With the genocide in Gaza far advanced, and having lost the recent election when supporting peace might have won it, the Biden administration -- on its way out the door -- has told Congress it wants to send yet more weapons to Israel, the majority of which it would take a year or several years to deliver.

The incoming Trump administration plans to continue the slaughter and destruction.

Is this last-minute proposal from Biden part of a competition for greatest support of mass killing? Or is it a move to demonstrate bipartisanship before the storm, by doing something that most of both parties' elected officials support?

Either way, this is a time to make clear to everyone in Washington that the demand for peace and compliance with laws and basic human decency has not gone away, that -- on the contrary -- it is growing.

Over the past 14 months, I have received hundreds of messages from family members throughout the Gaza Strip. The nature of the messages often conveyed a sense of urgency and panic but, at times, contentment in God’s will. 

 Some of those who wrote these notes have been killed in Israeli strikes, like my sister, Dr. Soma Baroud; others lost children, siblings, cousins, neighbors and friends. It may seem strange that none of those who communicated with me throughout the war have ever questioned their faith, and have often, if not always, begun their messages by checking on me, and my children. 

 The samples of the messages below have been edited for length and clarity.

 Ibrahim: 

 "How are you? We are all fine. We had to leave Shati (refugee camp). The Israelis arrived at the camp yesterday. Our whole neighborhood has been destroyed. Our home, too, was destroyed. Alhamdulillah - praise be to God." 

 Soma: 

Sundays, January 5, 12, 26 and Feb 2, 2025, 3:00 - 4:30 PM
The Israeli war on Gaza – widely considered genocide – did not begin on October 7, 2023. This series will look at the background of Zionism and colonialism that laid the foundation for ongoing wars and today's violence in the Middle East. Palestinian dispossession, we will see, began more than a century ago.  

Jan 5: CONQUEST AND COLONIALISM IN THE MIDDLE EAST DURING THE 20TH CENTURY: The roots of the contemporary Middle East go back to the First World War and its aftermath; the birth of Zionism as a political movement.

Jan 12: MANDATES AND REPRESSION IN PALESTINE AND BEYOND: The failure of the British colonial attempt to shape Palestine in conformance with the Balfour Declaration; Palestinian resistance and the first proposals for partition; Zionist terror; British, French colonialism in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.  

Jan 26: ISRAELI INDEPENDENCE AND “NAKBA”: The UN proposed partition of Palestine, Israeli declaration of independence and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from 1947 to the present; Arab and Palestinian resistance.