This is devastating — 21 people dead, including eight children, because families with nowhere else to go were forced to live in a building left leaning and unsafe after it was struck. The images and witnesses in this piece make painfully clear that the war’s harm to civilians keeps multiplying long after a strike: collapsing buildings, shifting rubble, and entire neighborhoods that are no longer habitable. Nobody should have to choose between starvation, exposure or living in a deathtrap. The UN warnings about hundreds of other buildings at risk and the desperate lack of heavy machinery and basic supplies are not abstract statistics — they are a ticking clock as winter approaches. The stated security concerns about dual-use items cannot become an excuse for blocking life-saving equipment, tents and repairs that are essential to protect civilians. We must condemn attacks that kill civilians wherever they come from, including the horrific October 7 atrocities — but those crimes do not absolve the international community or any party from respecting international humanitarian law. Collective punishment and indefinite denial of aid are morally and legally unacceptable. Governments that supply weapons or tacitly enable policies that put civilians at risk need to be held accountable and pressured to change course immediately. What’s needed now is an urgent, sustained humanitarian response: safe corridors, unfettered entry of rescue and reconstruction equipment, winter shelters and medical supplies, independent investigations into civilian deaths, and a credible path to accountability and reconstruction. Longer term, there must be a political solution that ends the cycle of occupation, violence and displacement so people in Gaza can rebuild their lives in safety and dignity. My heart goes out to the families who lost loved ones. If your representatives aren’t demanding immediate humanitarian access and a durable ceasefire, push them — silence and inaction are a form of complicity.
