They went to see it for themselves. After a seven-day fact-finding mission that took them to Gaza’s border crossings, the West Bank, Egypt, and Jordan, U.S. Senators Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) and Jeff Merkley (D-OR) came back with a landmark report that used a word most of their colleagues have refused to say out loud: ethnic cleansing.

The report, covered by The Guardian, accuses Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — already wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes — of overseeing a systematic campaign to displace and destroy the Palestinian population. It goes further than most official U.S. government documents have dared to go. And it does something rarer still: it names the United States as complicit, through billions in unconditional military aid and uncritical political cover.

Watch the senators discuss their findings here.

What Van Hollen and Merkley documented on the ground is what Palestinians and human rights organizations have been reporting for years — a reality that has been systematically minimized, reframed, and ignored by much of Washington. Aid stockpiles sitting idle at border crossings while people starve. A civilian infrastructure in ruins. A population with nowhere left to go being pushed further and further into an ever-shrinking strip of land.

The political courage it takes to publish a report like this — under enormous pressure from pro-Israel lobby groups, party leadership, and a media environment that has long treated Palestinian suffering as a footnote — should not be understated. Van Hollen and Merkley chose truth over convenience. That matters.

United Voices is amplifying this report because public understanding of what is happening in Gaza depends on elected officials being willing to say plainly what the evidence shows. The findings deserve to be read widely, debated seriously, and acted upon. Congress must now follow the evidence where it leads: halt military aid to the Netanyahu government, enforce existing U.S. human rights laws, and support international accountability efforts already underway.

Ethnic cleansing is not a talking point. It is a legal and moral category with consequences — for its victims, for its perpetrators, and for those who fund it. The senators’ report makes clear which category the United States currently occupies. The question now is whether enough people in power are willing to change that.