Palestinians Sue Biden for Failing to Prevent Genocide in Gaza
Via the intercept:
“The 89-page lawsuit, filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights in a California federal district court, traces 75 years of history and analyzes acts committed and rhetoric espoused by the Israeli government that exhibit a disregard for international law. It is accompanied by a declaration from a genocide expert who describes Israel’s actions as signs of genocide and argues that the Biden administration has breached its duty under international law to prevent it.
“Under international law, the United States has a duty to take all measures available to it to prevent a genocide. Yet, Defendants have repeatedly refused to use their obvious and considerable influence to set conditions or place limits on Israel’s massive bombing and total siege of Gaza,” the lawsuit reads.
“Despite escalating evidence of Israeli policies directed at inflicting mass harm to the Palestinian population in Gaza,” the Biden administration has opposed “a life-saving cease-fire and lifting of the siege, even vetoing United Nations measures calling for a ceasefire,” the lawsuit continues. “Instead, their actions to fund, arm, and endorse Israel’s mass and devastating bombing campaign and total siege of the Palestinians in Gaza constitutes a failure to prevent an unfolding genocide and complicity in its development.”
“[W]hat I’m seeing unfolding at the moment isn’t just self-defence. It looks, it resembles something more approaching revenge. I don’t think that’s how Israel will guarantee its future freedom and its future security.”
"It is a terrible, terrible situation. There is no room even to sleep on the floor. There is one toilet for 700 or 800 people. No bread, no stoves for cooking. We are drinking irrigation water.
No one can get an accurate number of IDPs [internally displaced persons] here. We know nothing about what happens outside. Everyone is just concentrating on survival"
UN official at a compound in Khan Younis, Gaza. #Israel#Palestine#Gaza #CeasefireNow#WarCrimes
Thousands of miles away from the brutality of war in Gaza, Tareq Hamoud and his wife Manal are in disbelief over the loss of three generations of their family.
Palestinian health officials say Israeli warplanes struck a refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip, killing at least 40 people and wounding dozens. Sunday's strike came as Israel vowed to press on with its offensive to crush the territory’s Hamas rulers, despite U.S. appeals for a pause in fighting to get aid to civilians....
Tens of thousands of people are in the streets demanding an end to the occupation of #Palestine, a ceasefire in #Gaza, and for the US to end military aid to Israel.
Autonomous actions continue to take place as mass demonstrations and direct actions continue.
This war is showing (again) that Palestinians have to audition for our empathy.
But in the past week, I've had difficult conversations with relatives who say "4,000 dead children, but can we trust these numbers? They come from Hamas".
In a video on Oct. 13, Instagram influencer and photojournalist Motaz Azaiza shared footage of the rubble of an apartment, the site of an Israeli bombardment that killed 15 of his family members....
When some things end in your life, often there is a certain moment, a certain episode, where you know you cannot do it any longer. You know it's over. I had my final and complete disillusionment with my country the summer they shot and killed 223 and wounded thousands of demonstrators using live fire during the 'The Great March of Return'. Every weekend, from March 2018 until December 2019, Gazans would gather along the border with Israel, with thousands and thousands in attendance. They wanted to break the siege and attract the world's attention to their plight and oppression under so many years of brutal occupation, with no end in sight.
They were quiet demonstrations: no Israeli soldier was hurt in any of them (there may have been one case of counter-violence by Palestinians, and maybe not even that). Israel's murderous overreaction that time was placing tens, or maybe even hundreds of snipers in positions overlooking the border and the adjacent Gaza lands.
Those snipers shot and shot and shot people in unbelievable numbers. on May 14th, 2018, 52 Palestinians were killed in one demonstration. Rouzan al-Najjar, a 20-year-old nurse, was sniped to death two weeks later, on the 1st of June. She was hundreds if meters away from the fence. Her death may have been what broke me. Or maybe it was the complete obedience of everyone in the IDF. No one said: we cannot do that. This is insane. No one felt bad about it. I felt like I was losing my mind. Or maybe it was the big live concert at the center of Tel Aviv that very summer, given by Israel's fresh Eurovision winner, a day or two after one of the bloodiest weekends in The Great March of Return. It was a big deal, and everyone was happy and celebrating and proud.
On Local Call, the Hebrew version of +972 Magazine, I wrote an article titled "Accept that it is over". In that article, I also wrote that I was not going to vote in Israeli elections again, as there was no point, particularly as so many people who are ruled by Israel cannot vote.
2018 seems like so long ago now. It was before Covid, before October 7th, before the genocide. But it was that summer, that year, that I knew I lost my country.
And the absolutely beautiful, angelic face of Rouzan al-Najjar brings tears to my eyes to this day. To this moment. It is such a heartache. Such a loss to this world. Such a stupid, monstrous crime.
There has to be justice for Palestine someday. There simply must be.
The Journal of the American Medical Association published four letters rife with racist anti-Palestinian tropes. The prestigious platform created the appearance of intellectualism and expertise, but it’s all just racism with a ribbon on it.
I am launching a new blog on Zionism, Israel & Palestine. I will be sharing my experience as someone who grew up Zionist, lived in Israel, and still has plenty of Zionist friends and relatives, and my thoughts on why Zionism is inherently incompatible with a just solution to the conflict.
The blog is called One Small Detail, in references to this quote by Yitzhak Epstein, who settled in Palestine in 1907.
We cannot talk about Passover, a holiday celebrating Jewish liberation, without talking about the extreme violence and dispossession carried out against Palestinians at this very time in the name of the Jewish people.
I’ve translated below the words of Simon Assoun, who organizes with me as part of Tsedek!, a collective of decolonial Jews in France. Simon’s words exactly convey my feelings at this time.
Israel bombed Rafah in southern Gaza over 60 times in 48 hours, ignoring the International Court of Justice orders to stop its military operations there.
Israel bombed displaced Palestinians in tents, killing over 30 Palestinians, including children.
The scenes coming out of Rafah are horrific, resembling a massacre.
the statement from the emory university protestors is nothing but pure fire. every word. fierce. #emory#georgia#palestine#ceasefireNow#freePalestine
EMORY IS EVERYWHERE.
THE PLACE FOR DIVISION IS NOWHERE.
WE INVITE YOU TO STRUGGLE WITH US.
BREAKING: Secretary of State #Blinken Is Sitting on Staff Recommendations to Sanction Israeli Military Units Linked to Killings or Rapes
A special State Department panel told Blinken that the U.S. should restrict arms sales to #Israeli military units that have been credibly accused of human rights abuses. He has not taken any action.
Yesterday, Aaron Bushnell, an active-duty member of the Air Force and an anarchist, set fire to himself in front of the Israeli embassy in #DC, in what they called an "extreme act of protest" against the ongoing genocide and ethnic-cleansing of #Gaza by the state of Israel.
Bushnell was involved in various mutual aid projects.
Already, far-Right grifters and pundits have attacked his anarchist beliefs as signs of him being mentally "disturbed."
Bushnell's death comes as Israel prepares to invade #Rafah, where over a million Palestinian refugees have been pushed into tent cities.
The United Nations (U.N.) condemned a recent attack by Israel on a convoy of ambulances leaving a Gaza hospital. “I am horrified by the reported attack in Gaza on an ambulance convoy outside Al Shi…
Video evidence showing Israel using 2,000lb bombs (which EVEN THE USA DOESN'T USE in densely populated areas) at least 200+ times in the south of Gaza, including in areas they told Palestinians civilians to flee to.
The Anti-Defamation League’s call for the FBI and IRS to surveil, investigate, and possibly prosecute student activists is a new level in its McCarthyite campaign to silence any and all criticism of Israel.
It is possible to feel with victims in #Israel and #Palestine both. It's not an either or. It's possible to hope and ask for a solution that keeps everyone safe. For the war to stop.
I wish this was the starting point for everyone who sees themselves as progressive, humanitarian, feminist.
Palestinian American family mourns 42 relatives killed in a single day in Gaza | CNN (www.cnn.com)
Thousands of miles away from the brutality of war in Gaza, Tareq Hamoud and his wife Manal are in disbelief over the loss of three generations of their family.
Warplanes strike Gaza refugee camp as Israel rejects US push for a pause in fighting (apnews.com)
Palestinian health officials say Israeli warplanes struck a refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip, killing at least 40 people and wounding dozens. Sunday's strike came as Israel vowed to press on with its offensive to crush the territory’s Hamas rulers, despite U.S. appeals for a pause in fighting to get aid to civilians....
A bombing in Gaza killed an influencer's family—Instagram responded by suspending his account (www.dailydot.com)
In a video on Oct. 13, Instagram influencer and photojournalist Motaz Azaiza shared footage of the rubble of an apartment, the site of an Israeli bombardment that killed 15 of his family members....
UN chief condemns attack on ambulance convoy in Gaza: ‘This must stop’ (thehill.com)
The United Nations (U.N.) condemned a recent attack by Israel on a convoy of ambulances leaving a Gaza hospital. “I am horrified by the reported attack in Gaza on an ambulance convoy outside Al Shi…