Three years ago today, 1,100 people were killed and 251 were taken hostage. My heart is with those who lost loved ones and felt the pain of that day. What immediately followed was destruction on a scale this generation hasn’t seen in Israel's nearly 80 years of violent oppression of Palestinians — much of which was funded by American tax dollars. Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza has killed more than 74,000 Palestinians, including over 20,000 children. More than 175,000 Palestinians have been wounded. Thousands more are still missing under the rubble. Entire Palestinian family names have been wiped from the civil registry. The Israeli military has bombed hospitals, schools, mosques, churches, humanitarian aid distribution centers, and water systems. Nearly the entire population of Gaza has been driven from their homes and forced to live in tents that have also been bombed. Israel is subjecting Palestinian men, women, and children to systematic torture and collective starvation as a weapon of genocide. Israel has killed over 1,400 Palestinians since its so-called ceasefire. Our tax dollars are paying for these atrocities and unconditional support from both the Biden and Trump administrations have allowed them to continue. Here in Uptown and the Bronx, our neighbors voted to invest in a politics of life: one where their tax dollars are used to invest in our babies at home, not in dropping bombs on babies abroad. If we are to build a politics of human dignity that disrupts cycles of violence, we must reckon with the reality of our own failure to intervene in decades of dispossession, apartheid, and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. Every human life is precious, and we must start acting like it. As a Member of Congress, I will do everything in my power to build a foreign policy rooted in the safety, equality, and freedom of all people, including ending U.S. taxpayer funding for Israel’s war crimes, fighting for a full arms embargo, and for the Palestinian right of return.