Today marks three years since the October 7 attacks and Israel's devastating military campaign that followed. The brutal genocide against Palestinians in occupied Gaza has killed more than 73,000 people and forcibly displaced nearly 2 million more. Palestinians have been subjected to severe torture, violence, and deliberate abuse designed to wipe out most of the Palestinian population. Children have been intentionally targeted and maimed, making Gaza home to the largest concentration of child amputees. We reject the idea that any civilian life is worth less than another. Nothing can justify collective punishment, the destruction of civilian infrastructure, forced displacement, the obstruction of humanitarian aid, or the use of American weapons in attacks that cause extensive civilian harm. We cannot continue to look away. The US has a moral and legal obligation to pressure Israel to end its genocide against the Palestinians by establishing an immediate ceasefire to end civilian suffering, ending all military sales to Israel, and allowing unconditional humanitarian aid to enter Gaza immediately.
Three years after the October 7 attacks and Israel’s devastating military campaign that followed, the human cost is impossible to ignore. Tens of thousands of Palestinian lives have been lost in Gaza, families have been torn apart, communities destroyed, and millions left to endure displacement, hunger, and profound uncertainty.
We mourn every life lost since October 7 and reject the idea that any civilian life is worth less than another. Nothing can justify collective punishment, the destruction of civilian infrastructure, forced displacement, the obstruction of humanitarian aid, or the use of American weapons in attacks that cause extensive civilian harm.
This anniversary must be more than a moment of remembrance. It must be a moment of reckoning and action. The United States has both a moral responsibility and a policy obligation to end its complicity in Palestinian civilian suffering and pursue a foreign policy rooted in human rights, international law, accountability, and equal dignity.
That means working to secure a permanent ceasefire, ensuring unrestricted humanitarian access, protecting Palestinians from displacement and annexation, restoring and safeguarding humanitarian assistance, and ensuring that U.S. weapons and taxpayer dollars are never used in ways that violate U.S. or international law.
The path forward must begin with recognizing the humanity of every Palestinian life and with the conviction that lasting peace cannot be built without justice, accountability, and equal rights and dignity for a free Palestine.
A Congressional Debate That Is Changing
For decades, meaningful congressional debate over U.S. military assistance to Israel was often treated as politically off-limits. That is beginning to change.
The 2024 Senate votes on Joint Resolutions of Disapproval (JRDs) targeting specific offensive weapons did not succeed, but they forced lawmakers to take recorded positions on individual arms transfers and civilian harm. Similar efforts continued in 2025. While these resolutions failed and significant bipartisan support for military assistance remains, the debate itself has shifted.
Congress is increasingly confronting questions about U.S. weapons, humanitarian access, settlement expansion, settler violence, and annexation. New legislative proposals and oversight efforts demonstrate that unconditional military support is no longer beyond congressional debate.
That shift matters. But debate alone is not enough.
Our Perspective
Gaza’s Destruction Is a Defining Moral Test
Since 2023, more than 70,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, alongside mass displacement and the widespread destruction of homes, hospitals, schools, universities, and essential infrastructure. That figure represents a documented historical threshold, not a current accounting of the full death toll; the human cost has continued to grow beyond the figures cited here.
Behind every number is a person: a child who lost a parent, a parent who buried a child, a family forced from home again and again, a student whose education was interrupted, or a community struggling to survive without reliable access to food, water, healthcare, and shelter. The damage extends far beyond the loss of buildings. It has fractured families, devastated public health and education, and placed the continuity of Palestinian life under profound strain.
The United States cannot credibly uphold a rules-based international order while providing military assistance without meaningful safeguards and accountability. International humanitarian law must apply consistently, including when violations involve a close U.S. ally. And U.S. law must govern the use of American weapons and taxpayer dollars without exception.
Emgage Action’s position begins with a simple principle: Palestinian lives have equal value. Palestinian civilians deserve the same dignity, security, freedom, and protection that the United States says it seeks for people everywhere. Accountability and human rights should not depend on whose lives are at stake.
What Comes Next
The goal is to turn growing congressional scrutiny into concrete policy:
- • Condition U.S. military assistance where there is a substantial risk of unlawful civilian harm.
- • Enforce U.S. law, including the Leahy Law and Section 620I of the Foreign Assistance Act.
- • Protect humanitarian access and sustain funding for UNRWA and other credible aid organizations.
- • Reject forced displacement and annexation and oppose policies that facilitate either.
- • Hold perpetrators of settler violence and dispossession accountable through meaningful U.S. consequences.
- • Track the votes. Lawmakers who express concern must also be held accountable for how they vote when these questions reach Congress.
Take Action
The congressional tide may be shifting, but change only happens when lawmakers hear from their constituents. If we want growing concerns to become meaningful policy, we have to keep the pressure on.
There are two ways you can take action, today:
Stop the flow of weapons that cause civilian harm. Urge Congress to support restrictions on weapons and ensure U.S. military assistance complies with U.S. and international law.
Reject settlement expansion and displacement. Urge Congress to oppose policies that enable settlement expansion, annexation, and the displacement of Palestinians from their homes.