Calls for an Israel Ceasefire Are Growing

Even before the horror over the hundreds killed at a Gaza hospital Tuesday, legal scholars in the US were calling on President Biden—who said he was "outraged" at the hospital tragedy—to work toward an immediate ceasefire. Gaza officials say an Israeli airstrike hit the hospital, but Israel insists a misfired Hamas rocket is to blame. As of Tuesday, Palestinian authorities said 3,000 people had been killed in Gaza, nearly two-thirds of those women and children. A letter from 178 legal scholars from what the Guardian calls "some of the US's most prestigious law faculties" calls Israel's response to the Hamas attack "a moral catastrophe," and says the US must do something about it.

"We condemn the Israeli government's escalating response, which is killing and displacing unarmed families and children in Gaza with the apparent support of the United States government," the letter says. Calls for a ceasefire were growing in other corners, too: A coalition of progressives in the House of Representatives is backing the Ceasefire Now resolution, the Hill reported Monday, and Axios reported that same day that dozens of Jewish demonstrators calling for a ceasefire were arrested outside the White House. "We all know collective punishment of Palestinians is a war crime," said Rep. Rashida Tlaib at a press conference Monday, per the Intercept. "The answer to war crimes can never be more war crimes." (More Israel-Hamas war stories.)