I’d thought that my next post would be continue the last. But now the Gaza war has become the wider war that Biden was trying to prevent, with 40,000 U.S, troops in the region, and the legal group I volunteer for is convening to issue a statement and strategize about next steps. The statement will build on one issued by Veterans For Peace, which demanded that ‘any and all present and future deliveries of military weapons and munitions to Israel be suspended until the State Department conducts a full investigation of possible violations of U.S. law.” The laws include:
● The Conventional Arms Transfer Policy, which prohibits U.S. weapons transfers when it’s more likely than not that the arms will be used by Israel to commit genocide; crimes against humanity; and grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions, including attacks intentionally directed against civilian objects or civilians protected or other serious violations of international humanitarian or human rights law, including serious acts of gender-based violence or serious acts of violence against children. Dozens of authoritative complaints and referrals made by hospital administrators in Gaza, as well as by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Palestine Authority, South Africa, Turkey, Medicins san Frontieres, UNRWA, UNICEF, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, the Norwegian Refugee Council and the World Food Programme have confirmed that there is an ongoing human rights and humanitarian disaster due to Israel’s cutoff of water and electricity, deliberate destruction of sewage infrastructure and delaying of aid shipments by Israeli forces.
● The Foreign Assistance Act, which forbids the provision of assistance to a government which "engages in a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights.”
● Arms Export Control Act, which says countries that receive US military aid can only use weapons for legitimate self-defense and internal security. Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza goes way beyond self-defense and internal security.
● The U.S. War Crimes Act, which forbids grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions, including wilful killing, torture or inhuman treatment, wilfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health, and unlawful deportation or transfer, perpetrated by the Israeli Occupying Forces.
● The Leahy Law, which prohibits the U.S. Government from using funds for assistance to units of foreign security forces where there is credible information implicating that unit in the commission of gross violations of human rights.
● The Genocide Convention Implementation Act, which was enacted to implement U.S.obligations under the Genocide Convention, provides for criminal penalties for individuals who commit or incite others to commit genocide.
VFP’s demand echoes those from many of the dissenters I write about, including the Voices of Conscience and Feds United for Peace. Like the Appeal for Redress, their resistance was focused on Gaza until now; with national dialogue now shifting to Iran (see the first question in this week’s VP debate), all of the above concerns will be marginalized. But with Netanyahu set to realize Ariel Sharon’s dream in Lebanon, we need a unified front to insist on a suspension of aid, before it’s too late.
If he responds to us, Biden to make like Ronald Reagan, who did so in 1981 and in 1982 stopped the Lebanon invasion from spreading. Is that bipartisan enough for you, Mr. President?
I’ll share more of what I learned from the resisters in the next post. Meanwhile, look to
, and for smart thinking about all this.
The Iran regime isn’t sending social workers, conflict resolution experts or peace negotiators to help Israel correct any human rights abuses against their Arab cousins.
They’re sending armed drones and ballistic missiles while the IRGC supporters shout Death to Israel!
The goal has beem to destroy Israel since 1948. The propaganda that there are still refugees from 1948 is a scam; all other refugees are settled in long before 76 years have gone by!
UNWRA hosts elementary schools that comdition little children to hate and attack Israeli children and grow up to become martyrs.
Both Oct 7 and the May 2021 war were started with Hamas attacking Israeli - civilians. If the Iron Dome is defunded, my cousins in Tel Aviv could be killed.
Israeli children and pets tremble with fear and panic from all the missile strikes.
The British Foreign Secretary commented in 1947 that Palestinians don’t want a state; they want to keep Israelis from having a state.
When Israelis left Gaza in 2005, they could have built the beginnings of a state. Instead Hamas took over in 2006 by electiions amd violently in 2007, and turned Gaza into a military base.
Hexbollah pretends to be protectors of Lebanon, but they are Shia agents of the Iran regime, in orher words, an occupying force. And they violate UN Security Council 1701 by amassing along the Israeli border and rendering 10’s of 1,000’s of northern Israelis homeless.
The IRGC is destabilizing Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen and Syria. They rose up just as Egypt and Jordan signed peace treaties with Israel.
The media does not cover the weekly or daily abuses of the IRGC against its own people. If the IRGC were gome, the Iranian people would live peacefully with the Israeli people.
The Ayatollah just gave a speech justifying Oct 7, for which there is no justification. The atrocities were on the same level as pogroms that chased Russian Jews, including my own family, to America and Palestine.
Israel provides a sense of security and safety for all Jews worldwide. Antisemitism has risen sharply everywhere, including in the United States.
The IRGC, Hamas, etc., are not egalitarian socialists just because they’re brown people, and Israel itself is more brown than white.
Fundamentalist Islamists have no imterest in equality. No group is more repressive and violent of women and gays. A recent street interview of Palestinians showed that they reject the support of Queers for Palestine. One of the biggest Gay Pride Parades is held in Tel Aviv.
The IRGC is sending drones to help Russia comtimue its vicious onslaught against Ukraine.
Please choose sides wisely. The US is correct in supporting Israel’s self-defense against these dark, truly genocidal forces.
Meanwhile, if you have any doubts about which side is actually genocidal, may I suggest reading or re-reading the Hamas charter and watching interviews om MEMRI/YouTube of Gazi Hamad who pledged genocide against Israel right after Oct 7.
This is very scholarly and thorough, and in that regard very impressive. However, you’ve flipped the script. The Iran regime, which is murderously harmful to women, gays, artists, musicians and pro-democracy advocates among its own people, has hijacked Lebanon, a mostly Christian country, with Shia terrorists in the form of Hezbollah, which has raped and murdered its way across Syria in support of Assad in a civil war in which many more have died, and the Houthis who are not the legit govt of Yemen but another Shiite rebel hijacking group - this Iran regime is the imperialist, fascist, theocratic, expansionist destabilizer, string puller, and aggressions orchestrator - not Israel.
Sometimes it can be confusing that Israel uses offensive weapons to defend itself. But this is to seek and destroy the source of the aggression, nothing more. Israel has no war crime or military ambitions to take over the Middle East and then force Europe and America into conversions to Judaism.
This applying to Israel the accusations that apply to Islamists is an amazing trick of propaganda that, unfortunately, very educated people have been gaslit into believing.
And Reagan would be deeply relieved to learn that Israel had finally taken out the orchestrators, as in the literal individuals, behind the huge massacre of Marines in Lebanon during Reagan’s presidency.
And on May 29 on X the Ayatollah literally thanked the protest kids on campuses and praised them for being on the right side of history. X didn’t take it down, either, you can still read it.
The most telling of all is how amazingly much Islamist violence there is in many parts of the world - where there are no Israelis, no Jews at all, as in the very recent massacres of Hindis by Islamists in Bangladesh.
There are no Jews there, or in Sudan, or where Boko Haram has struck. You can’t accuse Jews of war crimes where there are no Jews!
Last but not least the head of the ICJ clarified that the ICJ did not rule that genocide in Gaza is plausible - only that it could happen in the future. There is no doubt that Israel has targeted Hamas in Gaza and done so as a defensive measure - after both Hamas and “innocent civilians” from Gaza committed unspeakable violence on Oct 7.
And as a postscript, pls don’t forget the Hamas billionaires living in a hotel in Doha, or the Holocaust denialism of Mahmoud Abbas, or his use of American funds to reward the families of terrorists who succeed in killing Israelis.
Or the Syrian, Qatari and Iran-regime money that has poured into Hamas. Or the diversity and democracy in Israel that includes 2 million Arabs living peacefully in Israel in contrast to Palestinians who can’t even get jobs even after living in Lebanon for generations.
The legalities you’ve presented are so well organized.
It’s just - please apply them appropriately.
And please support the Iranian people in their desperate hopes to one day overthrow the IGRC.