Letter To The Editor: Response to Bucks Co. Commissioners' Statement

To the editor:

On October 16, I'd sent the following message to the Bucks County Commissioners in response to their joint statement on October 12. I subsequently attempted to follow up via phone call and snail mail, but I unfortunately have yet to successfully connect with them or elicit a response, so I'm sharing my thoughts here since I feel it's important to share.

A lot has transpired since October 16, and death counts have skyrocketed, but I'm sharing my original message (with some details about my family excluded) here so that you have the context. I recently moved to NJ after two decades in Newtown (where I also served as Chair of the Human Relations Commission), but I'm still interested in the betterment and safety of Newtown and Bucks County as a whole, which is why I'm so passionate about trying to improve the commissioners' messaging to the community.

Dear Bucks County Commissioners,

Today, I read the joint statement that the commissioners issued and was posted on the Bucks County Website on Thursday, October 12, 2023. While I don't have the benefit of reading it on the day it was issued, with the context and state of affairs at the time, and I sincerely believe it to be well-intentioned, I find it today to be incomplete and misguided, and I fear it could be potentially dangerous.

Over the course of the past week:
• Israel ordered 1.1 million residents of northern Gaza, including those in 22 hospitals, to evacuate and head south within 24 hours, an order which the United Nations declared "impossible" and "tantamount to a death sentence" (UN)
○ While evacuating, 70 people in cars containing "mostly women and children" were killed in Israeli airstrikes (PBS.org)
• Israel has planned to cut off Gaza from "all water, food, electricity & fuel," until hostages are released. This is considered collective punishment, which constitutes a war crime (Amnesty International)
• Israel has used white phosphorus in Lebanon and Gaza. The use of white phosphorous in densely populated areas "magnifies the risk to civilians and violates the international humanitarian law prohibition on putting civilians at unnecessary risk" (Human Rights Watch)

However, the joint statement your team issued on Thursday contains no reference to nor condemnation of the brutal and illegal actions that the Israeli regime has taken, nor does it provide any clear sympathy or recognition of the thousands of Palestinian lives lost and the millions that have been displaced and are at risk of death. This rhetoric of erasure of Palestinian plight, even if unintentional, has real consequences: a six-year-old Palestinian-American child was murdered in Plainfield, Illinois today and his mother was also seriously injured after their landlord entered their home and stabbed them multiple times, telling them "you Muslims must die" (BBC).

In the opening paragraph of the statement, reference is made to "the innocent victims, including babies and children, who were brutally murdered" in Israel, yet it makes no mention of the ~500 children killed in Gaza as of Friday, with likely many more child casualties to come since roughly half of Gaza's population is under 18 (Al Jazeera). There are certainly innocent victims on both sides, and we pray for the end of suffering for all and for peace in the region, but one-sided statements can create danger in Bucks County by those who read them and, like the murderer in Plainfield, don't view Palestinians as human. According to Save the Children, four in five children in the Gaza Strip live with emotional distress and more than half have contemplated suicide. I don't know how many Palestinian families there are in Bucks County, but unless they share nothing in common with my own Palestinian friends (and many of my Arab and Muslim friends), they are surely feeling the effects.

My parents attend a mosque in Bucks County. I also attended this mosque for many years while living in Newtown (I now live in NJ, but I'm in Bucks often). In the past week, the mosque has had to lock its doors during collective prayers, limit the allowed attendees for services, and suspend Sunday school, in order to do its best to increase security and protect the community. Unfortunately, when people only see one side of an issue these days, they can feel emboldened to ostracize and even try to attack those they deem to be members of the "other group" in their misguided passion for their cause. Failure to acknowledge the existence and suffering of the Palestinian people, coupled with their collective portrayal solely as violent extremists, dehumanizes them and thus endangers Palestinians, Muslims, and Arabs alike. Many people have never met a Palestinian, so there's an obligation to present their humanity when they're being demonized in media.

I hope that it's already been on your radar following the events that have taken place in the past few days, but if not, I urge you to consider amending the previously-issued statement or issuing a new statement altogether that addresses the current reality of the situation.

Thanks,
Aamir Nayeem