The US and Israel carry out a genocide in Gaza with F-35 jets

F-35 jets have been dropping bombs in Gaza. 35,000 civilians murdered so far, including 10,000 women and 15,000 children. Thousands more lie crushed under the rubble. Housing, schools, hospitals, churches, mosques, and farms blown up. Every university in Gaza destroyed.

The City of Rafah, adjacent the Egyptian border where over 1 million displaced Gaza residents relocated, is now under intense bombardment. Hundreds killed and wounded. The border crossing with Egypt taken over by Israeli troops.  

The US Congress and the Biden Administration provide the F-35 jets, the bombs, the artillery, and the UN Security Council vetoes of ceasefire resolutions. The genocide inflicted on Palestinians in Gaza is a joint operation of the US and the Israeli governments.

Students take the lead upholding justice and the rule of law

The Columbia University encampment began on April 17 with students putting up 50 tents akin to the tents housing displaced families in Gaza. The students called for an immediate ceasefire, disclosure of university investment in companies doing business with Israeli apartheid, and divestment from those companies.

The Columbia University administration, demonstrating its support for genocide, twice called in the police to stamp out the expressive speech and grassroots democracy of their students. But the vicious repression of their peaceful protest failed to stop the Columbia students. Nor did it prevent a rapid global expansion of the encampment movement they initiated—including to the University of Vermont and Middlebury College.

Columbia students in the School of Social Work continued to make saving Gaza a central issue by their action at the graduation ceremony yesterday: Each student taking the stage displayed a different form of protest or solidarity with Gaza to the enormous cheering of their classmates.

Vermont is training its airmen to commit genocide

Here in Vermont, statewide political and military leaders are abusing their power over the training of the Vermont Air National Guard by foisting the 115-decibel noise of the F-35 jets on 6,663 Vermonters who live in working class and ethnic minority parts of Winooski, Burlington, Williston, and South Burlington near the airport.

Those F-35 jets were brought to Burlington International Airport in 2019 because the airport is amidst the most densely populated cities in Vermont. As described in the US Air Force F-35 Environmental Impact Statement, repeated exposure to this extreme F-35 noise impairs the cognitive development of children (pages C-28 to C-30). The Air Force described degraded “reading, attention, problem solving and memory” from exposure to such loud aircraft. The location in a densely populated area gives the pilots daily practice targeting civilians, especially children, with the 115-decibel F-35s taking off low over them more than a dozen times a day.

The idea of using the 1,300 children who live in that extreme F-35 noise zone as subjects of the training was the result of years of deliberation by Air Force and Vermont officials before the final decision was made in 2013 to locate the F-35 jets at the Burlington International Airport. Those officials concluded that the F-35 training in a location where they would hurt children would give pilots the real-life training they need. The idea was that the pilots would gradually get used to hurting civilians, including children. They could then be counted on to reliably commit any needed atrocity in the next illegal, immoral, and unjust US war based on lies that especially targets civilians, like the Iraq War did or the current War on Gaza does.