To the Editor:

One of the most disturbing aspects of the Israeli wars of the past year is the lack of outrage among powerful individuals, particularly President Joe Biden, and groups in the United States, at the brinkmanship, intensity, duration, and methods of Israeli violence.

This includes Paul Tonko, Charles Schumer, Kirsten Gillibrand, Donald Trump, Kamala Harris, and Kathy Hochul. You have all disgraced yourselves. Palestinian infants and children are being splattered by U.S.-made and supplied bombs.  Israel is imposing a Final Solution on north Gazans.

Thousands of Lebanese were injured — many with severe facial wounds — by boobie-trapped exploding pagers and walkie-talkies. More than a million Lebanese have been driven from their homes since mid-September.

The entire Gaza population is gradually starving to death, one-half of whom are children and teens. Five hundred- and 2000-pound-bombs given by the United States are dropped atop crowded schools (shelters) and apartment buildings. Children are frequently shot in the head by Israeli soldiers.

Terrorized, homeless, emaciated and exhausted Palestinian children have been repeatedly displaced; many live in tents as another winter approaches. Israeli soldiers often post social media videos of themselves committing war crimes and celebrating.

Palestinian POWs are routinely tortured. The Israeli military has repeatedly targeted and killed journalists, physicians, rescue workers, United Nations staff, and destroyed buildings containing news offices.

Israel's Gaza war goal seems to be to obliterate every aspect of Palestinian culture, civilization, and life.  Hospitals, ambulances, homes, farms, factories, universities, schools, mosques, churches, historic sites, libraries, archives, museums, bakeries, U.N. relief stations, infrastructure — all have been severely damaged or destroyed.

Israel, with U.S. help, is transforming Gaza from a concentration camp into an extermination camp. We need to call things by their correct names: The Israeli-U.S. war in Gaza is a holocaust.

Many fear that what little remains of the Palestinian West Bank will soon get the Gaza treatment; some think it has already begun. West Bank Palestinians are terrorized by Israeli settlers into fleeing their homes while the Israeli military destroys them.

Israeli leaders often blame Palestinians and Lebanese for their own predicament, but like everyone else, Israel is responsible for its own behavior, and its actions are often vicious, enormously disproportionate, and contrary to international law. Israeli leaders increasingly talk and behave like German Nazi leaders 80 years ago.

Israeli leaders have chosen to murder tens of thousands of Gaza Palestinians, mostly innocent civilians. The Lancet medical journal reported in July the total Gaza death toll may be almost 200,000. In September, Ralph Nader said the death toll is over 300,000.

Why do we not see full-page newspaper advertisements from clergy, physicians, educators, and mental-health professionals demanding a termination of U.S. weapons gifts to Israel and U.S. complicity in this genocide? Why do U.S. elites not speak out? Why do so few elected officials demand an immediate weapons embargo? Why does the U.S. pledge unwavering loyalty to Israel?

History will judge the U.S. government very harshly for not stopping the genocide while simultaneously providing the armaments Israel used to carry it out. The stature of the U.S. in the world is severely damaged. The U.S.  has demonstrated the United States will not enforce U.S. law. And Jews may live to regret that 20th- and 21st-century Israeli leaders trashed U.N. institutions and international law.

Tom Ellis

Albany