[Photo Credit: ALEX KORMANN, STAR TRIBUNE]
As Israel continues its war against Palestinians, killing more than 37,000 people, including over 15,000 children, I have wondered about First Lady Jill Biden, how she feels and what she thinks. Her husband is complicit in the genocide because of his supplying weapons to Israel to carry on this onslaught. Does she quietly watch the images of injured and dead children from her couch, or does she not watch them at all? As a woman and as a mother, what are her thoughts? Her husband and his political allies have the power to stop this genocide because, without US weapons Israel is helpless.
Of course, we don’t know what kind of conversations the Bidens are having. Everything seems to be such an anachronism from an outsider’s view. The male president engages in war, and the wife sits quietly by as some prop. Jill is fulfilling this anachronistic role.
As a mother and as a woman, I am sickened by what I see and read concerning Gaza. I cannot imagine the suffering of the mother of Hind, the six-year-old girl killed by Israelis as she waited for help while injured in a car. Did Jill Biden talk to her husband about Hind? Did she mention the suffering of the children? As a mother, did she beg him to do something? Or has she decided that supporting the war profiteers and her husband’s complicity in genocide is the right thing to do?
In public, she supports him like an anachronistic, dutiful wife. But where does duty end and humanity begin? When do you say enough – enough of the famine children in Gaza are enduring, enough of being left orphans, enough of injuries, enough of death? Will you ever say enough, Jill? Will you ever speak out and show compassion towards the mothers and children of Gaza?
I say enough of the silence of these first lady wives kowtowing to their powerful husbands to support the husband’s bloodshed in distant lands. As for you, Jill Biden, you are the latest in them.
Anna Christina Peterpaul is an ESL teacher who works with children and adults. She volunteered with Amnesty International for several years.
