The lat­est sev­en-week war in Gaza is over. More than 2,000 peo­ple are dead — most of them civil­ians, 500 of them chil­dren. At least 10,000 peo­ple have been injured, and 500,000 are home­less. Yet there have been few words of crit­i­cism from our nation’s edi­to­r­i­al boards or polit­i­cal lead­er­ship for these rep­re­hen­si­ble, trag­ic events.

Where is our sense of outrage at the deaths of thousands of innocents that we show when a single American, 200 airline passengers or three Israeli youths are killed?

What has hap­pened to us? Where is our sense of out­rage at the deaths of thou­sands of inno­cents that we show when a sin­gle Amer­i­can, 200 air­line pas­sen­gers or three Israeli youths are killed?

Is it the assumed moral supe­ri­or­i­ty of the per­pe­tra­tors? Yes, as our main­stream media heads, and elect­ed offi­cials have said, ​“Israel has a right to defend itself,” but at what cost, in what man­ner and to what end?

The label of Pales­tin­ian forces as ​“ter­ror­ists” may act as an easy excuse for why our offi­cials and media high­er-ups have refused to empathize with those in Gaza. But ter­ror­ism is a fun­ny term, often used by those with state pow­er to describe those with­out it. Although the word itself wasn’t in mod­ern usage until the 19th cen­tu­ry, the British like­ly would have referred to Amer­i­cans as such in 1776, as would have the Con­fed­er­a­cy to abo­li­tion­ists and John Brown, or the Sovi­ets to Pol­ish free­dom fighters.

And Israel itself is not with­out its own his­to­ry of ter­ror­ism, for that mat­ter. More recent­ly, two men who lat­er would become Prime Min­is­ters of Israel — Men­achem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir — were denounced as ter­ror­ists for the assas­si­na­tions of British offi­cers and troops and their dyna­mit­ing of the King David Hotel, which killed 91 peo­ple, includ­ing hotel employ­ees and civ­il servants.

It might be use­ful to remem­ber, too, that though Israel may refer to Hamas as a ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion, it was also the elect­ed gov­ern­ment of Gaza in 2006 and formed a uni­ty gov­ern­ment with Fatah ear­li­er this year. For that mat­ter, it is an orga­ni­za­tion whose ini­tial growth and devel­op­ment was encour­aged by the Israelis as a means of coun­ter­ing and under­min­ing Yass­er Arafat and his sec­u­lar-lean­ing Pales­tine Lib­er­a­tion Organization.

Even with­out such con­text, how­ev­er, our nation’s moral out­rage has been ignit­ed before by the actions of a gov­ern­ment, even when it claimed self-defense against those it defined as terrorists.

Take, for exam­ple, the Sharpeville Mas­sacre of 1960, in which the South African gov­ern­ment claimed that its killing of 69 demon­stra­tors was a nec­es­sary defense against the ter­ror­ist activ­i­ties of Nel­son Mandela’s African Nation­al Con­gress and the Pan African Con­gress. Rather than sim­ply accept the expla­na­tion, oth­er coun­tries — includ­ing the Unit­ed States — inves­ti­gat­ed the under­ly­ing issues, even­tu­al­ly open­ing the world’s many eyes to the injus­tice and unsus­tain­abil­i­ty of South Africa’s apartheid system.

We in Amer­i­ca even found it pos­si­ble and nec­es­sary to con­demn our own nation’s actions, when U.S. troops in Viet­nam slaugh­tered a whole vil­lage — My Lai — in ret­ri­bu­tion for its har­bor­ing of our then-ene­mies, the ​“ter­ror­ist” Viet Cong.

Yet in this case, our lead­ers and huge swathes of the pub­lic seem con­tent to take Israel’s side with­out the same com­mit­ment to the entire nar­ra­tive. This week’s New York­er sug­gests anoth­er sce­nario: that the ret­i­cence to show out­rage might be the result of the strength of the Israeli lob­by in the Unit­ed States.

Its the­o­ry has some mer­it. It is true that unlike the sit­u­a­tion in South Africa — or, more recent­ly, in Ukraine, Rus­sia, or Myan­mar — there are mil­lions of Jew­ish vot­ers, whose sen­si­bil­i­ties politi­cians and per­haps even media out­lets fear offend­ing. It would be a mis­take, how­ev­er, to assume that all Jews sup­port the war on Gaza, Netanyahu’s poli­cies or the con­tin­u­a­tion of Israeli occu­pa­tion. Many recur­ring opin­ion polls in the Unit­ed States and Israel shows that a vast major­i­ty of cit­i­zens of both coun­tries sup­port an inde­pen­dent state for Palestine.

Even beyond the poll data, too, there is action. In recent weeks, Israelis’ abil­i­ty to fight Netanyahu’s poli­cies has been threat­ened by the Israeli gov­ern­ment, which has placed trav­el restric­tions on demon­stra­tions, jour­nal­ists and human rights groups in addi­tion to expelling mem­bers of the Knes­set who dis­agree with its cur­rent poli­cies. Right-wing groups, too, have attacked peace demon­stra­tions and lead­ers. Even so, last week, an anti-war protest attract­ed 10,000 sup­port­ers in Tel Aviv — and more actions are sure­ly to follow.

In the Unit­ed States, there is sim­i­lar, per­haps even stronger crit­i­cism. Last week more than 300 Holo­caust sur­vivors and their descen­dants liv­ing in the Unit­ed States placed an ad in the New York Times vil­i­fy­ing the recent violence.

​“As Jew­ish sur­vivors and descen­dants of sur­vivors and vic­tims of the Nazi geno­cide,” the ad read, ​“we unequiv­o­cal­ly con­demn the mas­sacre of Pales­tini­ans in Gaza and the ongo­ing occu­pa­tion and col­o­niza­tion of his­toric Palestine.”

That same week, hun­dreds of Israelis liv­ing in the Unit­ed States pub­lished an open let­ter fur­ther denounc­ing the Israeli actions in Gaza as dan­ger­ous both to peace in the Mid­dle East and to democ­ra­cy in Israel.

There is a grow­ing group of Amer­i­can Jews who believe that while Israel needs and deserves to exist as a ​“home­land for the Jew­ish peo­ple,” the actions of the Netanyahu gov­ern­ment imper­il the ​“project in democ­ra­cy” that was the promise of the enter­prise. As a Jew myself, I was raised on Jew­ish val­ues honed in the dias­po­ra: that it is my respon­si­bil­i­ty to make the world a bet­ter place. I took the lessons I learned from Holo­caust sur­vivors as a man­date to fight for jus­tice for all, regard­less of their coun­try of origin.

If those virtues of the Israelites dis­ap­pear, what is left to sup­port? It is time for the rest of us to speak out, and to demand that our elect­ed offi­cials and media rep­re­sen­ta­tives do the same. Our silence, and our lead­ers’, is only allow­ing Netanyahu’s vio­lence to con­tin­ue unchecked. The Israeli gov­ern­ment must learn that we will hold it account­able, no mat­ter what nar­ra­tive it choos­es to jus­ti­fy its actions.

One thing is cer­tain: no mil­i­tary solu­tion will end the Israeli-Pales­tin­ian con­flict. Only by stop­ping the 47-year Israeli occu­pa­tion of Gaza and the West Bank can we hope for an end to this seem­ing­ly cease­less war. For as so many Jews and non-Jews alike have said and con­tin­ue to believe, ​“With­out jus­tice, there will be no peace”.