This past Friday, nearly in despair about the starvation spreading throughout Gaza, and outraged by the endless, childish finger-pointing, always blaming other countries and organizations while denying one's own responsibility to deliver food and water and medical supplies to save the lives of the Gaza people, I finally asked myself, "WHAT CAN I DO?"   

I don't know why it has taken me so long to ask this question. Perhaps because  the food and medical supplies are right there in Israel, just waiting to be delivered, so giving money wasn't the key to feeding the people, and I didn’t know what else to do.)

Then it hit me — many of us write or call our local, state and federally-elected officials to share our views. I should contact Israel's ambassador to the United States: Yechiel Leiter.  So I did: Haven’t you killed enough people in Gaza? Release the damn food and supplies! Use your drones or planes and trucks to deliver them throughout the country! DO IT TODAY! What you're doing is immoral on every level, in every religion. You are creating anti-semitism around the world through your actions. From one totally outraged by the murderous actions of your leadership.

Here's Ambassador Leiter’s position as just expressed in the New York Times the very next day: “Israeli officials have argued that the level of hunger has been exaggerated and that Israel is doing what it can to lessen it."

"What we are currently witnessing is an unprecedented vilification of Israel,” Yechiel Leiter, Israel’s ambassador to the United States, said in a statement on Saturday night. “The accusations that Israel is guilty of implementing a policy of starvation in Gaza are lies.”

I think he needs to hear from more of us. Perhaps you might have a few words to share with Ambassador Leiter? (I wasn't particularly polite, but that's me. You may be more diplomatic.)

Leiter's email is: consular@washington.mfa.gov.il  I hope you’ll let him hear from you.

Mary Orear lives in Rockport