United States Complicity
Updated 2024-08-29
2024-08-11 Palestinians Say US Responsible for Latest ‘Massacre’ of Children in Gaza The office of the Palestinian Authority’s president is holding the U.S. government responsible for a weekend bombing in Gaza that killed an estimated 100 people, including at least 11 children. The victims of the attack on the al-Tabin school were blown to ‘pieces,’ according to video evidence and on-the-ground reporting, when U.S.-provided missiles were fired on a school-turned-shelter in Gaza City.
In the wake of the attack that stirred global outrage and condemnation Saturday, the Palestinian presidency’s spokesperson Nabih Abu Rudeineh condemned the massacre and said the PA held the Biden administration “responsible for the massacre due to its financial, military, and political support for Israel.”
Rudeineh demanded the U.S. pressure the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to cease indiscriminate attacks that have left hundreds of thousands of Palestinians dead, wounded, and displaced over recent months. In addition, he said, the U.S. must conform to international law by ending its “blind support” to Israel “that leads to the killing of thousands of innocent civilians, including children, women, and the elderly.”https://www.commondreams.org/news/us-responsible-for-gaza-massacre
2024-07-24 Netanyahu’s Visit to Congress Underscores US Contempt for International Law The U.S. has long ignored many commands of international law, but its casual disregard of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has come into sharp focus this week as the U.S. Congress extends a warm welcome to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, just five days after the ICJ notified all UN member states that they have a legal “obligation not to render aid or assistance in maintaining the situation created by Israel’s illegal presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.”
The World Court’s historic 83-page advisory opinion, which was issued on July 19 and held that the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory is illegal, was quickly hailed by Middle East political expert Nomi Bar-Yaacov as a “legal earthquake” and the strongest decision that the court had ever issued.
Unsurprisingly, however, both the Israeli and U.S. governments denounced the ICJ’s ruling and proceeded with their plans — including Netanyahu’s visit to Washington, D.C. — as if it had never occurred. https://truthout.org/articles/netanyahus-visit-to-congress-underscores-us-contempt-for-international-law/
2024-7-17 Report: US Allows Tax Incentives for Donations to Israeli Groups Blocking Aid Americans who wish to financially support far right Israeli groups working to block humanitarian aid from entering Gaza are given tax incentives to do so, a new investigation finds.
Reporting from The Associated Press and Israeli news site Shomrim finds that three groups that have worked to obstruct aid efforts in Gaza have gotten tax deductible donations from the U.S. and Israel. The groups have collectively raised $200,000, the investigation found.
The groups, Mother’s March, Torat Lechima and Tzav 9, have been active in organizing Israelis to block and attack aid trucks as Palestinians in Gaza are subjected to what UN officials have called a “genocidal starvation campaign” by Israeli forces. Over the past two months, Israeli forces have intensified their blockade on resources like food, fuel, and medical aid entering Gaza, which has been in place since October — on top of the illegal air, land and sea blockade Israel has used to impoverish and isolate the people of Gaza for over 17 years. https://truthout.org/articles/report-us-allows-tax-incentives-for-donations-to-israeli-groups-blocking-aid/
2024-06-15 America Crawls Further Into Global Isolation by Backing Gaza Genocide Aside from supplying Israel with the needed weapons to conduct its crimes in the Strip, the U.S. has gone as far as threatening international legal and political bodies that tried to hold Israel accountable, thus ending the “extermination” of Palestinians in Gaza —a term used on May 20 by the International Criminal Court Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan.
Washington continues to behave in such a way despite the fact that Israel refuses to concede to a single U.S. demand or expectation regarding peace and negotiations. Indeed, Israel’s political discourse is deeply invested in the language of genocide, while the Israeli military is actively carrying it out.
The West Bank, where the bulk of the Palestinian state would supposedly take shape, is experiencing its own upheaval. Violence there is unprecedented compared to recent decades. Across the West Bank, tens of thousands of illegal settlers are torching homes, cars, and attacking Palestinians with total impunity, in fact, often alongside the Israeli army.
Yet, despite the occasional gentle reprimand and ineffectual sanctions on a few settlers, Washington continues to stand firmly by its declared policy regarding the two states and all the rest. Not a single mainstream Israeli politician, certainly not Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government of extremists, is willing to entertain the very thought. https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/us-isolation-gaza
2024-06-14 End the Israeli War on Gaza and Palestine Eight months ago, Israel began a genocidal war against Gaza and the further increase of repression in the West Bank including thousands imprisoned, and expansion of the settlements there. Torture is commonplace of Palestinian prisoners in the West Bank and especially of prisoners in Gaza. 90 per cent of the population of Gaza is hungry, famine is occurring. Besides the 15,000 children killed, almost all Palestinian babies and young children are likely to have permanent health problems if they live from Israel’s systematically starving them and destroying the health care and educational system. Over a million Palestinians were forced to move to Rafah in southern Gaza fleeing their homes beginning May 6th. A million Palestinians in Rafah have been forced to flee again, under the threat of immediate murder by Israel, with no safe place to go to, nor to a place that can sustain life.
Not only is the United States government complicit with and participating in Israel’s genocidal war but also many U.S corporations. https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/06/14/end-the-israeli-war-on-gaza-and-palestine/
2024-06-10 Federal Court Hears Appeal in Case Accusing Biden of Complicity in Gaza Genocide “Genocide can never be a legitimate foreign policy choice,” argued one plaintiffs’ attorney.
Following the dismissal earlier this year of a federal lawsuit accusing senior Biden administration officials of failing to prevent Israel’s U.S.-backed genocide in Gaza, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco on Monday began hearing an expedited appeal by Palestinian plaintiffs in the case.
Arguing that U.S. leaders “have a legal duty to prevent, and not further,” genocide, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) first filed a lawsuit last November in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in Oakland on behalf of the rights groups Defense for Children International-Palestine (DCI-P) and al-Haq, as well as a group of individual Palestinians in Gaza and the United States. https://www.commondreams.org/news/genocide-case-against-biden
2024-05-20 I created the Leahy law. It should be applied to Israel Requiring Israel to respect human rights does not imply “moral equivalence” with Hamas.
In the 1980s and ’90s, the United States gave training, weapons and ammunition to Latin American security forces with a long history of violating human rights. In Guatemala and El Salvador, soldiers trained and equipped by the United States killed hundreds of thousands of civilians with near-total impunity. I conceived and introduced the Leahy law in 1997 because our Latin partners, and security forces in many other countries, were violating the basic principles that the United States stands for, and we were complicit.
Today, people are asking whether the law should apply to Israel. The law prohibits U.S. aid to any unit of a foreign security force if the secretary of state has “credible information” the unit has committed a gross violation of human rights: murder, rape, torture, forced disappearance or other flagrant denials of the right to life, liberty and personal security. Aid can resume if the foreign government is taking “effective steps” to bring the responsible members of the unit to justice. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/05/20/israel-leahy-human-rights-aid/
2024-04-04 Veterans for Peace: The US is criminally culpable as facilitator of Israel’s genocide in Gaza Veterans for Peace specifically documents the national and international laws that the US is violating in its facilitation of Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Executive Director of Veterans for Peace Mike Ferner and VFP member Jack Gilroy join us to specifically go over that charges VFP alleges in a letter to Anthony Blinken and other senior members of the State Department that calls on the Inspector General to initiate a criminal investigation. They specifically detail how the US is in violation of at least six domestic statutes and treaties. To see the letter: www.veteransforpeace.org/files/4017/0…_2-11-24.pdf https://soundcloud.com/user-55976759/4424-veteransforpeace-the-us-is-criminally-culpable-as-a-facilitator-of-israels-genocide-in-gaza
2024-03-09 State of the Union: War and Genocide Are Still the American Way Peace cannot be found in the endless military packages but in the corridors of diplomacy and peace talks, where dialogue and negotiation pave the way for lasting solutions.
President Biden’s State of the Union address made one thing clear: war, genocide, and militarism remains the American way. From Gaza to Ukraine, from the Middle East to the borders of our own nation, the toll of violence from militarism is immeasurable. Will we ever see an end to the cycle of destruction fueled by capitalism and U.S. imperialism?
Firstly, let’s address the white elephant in the war. Before the speech started, Democratic women leaders were shown wearing white in honor of women and feminism. But let’s be very clear, whether it’s women sending bombs or men, the result remains the same: women and children are being murdered, communities shattered, and futures erased. There’s no feminism in complicity with war and genocide, nor is there honor in turning a blind eye to the cries of the oppressed who are very loudly asking us to quit sending the bombs that are murdering their people. https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/state-of-the-union-war-and-genocide-are-still-the-american-way
2024-03-04 The Problem With Complicity The majority of Americans cannot accept their complicity because they cannot face the truth about the country to which their identity is so tightly bound. There is a problem with accusing ordinary Americans with complicity in the consequences of their government’s foreign policy. The problem is not with the validity of the accusation. Although Americans have been repeatedly misled by the foreign policy establishment, their complicity in the immense suffering wrought by this establishment is indefeasible.
First and foremost a moral accusation, aimed at rousing empathy and a sense of ethical obligation, the problem with complicity is that it is ineffective in catalyzing a critical mass of Americans to wake up and challenge the foreign policy status quo. The accusation has helped mobilize a moral minority, but it has not worked with the majority.
There are two principal reasons for this failure. First, in order to be motivated by charges of complicity we must feel empathy for those in whose suffering we are complicit. The second reason that the charge of complicity is ineffective is that accepting complicity requires accepting the reality of what we are complicit in, viz., the enormity of suffering for which our country is, wholly or in part, responsible. https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/us-complicity-israel-war-crimes
2024-02-25 Greg Shupak and Trita Parsi on the Assault on Gaza – Every day the US falls more out of step with the world in its support for Israel’s violent assault on Gaza. As International human rights lawyer Craig Mokhiber said, US vetoes of ceasefires in the UN Security Council, after which thousands more were killed, mean the US is directly responsible for those deaths: “Complicity is a crime.” Many in the US press seem divorced from the idea of US responsibility, and somehow we’re seeing more of the opinions of random TV actors than of groups on the ground in Palestine, and international human rights and legal bodies.
We get some update on this unfolding nightmare from author and activist Gregory Shupak, from the University of Guelph-Humber in Toronto, and from Trita Parsi, co-founder and executive vice president at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. https://kpfa.org/program/counterspin/
2024-02-05 ‘Complicity With Israel’ The supply of military aid and intelligence to Israel continues despite the World Court’s ruling on a plausible case of genocide by Israel of the Palestinian people. the most significant military aid is being supplied to Israel by the United States, sometimes bypassing Congressional approval, which in most cases is necessary, unlike in Australia where no parliamentary authorization for arms shipments is required. https://consortiumnews.com/2024/02/05/watch-cn-live-complicity-with-israel/
2024-02-08 Instead of Diplomacy and Peace, US Chooses to Back Genocide and War The horror Americans feel at the plight of people in Gaza and the U.S. role in it is a shocking new low in this disconnect between the humanity of ordinary Americans and the insatiable ambitions of their undemocratic leaders.
At the same time, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has been touring the shrinking number of capitals in the region where leaders will still talk to him, playing the United States’ traditional role as a dishonest broker between Israel and its neighbors, in reality partnering with Israel to offer the Palestinians impossible, virtually suicidal terms for a ceasefire in Gaza.
The position of the United States and Israel today is that ending a massacre that has already killed more than 27,700 people is not a serious option, even after the International Court of Justice has ruled it a plausible case of genocide under the Genocide Convention. Raphael Lemkin, the Polish holocaust survivor who coined the term genocide and drafted the Genocide Convention from his adopted home in New York City, must be turning in his grave in Mount Hebron Cemetery.
The United States’ support for Israel’s genocidal policies now goes way beyond Palestine, with the U.S. expansion of the war to Iraq, Syria, and Yemen to punish other countries and forces in the region for intervening to defend or support the Palestinians. https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/genocide-ceasefire-war-middle-east
2024-02-04 Forefather of Indie Rap Movement on Gaza, US Complicity – Palestine Chronicle Interviews Sage Francis After more than four months of intense Israeli bombardment and shelling, over 100,000 Palestinians have been killed, wounded or are still missing. Despite the harrowing figures and equally horrific images and videos that we receive from Gaza on a minute basis, Western leaders and mainstream media are relentless in their manipulation of the truth. They remain committed to their dehumanizing narrative, which depicts Palestinians as terrorists and Israel as the epitome of civilization and democracy.
Unlike the case of other wars, where artists are encouraged to take a principled stance in defense of and to speak on behalf of the victims of war, speaking out for the Gaza victims hardly earns an artist any accolade or even a mere nod of approval in mainstream society.
Sage Francis, American artist, the forefather of the indie rap movement and the CEO of Strange Famous Records, about his latest song ‘Master Cleanse’, featuring Old Boy Rhymes and Rituals of Mine. (See video below) The song and the video constitute a powerful attempt at raising awareness regarding the horrific events underway in the besieged Gaza Strip. The song and its poignant lyrics also serve as an unabashed criticism of the American political system, which continues to fund the devastating war using US taxpayers’ money. “I’m having lucid dreams of gruesome scenes; Things that human beings do when we become too extreme; Pursue our pray like wolverines, we root for teams; But some see troops as a means to an end,” part of the song’s lyrics read. The rest of the song is an equally courageous confrontation, not just of war itself, but of the collective complicity that allows such genocidal wars to go on. https://www.palestinechronicle.com/forefather-of-indie-rap-movement-on-gaza-us-complicity-palestine-chronicle-interviews-sage-francis/
2024-01-15 South Africa to sue US, UK for complicity in Gaza genocide Nearly 50 South African lawyers, led by attorney Wikus Van Rensburg, are gearing up to file a lawsuit against the United States and the United Kingdom, asserting their complicity in Israeli forces’ war crimes in Palestine, Anadolu Agency reports. This initiative follows South Africa’s filing of a genocide case against “Israel” at the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
Rensburg, the driving force behind the legal action, aims to prosecute those complicit in the crimes through civilian courts, collaborating with legal professionals in the US and UK. In an interview with Anadolu, Rensburg emphasized the need to hold the US accountable for its actions and highlighted the forthcoming legal proceedings against Washington and London.https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/south-africa-to-sue-us–uk-for-complicity-in-gaza-genocide
2023: The Year the Bubble of US Leadership Burst If Ukraine exemplifies yet another iconic U.S. military failure, and BRICS the changing of the guard in the economic realm, the sadistic savagery in Gaza repudiates the moral right of the U.S. to lead… anything.
Most important in bursting the bubble of U.S. leadership in international affairs is its tragic, morally suicidal complicity in Israel’s genocide in Gaza. The Biden administration has gone to extraordinary lengths to enable Israel to murder tens of thousands of innocent, defenseless Palestinian civilians, most of them women and children. It has provided—and dramatically increased—economic subsidies. It has rush-shipped tens of thousands of tons of weapons and ammunition to Israel, even bypassing Congress to do so. It has provided military cover in the form of two aircraft carrier battle groups to prevent other nations from intervening to stop the slaughter. It has exercised its veto power at the U.N. Security Council to prevent a cease-fire, even for humanitarian reasons. The U.S. is all in on the massacre of tens of thousands of defenseless Palestinian civilians.
As a result of the U.S.’ help, Israel is able to bomb, with impunity, working hospitals, refugee camps, schools, churches, mosques, relief agencies, anything where civilians shelter to try to escape the apocalyptic destruction. And it is doing this, knowing that civilians are the main casualties, thus making it not just “killing” innocent, defenseless women and children, but murdering them. And this is still just the beginning of the depraved degeneracy.
The World Food Program says that as many as 750,000 civilians are now being intentionally starved. This, by a supposedly civilized nation. And, with no hospitals, no medicines, no water, and no sewerage, it is only a matter of time before epidemic diseases emerge and spread and kill hundreds of thousands. It is undisguised mass murder for the undeniable purpose of ethnic cleansing, which has always been Israel’s agenda, since even before it was founded. It is genocide, pure and simple, and all in public view of the world’s 8 billion people.
In Gaza, the U.S. returns to its roots, albeit vicariously. It, too, was founded in genocide, in its case, of the 50+ million native Americans who once populated the North American continent. It too, used vastly disproportionate force, the mechanized tools of an industrial-age civilization systematically exterminating a stone-age one. It, too, bolstered its commitment to ethnic cleansing with its self-flattering myths of racial superiority and its carefully cultivated conceits of cultural supremacy. The difference is that then, all the world was not watching the daily depravity. And it had not formed its present-day revulsion and international prohibitions against such state-sponsored barbarism. Now it is, and has. The damage to the U.S.’ reputation is palpable, undeniable, stunning, and irreversible.
The U.S. has defiled itself, humiliated itself, as no other nation could possibly do. It has destroyed goodwill that has taken centuries to acquire and that will never be recovered. If Ukraine exemplifies yet another iconic U.S. military failure, and BRICS the changing of the guard in the economic realm, the sadistic savagery in Gaza repudiates the moral right of the U.S. to lead… anything. No nation will ever again be intimidated by its hypocritical tut-tutting about human rights or its sanctimonious finger wagging about the responsibility to protect. It is, more than anything else, the world’s leading purveyor of death and all the nations of the world can see it.
The combination of these three events signal the 2023 bursting of the bubble of U.S. global leadership. The year will be remembered as the pivot point, the turning away from the post-Cold War unipolar era, and the ushering in of the post-unipolar, post-Western-centric multipolar world. Five hundred years of Western domination of the world order are ending. There will be no going back. https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/2023-us-leadership-bubble-burst
2023-12-27 ‘This Is What the US Chose’: Israel Targets Refugee Camps in Central Gaza “So long as Netanyahu faces no consequences, even more innocent civilians will face death and starvation,” said one U.S. lawmaker, U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas).
The Associated Press reported Tuesday that the Israeli military has “ordered residents to evacuate a belt of territory the width of central Gaza, urging them to move to nearby Deir al-Balah.” According to the United Nations, more than 61,000 people were sheltering in the area Israel is now targeting.
Israel’s expansion of its ground assault came days after the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) approved a binding resolution calling for an increase in humanitarian aid to Gaza and urgent steps to “create the conditions for a sustainable cessation of hostilities.” An initial draft of the resolution called for an “urgent and sustainable cessation of hostilities,” but the U.S.—which has veto power at the UNSC—watered the measure down. The U.S. ultimately abstained from the final vote, allowing it to pass. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly suggested Monday that he’s looking for countries to “absorb” displaced Gazans, intensifying fears that a goal of the ongoing assault on Gaza is the permanent removal of the Palestinian population.
More than 90% of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million has been forced to flee their homes due to Israel’s airstrikes and ground invasion, which began following a deadly Hamas-led attack on southern Israel. Around 60% of Gaza’s housing infrastructure has been destroyed or damaged by Israeli forces, leaving displaced people with nothing to return to—if they’re able to return at all.
The U.S., meanwhile, has not wavered in its unconditional military support for Israel, even as the country’s government has defied its meager calls for the protection of Gaza civilians. The Biden administration has reportedly delivered more than 10,000 tons of military equipment to Israel since October, including 2,000-pound bombs that Israel has dropped on densely populated areas. https://www.commondreams.org/news/israel-refugee-camps
2023-12-22 ‘Disgraceful’: US Abstains After Watering Down UN Gaza Resolution The United States on Friday abstained from voting on a U.N. Security Council resolution that it repeatedly stonewalled and lobbied to weaken in the face of intense international opposition as Israeli forces continue to kill hundreds of Palestinians daily. Thirteen Security Council members voted in favor of the resolution. Russia joined the U.S. in abstaining
The newly passed resolution—which was introduced by the United Arab Emirates—calls for “urgent and extended humanitarian pauses and corridors throughout the Gaza Strip for a sufficient number of days to enable full, rapid, safe, and unhindered humanitarian access.” The resolutioncalls for “urgent steps… for creating the conditions for a sustainable cessation of hostilities,” language that’s weaker than an earlier draft’s call for an “urgent and sustainable cessation of hostilities.”
“Biden’s changes will help ensure that Israel’s slaughter in Gaza continues while minimizing the U.N.’s insight into what increasingly appears to be a genocide.” Also removed from the final version was language condemning Israel’s indiscriminate attacks on Palestinian civilians, tens of thousands of whom have been killed, wounded, or left missing during 77 days of Israeli onslaught. The vote came just after Russia proposed an amendment that would have restored language calling for an “immediate cessation of hostilities” to the resolution. The U.S. vetoed the amendment.
Earlier this month, the U.S. vetoed a separate Security Council resolution calling for a Gaza cease-fire. That resolution was later approved by the U.N. General Assembly in a 153-10 vote. “It is disgraceful that the U.S. was able to stall and use the threat of its veto power to force the U.N. Security Council to weaken a much-needed call for an immediate end to attacks by all parties,” Amnesty International secretary-general Agnès Callamard said in a statement. https://www.commondreams.org/news/united-nation-resolution-gaza
2023-12-06 Covert Action Bulletin: True Horror of the Israeli Assault The U.S. House of Representatives recently passed HR 888, reaffirming the State of Israel’s right to exist by a vote of 412-1. And HR 894, which says the House “clearly and firmly states that anti-Zionism is anti-semitism” has passed by a vote of 311-14 with 92 abstentions.
Imperialist media continues to make unsubstantiated claims about what the Palestinian resistance did or did not do on October 7th in a major new coordinated propaganda push. And, protests in support of Palestine, calling for a ceasefire, end of the siege of Gaza and an end to U.S. aid to Israel don’t seem to be slowing down at all as we approach two months from Al Aqsa Flood and get into the holiday season.
We’re joined by two Palestinian organizers to talk about the impact of the war on Palestinians in Palestine as well as in the U.S. Fatin Jarara is a community organizer with Al Awda NY, and Rania Mustafa is Executive Director of the Palestinian American Community Center. https://covertactionmagazine.com/2023/12/06/covertaction-bulletin-true-horror-of-the-israeli-assault/
2023-11-28 As Anti-Israel-Hamas War Movement Deepens In US, So Does ‘Genocide Joe’ Biden’s 2024 Poll Conundrum A movement calling for an end to the Israel-Hamas war has erupted across the United States condemning US President Joe Biden’s reluctance to push ally Israel for a long-term ceasefire in war-ravaged Gaza. Amid domestic and international pressure, Biden seems to have changed his tone. Watch for details. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKqkLjJw2Fg
2023-11-21 US OK’s Bombing Children as Hamas Fights for Their Freedom from Illegal Israeli Military Occupation Israel maintains an illegal air, sea and land blockade on Gaza, not allowing anyone, including children, to escape being bombed to death.
The US government, providing Israel with warplanes, missiles, weapons, ammunition and political and diplomatic backing, is complicit in this ongoing genocide of bombing to death thousands of militarily confined civilians, mostly women and children .
The Israeli government claims the right to bomb its illegally occupied and captive Palestinians and kill all the members of their Hamas government.
As to Israel’s using the Israelis killed in the Hamas Oct 7th attack to justify the Israeli response of murdering already 12, 500 Palestinian civilians, resent investigations find that a large fraction of the bodies recovered had been charred beyond all recognition, making it very difficult to distinguish between Israelis and Hamas attackers. Since the Hamas fighters had only been carrying rifles and other small arms, all those victims must have been killed by explosive tank shells and Hellfire missiles. Indeed, newly released video footage revealed that hundreds of Israeli cars had been incinerated by such munitions, suggesting that many or most of the Israelis killed fleeing the dance festival had probably died at the hands of trigger-happy Apache pilots, who reported that they had blasted anything that moved. https://countercurrents.org/2023/11/us-oks-bombing-children-as-hamas-fights-for-their-freedom-from-illegal-israeli-military-occupation/
2023-11-15 Palestinians sue Biden to stop Gaza genocide Palestinians are suing US President Joe Biden and his secretaries of state and defense to stop them from further aiding and abetting Israel’s genocide in Gaza. The legal move comes as the Israeli military has stormed al-Shifa hospital, Gaza’s largest health facility, after US officials parroted Israel’s claims that Hamas uses it as a commander center, despite a lack of credible evidence.
The complaint was filed in a federal court on Monday by the Center for Constitutional Rights, a New York-based civil liberties group, on behalf of the Palestinian human rights groups Defense for Children International-Palestine and Al-Haq and several Palestinians who are inside Gaza or are US citizens with family there.
The suit calls for the defendants to “take all measures within their power to exert influence over Israel to end its bombing of the Palestinian people of Gaza” and to lift the siege and prevent the forcible transfer and expulsion of Palestinians in the territory. The plaintiffs also ask the court to “order an end to US military and diplomatic support to Israel,” the Center for Constitutional Rights said in a press release on Monday.
Biden and secretaries Antony Blinken and Lloyd Austin III “have not only been failing to uphold the country’s obligation to prevent a genocide,” according to the lawsuit, “but have enabled the conditions for its development by providing unconditional military and diplomatic support – disavowing any constraint or ‘red lines’ on Israel’s military campaign.” This unconditional support is despite “numerous Israeli government statements reflecting a genocidal intent,” according to the complaint. “Defendants have refused to even initiate internal processes to assess whether there is a genocide unfolding in Gaza, or to monitor how US weapons are used there.” Meanwhile, the US leaders have refused to call for a ceasefire and vetoed UN resolutions calling for “humanitarian pauses” in Israel’s attacks, all while influencing and “guiding” Israeli military strategy.
During a press briefing on Tuesday, Katherine Gallagher, an attorney with the civil liberties group, said that the lawsuit brings forward two claims: “a claim of their failure in the duty to prevent genocide, and complicity in genocide.” The crime of genocide “means to destroy, in whole or in part, a group because of its identity,” Gallagher said. “In this case, we are setting forth the case of genocide against the Palestinian population in Gaza.” The complaint lays out “the very clear, specific intent announced and admitted by Israeli officials to destroy in whole or in part the Palestinian population in Gaza,” she added.
“It is very rare in cases of genocide that at the front end of an unfolding genocide, we have such clear evidence of specific intent,” Gallagher said. “And that is part of why the duty to prevent is something that is so important to enforce in this case. We should not have to wait until the death counts rise” and people start dying from starvation, dehydration and lack of medical care “before people act.”
The 1948 Genocide Convention – to which the US, Israel and Palestine have all acceded – puts an affirmative duty on states with influence to “take all measures that they can from the moment they know that there is a serious risk of genocide” to prevent it,” Gallagher added.
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/palestinians-sue-biden-stop-gaza-genocide
2023-11-09 Genocide in Gaza Would Not Be Possible Without Western Complicity The word ‘hypocrisy’ here does not even begin to describe what is taking place, and the repercussions of this moral failure will be felt around the world for years to come. In previous genocides, whether those accompanying the Great Wars or that of Rwanda in 1994, various justifications were offered to explain the lack of immediate actions. In some cases, no Geneva Conventions existed and, as in Rwanda, many pleaded ignorance.
But, in Gaza, no excuse is acceptable. Every international news company has correspondents or some presence in the Strip. Hundreds of journalists, reporters, bloggers, photographers and cameramen are documenting and counting every event, every massacre and every bomb dropped on civilian homes. It is important here to note that scores of journalists have already been killed in Israeli attacks.
Scientific approximations are telling us, for example, that nearly 25,000 tons of explosives have been dropped on Gaza by Israel in the first 27 days of war. It is equivalent to two atomic bombs, like those dropped by the US on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/western-complicity-gaza-genocide
2023-11-03 Palestine, Israel, and the US war machine w/Dennis Kucinich | The Chris Hedges Report Israel’s ongoing massacre in Gaza has stirred worldwide calls for a ceasefire to stop the genocide unfolding. The United States has been no exception, which countless demonstrators taking to the streets in recent weeks. That hasn’t stopped the US government from backing Israel’s horrific campaign in Gaza to the hilt. The White House has refused to heed calls for a ceasefire and even deployed two aircraft carriers to the Mediterranean—not to defend Palestinians, but to dissuade regional powers from joining the fray to defend Palestine. As the possibility of a regional war looms with the entry of Yemen into the conflict, many wonder how the US might respond to such a scenario. Former US Congressperson Dennis Kucinich joins The Chris Hedges Report for a discussion on the US war machine—what it is, how it works, and how it might respond should the war in Palestine spiral into a wider conflagration. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTP-W9VoFKA&t=313s
2023-11-03 Targeting Gaza From US Spy Hub in Australia Peter Cronau reports on Canberra’s secret support for Israel’s brutal assault on Palestinians in Gaza through NSA intelligence satellites in the U.S. Pine Gap base near Alice Springs. Two large Orion geosynchronous signals intelligence satellites, belonging to the U.S. and operated from Pine Gap, are located 36,000 kms above the equator over the Indian Ocean. From there, they look down on the Middle East, Europe and Africa, and gather huge amounts of intelligence data to beam back to the Pine Gap base.
After collecting and analysing the communications and intelligence data for the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), Pine Gap is providing it to the Israel Defence Forces, as it steps up its brutal assault on Palestinians in the Gaza enclave. https://consortiumnews.com/2023/11/03/targeting-gaza-from-us-spy-hub-in-australia/
2023-11-03 Strategically and Morally Bankrupt: U.S. Policy in the Middle East – Col. Lawrence Wilkerson Retired U.S. Colonel Larry Wilkerson discusses the Biden administration’s unconditional support for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bombardment of Gaza and large-scale indiscriminate attacks on Palestinian civilians. He points to state-sanctioned torture and other unlawful acts committed by the U.S. after 9/11 and asserts that the Israeli government is responding to Hamas’ attacks in a similar fashion by wholly disregarding international legal norms. In doing so, Israel is putting its own population at risk, as well as collectively punishing the Palestinians. https://theanalysis.news/strategically-and-morally-bankrupt-u-s-policy-in-the-middle-east-col-lawrence-wilkerson/
2023-11-03 U.S. General ADMITS Israel Is Starving Out Gaza – On CNN! During a recent segment on CNN, Retired Brigadier General Steven Anderson admitted to the hosts that Israel was committing — and poised to commit more — war crimes, stating that “This IS a war.” Meanwhile, former CNN anchor Marc Lamont Hill, now with Al Jazeera, confronted a former Israeli Foreign Minister with indisputable evidence that Israel was engaging in collective punishment of Palestinians in Gaza, also a war crime. Guest host Craig Jardula and Americans’ Comedian Kurt Metzger talk to independent journalist and filmmaker Dan Cohen about these startling admissions. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9jspDDuZH8&t=3s
2023-10-27 Biden Risks Complicity in Genocide, Warns Brief “The United States — and U.S. citizens, including and up to the president — can be held responsible for their role in furthering genocide,” says a brief by experts at the Center for Constitutional Rights.
By continuing to arm the Israeli military as it carries out a massive assault on the Gaza Strip, the lawyers argued in an emergency briefing paper, the Biden administration is rendering itself complicit in possible genocide against Palestinians in the occupied territory. “The United States is not only failing to uphold its obligation to prevent the commission of genocide, but there is a plausible and credible case to be made that the United States’ actions to further the Israeli military operation, closure, and campaign against the Palestinian population in Gaza rise to the level of complicity in the crime under international law,” warned experts with the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), a U.S.-based nonprofit. CCR’s brief notes that “the United States—and U.S. citizens, including and up to the president—can be held responsible for their role in furthering genocide,” both under international and U.S. law. https://consortiumnews.com/2023/10/27/biden-risks-complicity-in-genocide-warns-brief/
2021-05-19 A history of the US blocking UN resolutions against Israel The United States has vetoed dozens of United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolutions critical of Israel, including at least 53 since 1972, according to UN data. With the latest escalation of violence between Israel and the Palestinians now in its tenth day, the US has stuck to that playbook. On Monday, Washington blocked a joint statement calling for an immediate ceasefire between Israel and Hamas – the US’s third such veto reportedly within a week.https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/5/19/a-history-of-the-us-blocking-un-resolutions-against-israel
2019-05-18 How the United States helps to kill Palestinians Through the supplying of arms, financial support and UN vetoes, the US has played a key role in the decades-long Israel-Palestine conflict.
he US corporate media usually reports on Israeli military assaults in occupied Palestine as if the United States is an innocent neutral party to the conflict. In fact, large majorities of Americans have told pollsters for decades that they want the United States to be neutral in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
But US media and politicians betray their own lack of neutrality by blaming Palestinians for nearly all the violence in the region and framing flagrantly disproportionate, indiscriminate and therefore illegal Israeli attacks as a justifiable response to Palestinian actions. The classic formulation from US officials and commentators is that “Israel has the right to defend itself”, never “Palestinians have the right to defend themselves”, even as the Israelis massacre hundreds of Palestinian civilians, destroy thousands of Palestinian homes and seize ever more Palestinian land. https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/north-africa-west-asia/how-united-states-helps-kill-palestinians/?
2019-10-00 Israel–Palestine Today: A Values-Based Approach The abiding impression from reading Michael Walzer’s essay, “Anti-Zionism and Anti-Semitism,” is that he is interested much more in what Zionism could have been than what it has turned out to be. He is primarily concerned with the past as opposed to the present, with hypotheticals and counterfactuals as opposed to the facts on the ground, with Zionism in the abstract as opposed to what Zionism has become.
I want to begin instead with the political reality in Israel–Palestine, where Zionism, the operative ideology of the state of Israel, is put into practice. I believe this reality demands a politics very different from what Walzer recommends—a politics that Walzer would likely deem anti-Zionist, but that those on the left committed first and foremost to the values of freedom, democracy, and equality should support. “There is one duty,” Ignazio Silone once wrote in Dissent, “that we cannot evade: to be aware of what is happening.” So let us first take stock of what is happening in Israel–Palestine today.
Between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, there is one sovereign state, Israel, which governs, in some places directly, in others indirectly, the lives of roughly 13 million people. Of those 13 million, approximately half are Jews, who enjoy full citizenship and social rights, regardless of where they choose to live. The other half are Palestinians, who live under a range of oppressive systems: codified second-class citizenship in Israel proper; residency, always under threat, without franchise in East Jerusalem; military rule in the West Bank; and siege by air, land, and sea in the Gaza Strip. There are terms to describe similar, now-defunct regimes that enforced separate legal systems and hierarchies of laws, privileges, and rights on the basis of ethno-national identity, but we need not delve into their particular applicability here; for now, we can call this the “one-state reality.”
The one-state reality is not new. Israel has occupied East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights, and the West Bank for more than half a century—longer than the apartheid regime lasted in South Africa. (It is also worth remembering that Palestinians within Israel lived under martial law from the state’s founding until 1966.) Refusing to hold Israel to the standards to which we hold all other states would be wavering in our commitment to freedom, democracy, and equality. https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/israel-palestine-today-a-values-based-approach/
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