCB Cmte. on Int’l Justice & Peace, public statement, 25 March 2025

Block the bombs, let aid flow, and stop the genocide in Gaza

Last week, the Block the Bombs Act (H.R. 3565) was introduced to the House of Representatives and now has 23 sponsors. This brief bill would prohibit the sale of certain offensive weapons to Israel. This is incredibly important, as Israel continues to engage in daily military actions that kill and injure scores of Palestinians trapped in the concentration camp they call home.

For several weeks now, Israel and the U.S. have collaborated to operate the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) as a replacement for long-standing and trusted humanitarian aid services through the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). In contrast to UNRWA, the GHF is run by military contractors and fails to satisfy its own purported goal of meeting basic needs for the Palestinians held in Gaza. The result has been disastrous and chaotic, resulting in dozens of killings and hundreds injured by GHF gunfire during the mere minutes of each distribution before aid is exhausted. The plan to use GHF is viewed not as an authentic provider of humanitarian assistance but as a plan to incentivize the displacement of Palestinians into militarized zones. Matching Senate and House resolutions (S.Res. 224 & H.Res. 473) have been introduced to express grave concern about the impending famine and urging the Trump administration to leverage all available tools to release hostages, deliver humanitarian aid, and end the genocide.

Please use the draft email in the grey box at right (below on mobile devices) to urge your members of Congress to support these bills and to use every available tool to stop the killing, starvation, and suffering of every kind being visited on the people of the Holy Land.

Background

From the Institute for Middle East Understanding:

Since October 2023, the Biden and Trump administrations have delivered more than $30 billion of US taxpayer-funded weapons to Israel to enable it to perpetrate alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity, making the US complicit in Israel’s actions.

These weapons deliveries have taken place in violation of US law, which prevents any form of US assistance going to a country which blocks the delivery of US humanitarian aid and engages in a consistent pattern of gross human rights violations.

Not only are US weapons deliveries to Israel illegal under US law; they are also immoral. Israel has used US weapons to kill more than 54,500 Palestinians and injure nearly 125,000 (nearly 10 percent of Gaza’s population); Israel has forcibly displaced 90% of Palestinians from their homes repeatedly, some as many as ten times; Israel has damaged or destroyed 92% of housing units in Gaza; and Israel has starved to death Palestinians through its nearly total blockade of aid to Gaza, leaving more than 2 million people on the brink of famine.

A new bill in Congress–H.R.3565, the Block the Bombs Act–introduced by Rep. Delia Ramirez, co-led by Reps. Sara Jacobs, Pramila Jayapal, and Mark Pocan, and originally cosponsored by 18 additional Members of Congress, seeks to end US complicity in Israel’s genocidal violence by proactively blocking the delivery to Israel of the types of weapons it has used to commit atrocities against Palestinians in Gaza.