Since October 2023, the Palestinian death toll in Gaza has risen above 74,000, with almost half of those killed women and children. Children alone account for over 20,000 of the dead. Of the over 175,000 people wounded, more than 44,000 are children, many with severe burns, amputations, and traumatic injuries that require medical attention no longer available in Gaza due to the deliberate destruction of the hospital system by the Israeli military. Israel continues to delay or deny medical evacuations of wounded and chronically ill Palestinians to countries who are ready and willing to provide vital treatment that could improve their chance of recovery or survival.

Since the "ceasefire" signed by Israel and Hamas in October 2025, continued attacks by the Israeli military have killed 1,145 more Palestinians, including 300 children, and the Israelis have expanded the scope of their violence and destruction to the rest of the occupied Palestinian territories and other countries in the region. The total of civilian deaths continues to climb.

The United States has supplied 69% of the weapons Israel used in its assault on Gaza, including 2000-pound bunker-buster bombs dropped on Palestinians forced to live in tents or other makeshift shelters. From October 2023 to October 2025, the U.S. spent over $21 billion of our tax dollars on weaponry used by Israel, often to commit verified war crimes. Recently, President Trump approved a new $2.8 billion arms deal with Israel, including 40,000 one-ton bombs, which will again be paid for with U.S. taxpayer dollars given to Israel as foreign military financing they can use to "buy" the weapons from the United States. Since October 2023, U.S. taxpayers have paid over $31 billion for Israel's war on Gaza and ancillary military operations in the region.

Respected religious, humanitarian, and human rights organizations worldwide have acknowledged Israel's onslaught on Gaza as a genocide, including B'Tzelem (the leading human rights group in Israel), Amnesty International, Doctors Without Borders, Oxfam, Human Rights Watch, the International Association of Genocide Scholars, Jewish Voice for Peace, Americans Friends Service Committee, PCUSA (the largest Presbyterian denomination in the U.S.), the Mennonite Central Committee, Pax Christi International (the global Catholic peace movement), and Veterans for Peace. In June 2026, the U.N. Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory released its findings, determining that Israeli authorities and security forces have deliberately targeted and killed Palestinian children. It also described the intentional widespread destruction of infrastructure necessary to support children's lives, including medical facilities, neonatal and maternity centers, orphanages, and schools. Of the children who have survived the genocide, they concluded, "the destruction of their health, education, and development is irreversible."

In 2024, U.S. doctors and nurses who had volunteered in Gaza with the World Health Organization and other aid agencies described the violations of U.S. weapons laws they had witnessed while there, especially violence directed at children, and called for an arms embargo against Israel. In a letter written to then-president Joe Biden, they said, "We wish you could hear the cries and screams our consciences will not let us forget. We cannot believe that anyone would continue arming the country that is deliberately killing these children after seeing what we have seen."

We, too, want the U.S. to stop arming Israel. Representative Josh Riley is running for re-election in the midterm election on November 3. If you are registered to vote in Congressional District 19, call his Washington office now at (202) 225-5441. Tell him NY 19 voters want our tax dollars spent on problems here at home, not to support the slaughter of children or to fund endless foreign conflicts. Then, sign the petition.