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Showing posts with label U.S. complicity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label U.S. complicity. Show all posts
Acclaimed journalist Mehdi Hasan joins us to discuss U.S. media coverage of the Israeli war on Gaza and how the war is a genocide being abetted by the United States. Hasan says U.S. media is overwhelmingly pro-Israel and fails to convey the truth to audiences. "Palestinian voices not being on American television or in American print is one of the biggest problems when it comes to our coverage of this conflict," he says. Hasan has just launched a new media company, Zeteo, which he started after the end of his weekly news program on MSNBC and Peacock earlier this year. The cable network announced it was canceling his show in November. The move drew considerable outrage, with critics slamming MSNBC for effectively silencing one of the most prominent Muslim voices in U.S. media.
Hasan also warns U.S. media coverage of the 2024 election is largely unable to capture the threat to democracy posed by Donald Trump and the modern Republican Party. “We need to speak very clearly about what that fascist threat is,” says Hasan, who warns media outlets cannot “normalize his extremism and racism and bigotry,” because the right to free press itself could be under threat if he regains power. “One of our two major parties has been fully radicalized and is now in bed with white supremacists. … Let’s be plain about that.”
Democracy Now! is an independent global news hour that airs on over 1,500 TV and radio stations Monday through Friday. Watch our livestream at democracynow.org Mondays to Fridays 8-9 a.m. ET.
The War Turns Gaza Into a ‘Graveyard’ for Children
Khaled Joudeh, 9, mourning over the body of his baby sister, Misk, last month in Deir al Balah, Gaza. Credit: Samar Abu Elouf for The New York Times
Thousands of children have been killed in the enclave since the Israeli assault began, officials in Gaza say. The Israeli military says it takes “all feasible precautions” to avoid civilian deaths.
Barefoot and weeping, Khaled Joudeh, 9, hurried toward the dozens of bodies wrapped in white burial shrouds, blankets and rugs outside the overcrowded morgue.
“Where’s my mom?” he cried next to a photographer for The New York Times. “I want to see my mom.”
“Where is Khalil?” he continued, barely audible between sobs as he asked for his 12-year-old brother. A morgue worker opened a white shroud, so Khaled could kiss his brother one final time.
Then, he bid farewell to his 8-month-old sister. Another shroud was pulled back, revealing the blood-caked face of a baby, her strawberry-red hair matted down. Khaled broke into fresh sobs as he identified her to the hospital staff. Her name was Misk, Arabic for musk.
“Mama was so happy when she had you,” he whispered, gently touching her forehead, tears streaming down his face onto hers.
She was the joy of his family, relatives later said — after three boys, his parents were desperate for a girl. When she was born, they said, Khaled’s mother delighted in dressing Misk in frilly, colorful dresses, pinning her tiny curls in bright hair clips.
Misk Joudeh. Credit via Joudeh family
Through his tears, Khaled bid farewell to his mother, father, older brother and sister, their bodies lined up around him. Only Khaled and his younger brother, Tamer, 7, survived what relatives and local journalists said was an airstrike on Oct. 22 that toppled two buildings sheltering their extended family.
A total of 68 members of the Joudeh family were killed that day as they slept in their beds in Deir al Balah, in central Gaza, three of Khaled’s relatives recounted in separate interviews.
Several branches and generations of the Joudehs, a Palestinian family, had been huddling together before the strike, relatives said, including some who had fled northern Gaza, as Israel had ordered residents to do. The Israeli military said it could not address questions about a strike on the family.
In the end, members of the family were buried together, side by side in a long grave, relatives said, showing footage of the burial and sharing a picture of Misk before she was killed.
Determining the precise number of children killed in Gaza — in the midst of a fierce bombing campaign, with hospitals collapsing, children missing, bodies buried under rubble and neighborhoods in ruins — is a Sisyphean task. Health officials in Gaza say that 5,000 Palestinian children have been killed since the Israeli assault began, and possibly hundreds more. Many international officials and experts familiar with the way death tolls are compiled in the territory say the overall numbers are generally reliable.
If the figures are even close to accurate, far more children have been killed in Gaza in the past six weeks than the 2,985 children killed in the world’s major conflict zones combined — across two dozen countries — during all of last year, even with the war in Ukraine, according to U.N. tallies of verified deaths in armed conflict.
A wounded child arriving at Al-Nasr Hospital in Khan Younis, Gaza. Credit: Yousef Masoud for The New York TimesImage
The body of a child pulled from rubble in Khan Younis. Credit: Yousef Masoud for The New York TimesImage
The funeral of a child in Khan Younis on Oct. 26. Credit: Yousef Masoud for The New York TimesThe Israeli military says that, unlike the “murderous assault against women, children, elderly and the disabled” by Hamas on Oct. 7, Israeli forces take “all feasible precautions” to “mitigate harm” to civilians.
Hamas, the military said, deliberately caused “the maximum amount of harm and brutality possible to civilians.” During the attack on Israel, parents and their children were gunned down inside their homes, witnesses and officials say, with children taken as hostages.
In response, the Israeli military says, it is waging a war “forcefully to dismantle Hamas military and administrative capabilities.” It notes that Israeli forces have told residents to flee to southern Gaza, and says that they issue warnings before airstrikes “when possible.”
But the furious pace of the strikes — more than 15,000 to date, according to the Israeli military, including in southern Gaza as well — makes the Israeli bombing campaign on the Palestinian territory one of the most intense of the 21st century. And it is happening in a dense urban enclave under siege with high concentrations of civilians, particularly children, setting off mounting global alarm, even from some of Israel’s closest allies.
So many children are brought into the morgue at Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al Balah that the morgue director, Yassir Abu Amar, says he has to cut his burial shrouds into child-size fragments to handle the influx of corpses.
“The children’s bodies come to us broken and in pieces,” he said. “It’s chilling.”
“We’ve never seen this number of children killed,” he added. “We cry every day. Every day, we cry while we’re working to prepare the children.”
During previous wars, parents in Gaza, a crowded strip with more than two million people, sometimes put their children to bed in different rooms of their homes. If an airstrike damaged one part of the house, the other children might live.
Given the scale of the bombardment this time — which many Gazans describe as indiscriminate and without warning — some parents have put much greater distances between their children, splitting them up and sending them to relatives in different parts of the Gaza Strip to try to increase their odds of survival. Others have taken to scrawling names directly onto their children’s skin, in case they are lost, orphaned or killed and need to be identified.
In the emergency room of Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah said that many children had been brought in alone and in shock, with burns, shrapnel wounds or severe injuries from being crushed by rubble. In many cases, he said, no one knew who they were.
Waiting for treatment at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. Credit: Samar Abu Elouf for The New York Times
A wounded child was treated at Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al Balah. Credit: Samar Abu Elouf for The New York Times Image
PHOTO: Waiting for treatment at Al-Shifa Hospital in GazaCity.Credit: Samar Abu Elouf for The New York Times
“They are given a designation — ‘Unknown Trauma Child’ — until someone recognizes them,” he said. “The crippling thing is that some of them are the sole survivors of their family, so no one ever comes.”
“More and more, it seems like a war against children,” said Dr. Abu-Sittah.
Two weeks ago, the emergency room at Al-Shifa registered “Unknown Trauma Child 1,500,” Dr. Abu-Sittah said.
International experts who have worked with health officials in Gaza during this and other wars say that hospitals and morgues in the enclave gather and report the names, ID numbers and other details of people who have been killed in the territory. While the experts urged caution around public statements about the specific number of people killed in a particular strike — especially in the immediate aftermath of a blast — they said the aggregate death tolls reported by health workers in Gaza have typically proven to be accurate.
The Israeli military says it “regrets any harm caused to civilians (especially children),” adding that it is examining “all its operations” to ensure that it follows its own rules and adheres to international law.
But a growing number of human rights groups and officials contend that Israel has already broken that law.
After condemning the “heinous, brutal and shocking” attacks by Hamas as war crimes, Volker Türk, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, said this month, “The collective punishment by Israel of Palestinian civilians amounts also to a war crime, as does the unlawful forcible evacuation of civilians.”
“The massive bombardments by Israel have killed, maimed and injured in particular women and children,” he added. “All of this has an unbearable toll.”
Some international officials warn that children are in danger no matter where they go. “There is nowhere safe for Gaza’s one million children to turn,” said Catherine Russell, the director of UNICEF.
On Oct. 15, Dr. Mohammad Abu Moussa said that he was on a 24-hour shift at Al-Nasr Hospital in Khan Younis — south of the evacuation line drawn by Israel — when he heard a loud explosion nearby. He called his wife at home, but when she answered, he said, all he heard were screams.
Soon, he said, his wife, 12-year-old daughter and 9-year-old son were brought into the emergency room, bloodied, hysterical and covered in dust from rubble. He tried to comfort them, but panicked when he noticed that his youngest son, 7-year-old Yousef, was not with them.
“Where’s Yousef?” he recalled asking.
No one would answer.
When he pressed again about his son, he said a neighbor simply responded, “May God have mercy on his soul.”
I
Yousef Abu Moussa. Credit via Mohammad Abu MoussaDr. Abu Moussa didn’t want to believe it. Video from journalists at the hospital shows him frantically searching for Yousef. Dr. Abu Moussa recounted how he had asked other departments, including the intensive care unit, whether his son had been rushed there instead.
Then, he said, a journalist showed him pictures of their demolished home. Dr. Abu Moussa said he recognized the gray clothing Yousef had been wearing when he kissed him goodbye before leaving the house.
With dread, Dr. Abu Moussa walked from the emergency room to the hospital morgue. That’s where he said he finally found Yousef, a jokester with a cheeky smile who stuck out his tongue in photographs. Now, his lifeless body was lying on a gurney.
The shock was too much to bear. Dr. Abu Moussa recalled looking away before a colleague embraced him.
Multiple relatives said that airstrikes had hit their home without warning, and that Dr. Abu Moussa’s family had been pulled from the rubble. The Israeli military said it could not address questions about a strike on the family.
“Yousef was a very loved child,” said his mother, Rawan, a fitness instructor. “He was always smiling. He loved to laugh and make people laugh.”
At home, the boy had wanted to eat every meal next to his father, or in his lap, sometimes even sharing the same spoon.
“He would emulate me in everything I did,” Dr. Abu Moussa said, adding that his son had wanted to become a doctor as well.
Yousef was not the only one killed. Dr. Abu Moussa’s brother, Jasir Abu Moussa, lost both of his sons and his wife, family members said.
Dr. Abu Moussa’s nephew Hmaid, 18, had recently graduated from high school with high marks, the family said. He got his love of cars from his father and, from his mother, a love of poetry and art. He had hopes of studying mechanical engineering in Europe, relatives said, and had begun studying German even as he was studying for his high school exams.
His younger brother, Abdulrahman, 8, was even smarter, the family said. He was killed, too.
“He was a handful,” Jasir Abu Moussa said of his younger son. “But he was also very smart, and delightful.”
Death colors the living, as well.
Many children are showing clear signs of trauma, including night terrors, said Nida Zaeem, a mental health field officer with the International Committee of the Red Cross in Gaza.
Families in Khan Younis leaving their homes to seek shelter after an explosion. Credit: Yousef Masoud for The New York TimesImage
Wounded children in Khan Younis. Credit: Samar Abu Elouf for The New York TimesImage
Children inspecting their family’s home after a blast in Gaza City. Credit: Samar Abu Elouf for The New York Times “They are waking up shouting, screaming,” Ms. Zaeem said from a Red Cross shelter in Rafah, in the south, where she is staying with her family, including four children. Each night, she added, children in the shelter yell, “We’re going to die, we’re going to die.”
“They are shouting, pleading, ‘Please protect me, please, please hide me. I don’t want to die,’” she added.
In an encampment sheltering thousands of people around a United Nations center, Hammoud Qadada, 4, tried to focus on a video game inside a tent as the thundering sound of strikes were close enough to shake the ground beneath him.
When the soccer players on the screen scored, everyone in the tent — his siblings, cousins and other children from the makeshift encampment — yelled “goooaaal” so loudly that people in nearby tents thought a cease-fire had been announced.
Their parents had hooked up a television to a solar panel and, when it seemed safe enough, people played real soccer outside between the tents — trying to distract the children.
It wasn’t enough.
The next morning, Hammoud’s grandmother said he woke up and said, “I’m going to die.”
“I told him no,” said his grandmother, Hanaan Jaber, 53. “God willing, you will grow up and you will get married and tell your children what happened with us here, like a story.”
Hammoud’s vocabulary has already been shaped by the war. Soon after it started, he asked his parents what “martyrdom” meant. When asked what is happening around him, he answers without hesitation: “Airstrikes. Airstrikes and war.”
Gaza, a coastal strip where cabanas and food shacks line the Mediterranean, once had a lively beach culture. Yasser Abou Ishaq, 34, recalled how he used to teach his three young daughters how to swim.
“They were always asking me to go to the beach, to the amusement park, to the parks,” he said. “I loved watching them play.”
Amal, his oldest, 7, was named after his mother. At school, she was a good student with excellent penmanship, he recalled. At home, she became the teacher who made her younger sister Israa, a 4-year-old who loved chocolate and Kinder toys, play along as the student.
From left: Habiba Abou Ishaq, 1, and her sisters, Israa, 4, and Amal, 7. Credit via Yasser Abou Isha When his home was destroyed by what he said was an airstrike, he lost them both, he said. His wife was killed as well, he said.
In all, 25 members of his family, 15 of them children, have been killed, he said. Local journalists reported a strike and shared footage of bodies in burial shrouds — members of the Abou Ishaq family, they said — lined up on the ground as relatives cried over them. The Israeli military said it could not address questions about a strike on the family.
Mr. Abou Ishaq said that he and his 1-year-old daughter, Habiba, had been wounded and taken to the hospital. Most of his family, including his wife and Amal, were pulled from the rubble the same day and buried by relatives, he said, while he was still being treated. He never got the chance to say goodbye, he said.
The next day, Israa’s body was pulled from the rubble, he said. He was able to see her in the hospital’s morgue and hold her one last time.
“I hugged and kissed her. I said goodbye and I cried,” he said. “God only knows how much I cried.”
Mourning relatives outside the morgue of Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al Balah. Credit: Samar Abu Elouf for The New York TimesReporting was contributed by Alan Yuhas, Samar Abu Elouf, Ameera Harouda and Abu Bakr Bashir
A version of this article appears in print on Nov. 19, 2023, Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Smoldering Gaza Becomes A Graveyard for Children. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper
PHOTO: Smoke
and fire rise from buildings as people gather amid the destruction in
the aftermath of an Israeli strike on Gaza City on October 26, 2023.
Omar El-Qattaa / AFP via Getty Images
On November 16, two Palestinian human rights organizations, three Palestinians and five Palestinian Americans brought an emergency motion
in United States federal court to immediately force President Joe
Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd
Austin to stop providing additional weapons, money, and military and
diplomatic support to Israel, which is committing genocide in Gaza.
“Our Palestinian clients are asking the court to urgently order
Biden, Blinken and Austin to stop supporting Israel’s genocide,” said
Maria LaHood, Deputy Legal Director of Center for Constitutional Rights
which filed the lawsuit on behalf of the Palestinians, in an interview
with Truthout. “Israeli officials stated their intent to
eliminate everything in Gaza, and then proceeded to carpet-bomb it,
killing more than 11,000 people, including nearly 5,000 children thus
far — many more are missing, buried under rubble, crushed and
suffocating before they die.”
LaHood also pointed to Israel’s ongoing siege in which Palestinians
in Gaza remain cut off from food, water and electricity. “Those still
alive are starving and drinking contaminated water, fearing being
bombed. Yet the U.S. continues to expedite weapons and other support, in
defiance of its international law obligation to prevent genocide, not
fuel it,” LaHood told Truthout. “Our clients, who have already
collectively lost more than 116 of their family members, are asking the
court to provide preliminary relief so they do not suffer even more
irreparable harm.”
The motion for preliminary injunction is grounded in U.S. officials’
legal duty to prevent — not exacerbate — Israel’s ongoing genocide
against the Palestinian people in Gaza. The motion says that an
immediate court order is necessary to protect the plaintiffs from
“irreparable harm.” Some of the plaintiffs face a grave risk of death
from Israel’s war on Gaza.
Palestinians Sue Biden, Blinken and Austin
The emergency motion that the group of Palestinians filed on November 16 came days after the same group of Palestinian plaintiffs sued
Biden, Blinken and Austin in the U.S. District Court of Northern
California for failure to prevent genocide and complicity in genocide.*
The complaint — which the group filed on November 13, after more than
five weeks of Israel’s unrelenting slaughter in Gaza — alleges
violations of the Genocide Convention, the Genocide Convention Implementation Act and customary international law which forbids genocide.
The lawsuit
charges that defendants Biden, Blinken and Austin transferred a
significant amount of weapons and military equipment to Israel.
“To be honest, it’s difficult to revisit all the scenes of the past weeks. They open a door to hell when I recall them,” said
Plaintiff Dr. Omar Al-Najjar, an intern physician at Nasser Medical
Complex in Khan Yunis, Gaza. “I’ve lost five relatives, treated too many
children who are the sole survivors of their families, received the
bodies of my fellow medical students and their families, and seen the
hospital turn into a shelter for tens of thousands of people as we all
run out of fuel, electricity, food and water. The U.S. has to stop this
genocide. Everyone in the world has to stop this.”
Team Biden continues to unequivocally and unconditionally enable
Israel’s genocide in Gaza. But Biden, Blinken and Austin are finally
being called to account in court — as well as in the streets around the
world — for their unwavering and illegal support of Israeli genocide.
The U.S. sends $3.8 billion in annual military assistance to Israel,
more than it provides to any other country. Israel has special access to
U.S. military stockpiles, likely worth up to $4.4 billion. The U.S. has
long provided political and diplomatic cover to Israel by blocking
resolutions in the United Nations Security Council condemning Israel’s
human rights violations, and undermining efforts to hold Israel accountable in the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Israel Is Committing Genocide in Gaza
Article II of the Genocide Convention defines genocide as specific
acts “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national,
ethnical, racial or religious group.” The acts include: 1.) killing
members of the group; 2.) causing serious bodily or mental harm to
members of the group; and 3.) deliberately inflicting conditions of life
calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.
As of November 10,
Israeli occupying forces had killed more than 11,078 Palestinians in
Gaza, 4,506 of whom were children. Israeli forces had caused serious
bodily and mental harm by injuring 27,490 people in Gaza. About 2,700
more, including approximately 1,500 children, were missing. Israel also
forced the displacement of 1.5 million people, half the population of
Gaza.
For the past five weeks, the Israeli government has intensified its
preexisting and already severe blockade of Gaza, with a “total siege” by
further restricting the entry into Gaza of basic necessities, including
food, water, medicine and fuel, and by cutting off electricity.
In his declaration in support of the motion for preliminary
injunction, Professor William Schabas, a leading expert on genocide who
is also Jewish, wrote that the “avowed policy of depriving Gaza of
water, food, medicine and electricity, bearing in mind the rather
desperate economic situation in the territory prior to the conflict and
the fact that the borders are sealed, leaving the people of Gaza with
nowhere to go, will inexorably lead to their physical destruction. If
the siege and blockade continue, there can be no other outcome.”
Israel, as an occupying power, cannot claim self-defense against the people it occupies, the lawsuit maintains.
Public statements by Israeli leaders constitute evidence of an
“intent to destroy, in whole or in part” a “national group.”
Palestinians in Gaza constitute a substantial part of the Palestinian
nation.
Senior Israeli officials and politicians have used dehumanizing
rhetoric to describe Palestinians in Gaza, calling them “human animals”
and “children of darkness,” and refusing to distinguish between
civilians and combatants, declaring that the whole population of Gaza is
responsible for the Hamas-led October 7 attack.
The New York Times reported
that, “Calls for Gaza to be ‘flattened,’ ‘erased’ or ‘destroyed’ had
been mentioned about 18,000 times since Oct. 7 in Hebrew posts on X, the
site formerly known as Twitter, aid FakeReporter, an Israeli group that monitors disinformation and hate speech.”
Biden, Blinken and Austin Violated Legal Duty to Prevent Genocide
Article I of the Genocide Convention imposes a duty on all States
Parties, which include Israel and the U.S. who have ratified the treaty,
to prevent genocide. The International Court of Justice said in the
case of Bosnia and Herzegovina v. Serbia and Montenegro that “a State’s
obligation to prevent, and the corresponding duty to act, arise at the
instant that the State learns of, or should normally have learned of,
the existence of a serious risk that genocide will be committed.”
The Center for Constitutional Rights’s motion for preliminary
injunction charges that, “Defendants have been on notice of the risk of
genocide since at least October 9, if not already on October 7, through
the public and widely circulated statements and actions by Israeli
officials with whom they were in close, regular contact and
consultation, as well as by warnings of indicators of genocide from
United Nations officials and other sources that have only increased
since then.”
Reports and images of Israel’s assault on the Palestinians in Gaza
accompanied by words and actions of Israeli leaders revealing the
intention to ethnically cleanse Gaza of Palestinians have been
ubiquitous.
Yet instead of fulfilling their legal duty to prevent the unfolding
genocide, Biden, Blinken and Austin poured gasoline on the fire by
sending Israel vast amounts of weaponry, money and advisory support. On
October 18, the U.S. vetoed a UN Security Council resolution that would
have called for a ceasefire and urged Israel to rescind its order to 1.1
million Palestinians in northern Gaza to leave their homes and move to
southern Gaza.
Biden, Blinken and Austin Are Complicit in Israel’s Genocide
Complicity to commit genocide can only occur if there is a punishable
act of genocide by another state or persons. The accomplice enables or
facilitates the crime but doesn’t have to share the specific intent to
commit genocide. A defendant may be liable for genocide if he knowingly
provides assistance, encouragement or moral support for the crime.
Furnishing arms and ammunition and operational support and advice
that armed forces use to commit atrocities can constitute aiding and
abetting if the defendant knew his actions would assist the
international law violation.
The lawsuit charges that defendants Biden, Blinken and Austin
transferred a significant amount of weapons and military equipment to
Israel. They asked Congress to appropriate $14.1 billion in additional
military assistance to Israel. Blinken authorized a $320 million
transfer of military equipment to an Israeli manufacturer of kits for
precision bombs.
U.S. leaders are intimately involved in day-to-day assistance to
Israel as it bombards Gaza. On October 30, Defense Deputy Press
Secretary Sabrina Singh stated that Defense Department and other
officials, “all the way up to the president have certainly informed and
at least guided some of what the Israelis are doing on the ground in
their ground operation,” the complaint says.
U.S. officials refuse to place any limitations on Israel’s use of
U.S.-furnished weaponry to carry out its genocidal assault on the
Palestinians in Gaza. On November 7, Singh admitted that “we don’t put
conditions on weapons that … we’re sending or that Israel is using.”
Further, Biden continues to refuse to call for a ceasefire. On
November 9, when asked at a press briefing about the chances of a
ceasefire, he replied, “None. No possibility.”
The complaint states, “As Israel’s closest ally and strongest
supporter, being its biggest provider of military assistance by a large
margin and with Israel being the largest cumulative recipient of U.S.
foreign assistance since World War II, the United States has the means
available to have a deterrent effect on Israeli officials now pursuing
genocidal acts against the Palestinian people in Gaza.”
Lawsuit Seeks Declaratory and Injunctive Relief
In their lawsuit, the Palestinian plaintiffs are asking the court to
declare that defendants Biden, Blinken and Austin violated their duty
under customary international law, as part of federal common law:
to take all measures within their power to prevent Israel from committing genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza;
that prohibits their complicity in genocide, by knowingly continuing
to provide assistance that enables and facilitates Israel’s commission
of genocidal acts against the Palestinian people in Gaza.
The plaintiffs are also seeking an injunction ordering defendants to
take all measures within their power to prevent Israel’s commission of
genocidal acts against the Palestinians in Gaza, including but not
limited to ordering defendants to exert influence over Israel to:
end its bombing of the Palestinian people of Gaza, resulting in mass killing and serious injury;
lift the siege on Gaza and allow all electricity, fuel, food, water and humanitarian aid into Gaza; and
prevent the “evacuation” or forcible transfer and expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza and ensure freedom of movement.
Finally, plaintiffs are asking the court to issue an injunction to prohibit defendants from:
providing, facilitating, or coordinating military assistance and
financing to Israel, including sales, transfer or delivery of weapons
and arms to Israel, and providing military equipment and personnel,
advancing Israel’s commission of genocidal acts;
obstructing attempts by the international community, including at the UN, to implement a ceasefire and lift the siege on Gaza.
The lawsuit says that even the crimes committed by the military wing
of Hamas on October 7 that killed approximately 1,200 Israelis,
including many civilians, and kidnapped 240 others, cannot legally
justify the targeting of an entire population and collective punishment
the Israeli government has meted out, let alone genocide.
Israel, as an occupying power, cannot claim self-defense
against the people it occupies, the lawsuit maintains. Moreover, the
intent to commit genocide repeatedly expressed by Israeli officials
belies any claim to self-defense.
“Article 51 of the U.N. Charter, which sets the confines for the
invocation and use of self-defense by States, is inapplicable when the
threat originates from a territory over which Israel exercises control,”
the lawsuit states, citing the International Court of Justice’s
Advisory Opinion in “Legal Consequences of Construction of a Wall in
Occupied Palestinian Territory.”
Congress is considering the request by Biden, Blinken and Austin to
authorize more than $14 billion in additional military assistance to
Israel. On November 3, the National Lawyers Guild, Center for
Constitutional Rights and Palestine Legal sent a letter
to congressmembers alerting them that they could face legal liability
for aiding, abetting, inciting or conspiring to commit genocide by
appropriating funds to support Israel’s ongoing genocide.
A hearing on the plaintiffs’ motion for preliminary injunction is set
for January 11, 2024, in the Oakland, California, courtroom of Judge
Donna M. Ryu.
Note: A correction was made to fix a typo concerning the dollar amount of U.S. military assistance to Israel being considered.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School
of Law, former president of the National Lawyers Guild, and a member of
the national advisory boards of Assange Defense and Veterans For Peace,
and the bureau of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers. She
is founding dean of the People’s Academy of International Law and the
U.S. representative to the continental advisory council of the
Association of American Jurists. Her books include Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral and Geopolitical Issues. She is co-host of “Law and Disorder” Radio.
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"The idea of freedom is inspiring. But what does it mean? If you are free in a political sense but have no food, what's that? The freedom to starve?”
Duke Ellington (1899-1974)
“Jazz is the freest musical expression we have yet seen. To me, then, jazz means simply freedom of musical speech! And it is precisely because of this freedom that so many varied forms of jazz exist. The important thing to remember, however, is that not one of these forms represents jazz by itself. Jazz simply means the freedom to have many forms.”
Amiri Baraka (1934-2014)
"Thought is more important than art. To revere art and have no understanding of the process that forces it into existence, is finally not even to understand what art is."
Frederick Douglass (1817-1895)
"Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.” --August 3, 1857
Cecil Taylor (1929-2018)
“Musical categories don’t mean anything unless we talk about the actual specific acts that people go through to make music, how one speaks, dances, dresses, moves, thinks, makes love...all these things. We begin with a sound and then say, what is the function of that sound, what is determining the procedures of that sound? Then we can talk about how it motivates or regenerates itself, and that’s where we have tradition.”
Ella Baker (1903-1986)
"Strong people don't need strong leaders"
Paul Robeson (1898-1976)
"The artist must take sides. He must elect to fight for freedom or for slavery. I have made my choice. I had no alternative."
John Coltrane (1926-1967)
"I want to be a force for real good. In other words, I know there are bad forces. I know that there are forces out here that bring suffering to others and misery to the world, but I want to be the opposite force. I want to be the force which is truly for good."
Miles Davis (1926-1991)
"Jazz is the big brother of Revolution. Revolution follows it around."
C.L.R. James (1901-1989)
"All development takes place by means of self-movement, not organization by external forces. It is within the organism itself (i.e. within the society) that there must be realized new motives, new possibilities."
Frantz Fanon (1925-1961)
"Now, political education means opening minds, awakening them, and allowing the birth of their intelligence as [Aime] Cesaire said, it is 'to invent souls.' To educate the masses politically does not mean, cannot mean, making a political speech. What it means is to try, relentlessly and passionately, to teach the masses that everything depends on them."
Edward Said (1935-2003)
“I take criticism so seriously as to believe that, even in the midst of a battle in which one is unmistakably on one side against another, there should be criticism, because there must be critical consciousness if there are to be issues, problems, values, even lives to be fought for."
Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937)
“The challenge of modernity is to live without illusions and without becoming disillusioned. There must be pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the will.”
Susan Sontag (1933-2004)
"Do stuff. Be clenched, curious. Not waiting for inspiration’s shove or society’s kiss on your forehead. Pay attention. It’s all about paying attention. Attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. Stay eager."
Kofi Natambu, editor of The Panopticon Review, is a writer, poet, cultural critic, and political journalist whose poetry, essays, criticism, reviews, and journalism have appeared in many literary magazines, journals, newspapers, and anthologies. He is the author of a biography MALCOLM X: His Life & Work (Alpha Books) and two books of poetry: THE MELODY NEVER STOPS (Past Tents Press) and INTERVALS (Post Aesthetic Press). He was the founder and editor of SOLID GROUND: A NEW WORLD JOURNAL, a national quarterly magazine of the arts, culture, and politics and the editor of a literary anthology NOSTALGIA FOR THE PRESENT (Post Aesthetic Press). Natambu has read his work throughout the country and given many lectures and workshops at academic and arts institutions. He has taught American literature, literary theory and criticism, cultural history and criticism, film studies, political science, creative writing, philosophy, critical theory, and music history and criticism (Jazz, Blues, R&B, Hip Hop) at many universities and colleges. He was also a curator in the Education Department of Detroit’s Museum of African American History. Born in Detroit, Michigan, Natambu currently lives in Berkeley, California with his wife Chuleenan.
