One of the stories my mom likes to tell about how motherhood and maternal hormones, specifically, affected her is that, a few weeks after my birth in the fall of 1992, my dad walked downstairs in the middle of the night to find my mom nursing me on the couch and sobbing over a Time magazine article about the war going on in the former Yugoslavia.

“The Bosnian babies, the poor Bosnian babies!” was about all my dad could make out. The article wasn’t even about children; it was a general update on the war. But sitting in her safe, cozy home with her own baby in her arms, she couldn’t help but feel for all the mothers and children halfway across the world who didn’t have the safety and security that we did, for reasons entirely out of their control. 

Oddly, it wasn’t that particular baby who grew up to study genocide and ethnic cleansing. That was my sister Virginia, born seven years later. Last year, she graduated from the Honors College at the University of Maine at Orono with a bachelor’s degree in political science, with a concentration on international government and international security. Virginia received the Benjamin Gilman Scholarship from the State Department to study abroad in Kosovo. She was a William Randolph Hearst Foundation Scholar and received high honors for her thesis, “Genocide in Bosnia to Ethnic Cleansing in Kosovo: International Responses’ Influence on Serb Military Actions.” (If she asks, I definitely read the whole thing and didn’t skim or skip any parts.)

I‘m not just listing her resume to brag about her (well, maybe a little), I’m listing her qualifications so that you understand that when my sister says an action is a war crime, she’s not just blowing smoke around.

I don’t feel qualified to comment on the history of Israel and Palestine; I’m not qualified to comment on war in general, especially one that is unfolding so quickly that there’s a good chance this column will be out of date by the time it is published.

But I do think it’s important to say this: Evidence shows that Israel has committed war crimes against the people of the Gaza Strip. Yes, Hamas militants committed horrific war crimes against innocent Israeli citizens. As far as I’m concerned, if there’s a hell, killing children is a one-way express ticket there. But my sister says there is no rule that says if someone commits a war crime against you, you get a pass to commit a war crime against them.  

Cutting off electricity and water to such a large area as Gaza, which Israel has done, qualifies as “collective punishment” under international law. Collective punishment is a war crime. At the time of writing, there is only one way into and out of Gaza, and that is via the Rafah border crossing on the Egyptian border. Hopefully this changes. Desperately needed aid for Gaza, including food, fuel, and medical supplies, have largely not been able to get through the “inoperable” crossing.

The Washington Post and other organizations have reported that Israel appears to be using white phosphorus over Gaza. It’s a neutral-sounding name, but the chemical substance that ignites on contact with oxygen is anything but. It can cause burns on the human body that go down to the bone. Even more horrifically, tiny fragments of it can burrow into human flesh to ignite later. While there are legitimate uses of it in battle, using it over an area so densely populated by civilians is a breach of international law. And when civilians are hit with it, where will they go? To overwhelmed Gazan hospitals running out of even the most basic medical supplies?  

Israel’s government ordered 1.1 million people in northern Gaza to evacuate south – within 24 hours. That would be like ordering the entire population of the state of Maine except for York County to flee to New Hampshire, but the only way to do so is through the Piscataquis Bridge, while bombs are falling. How do you think that would go? 

There are so many innocent Palestinians suffering right now. The Gaza Strip has a population of 2 million, roughly half of whom are children. I do not think that is OK. I do not think it is fair or just. I get that I’m just a random girl in rural Maine (with a highly educated sister), but when I look at the scenes coming out of the Gaza Strip, I hear my dad’s voice in my head, saying one of his favorite phrases: “Two wrongs don’t make a right.” 

America is not a Muslim-majority or Jewish-majority country. Both religious groups are minorities here. Antisemitic hate crimes and Islamophobic hate crimes have both been on the rise here in the past few years.

I’m worried about the Jewish and Muslim citizens of this country who might be forced to pay a price for events happening across the world that they had nothing to do with. We need to look at our own communities and make sure that the anger, rage and fear exploding out of the Middle East does not land on innocent people here.

Victoria Hugo-Vidal is a Maine millennial. She can be contacted at:
themainemillennial@gmail.com
Twitter: @mainemillennial

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