More Weapons to Israel Violates US Law | Palestine Policy Roundup 4.19.2024
Welcome to the Palestine Policy Roundup, a weekly publication of the IMEU Policy Project.
🩺 DOCTORS RETURNING FROM GAZA VISIT MEMBERS OF CONGRESS
The IMEU Policy Project facilitated congressional visits for four doctors who recently completed medical missions in various hospitals in Gaza. The doctors provided detailed accounts and photos of targeted shots to the heads and bodies of children who were killed or injured in Israeli attacks, as well as evidence of deliberate starvation through the obstruction of thousands of aid trucks. Watch their press conference with Reps. Cori Bush, Rashida Tlaib, and Greg Casar.
👀 ICYMI: MEMBERS OF CONGRESS SPEAK OUT
Rep. Ayanna Pressley: “Right now, Palestinians in Gaza are being starved, bombed, tortured and executed. Generations of Palestinian families have been wiped out. Over 2 million are displaced from homes that have been razed to the ground. Make no mistake: history will remember this moment as a genocide.”
Rep. Cori Bush: “War is like a forest fire. All it takes is one spark. If it isn’t contained it spreads. The U.S. has the power and the influence to de-escalate the growing conflict in the Middle East by facilitating a lasting ceasefire. We must extinguish these flames, not fan them.”
Rep. Lloyd Doggett: “The warmongers here, including the ‘Netanyahu can do no wrong’ crowd, are some of the same group who insisted upon our disastrous invasion of Iraq. More war will harm all involved. The better course is to end the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza and secure the immediate release of all hostages.”
Rep. Rashida Tlaib: “We are seeing the same ‘messaging’ bills on the floor every single week. These bills are just an attempt to distract from the genocide in Gaza. I am not voting for any of these bills while the genocide of Palestinians continues.”
DC DEVELOPMENTS
HOUSE VOTES ON $14.1 BILLION IN WEAPONS TO ISRAEL
The House voted Saturday on a $26 billion supplemental which includes $14.1 billion in weapons to Israel. The supplemental, H.R.8034, passed by a vote of 366-58.
Two weeks ago, more than 50 Members of Congress urged President Biden and Secretary of State Blinken to withhold pending offensive weapons transfers to Israel after three air strikes killed seven World Central Kitchen aid workers.
💡 POLICY ASK: IMEU Policy Project encouraged Members of Congress to vote “NO” on weapons to Israel. The vote recommendation said representatives should not vote for this bill on the pretext that it will provide any humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza. While it includes assistance for migrants and refugees, no amount of money is earmarked for humanitarian relief of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Read IMEU Policy Project’s vote recommendation.
HOUSE DEMOCRATS QUESTION US CLAIMS THAT ISRAEL ISN’T VIOLATING INTERNATIONAL LAW USING AMERICAN WEAPONS
Twenty-six Democratic Representatives have questioned the Biden administration’s acceptance of Israel’s assurances related to National Security Memorandum 20 as “credible and reliable.” The congressional letter was led by Rep. Veronica Escobar – who is national co-chair of President Biden’s reelection campaign – and Rep. Joaquin Castro, and was backed by two dozen advocacy organizations including IMEU Policy Project, Indivisible, Amnesty International USA, Americans for Peace Now, and MPower Change Action Fund.
In February, President Biden issued NSM-20, a memo requiring assurances from governments receiving weapons from the United States that they are not using US weapons in violation of international humanitarian law or to block humanitarian aid. Last month, the Biden administration accepted Israel’s assurances, while announcing several more arms transfers to Israel. Yet Israel’s deliberate disregard for international law has been well documented, from the Israeli army’s targeted killing of youth holding white flags while walking home to the mass murder of civilians at Al-Shifa hospital.
44 MEMBERS OF CONGRESS VOTE AGAINST RESOLUTION DENOUNCING ‘FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA’ SLOGAN
Last week the House of Representatives voted on an inaccurate and inflammatory anti-Palestinian resolution being pushed by the GOP to incite anti-Palestinian racism, which has had a deadly impact here in the US. This resolution willfully distorted the meaning of a widespread popular Palestinian slogan for freedom into something which it is not. The resolution also contains inaccurate statements, which have been thoroughly debunked, about what happened on October 7.
🔑 KEY TAKEAWAY: In 2021, Palestinian American analyst Yousef Munayyer, Head of Palestine/Israel Program and Senior Fellow at Arab Center Washington DC, wrote in Jewish Currents that the slogan advocates for “a state in which Palestinians can live in their homeland as free and equal citizens, neither dominated by others nor dominating them. When we call for a free Palestine from the river to the sea, it is precisely the existing system of domination that we seek to end.”
👀 ICYMI: Learn more about the slogan, what it means, and how it relates to Israel’s apartheid system in our policy memo.
REPORT: SECRETARY OF STATE ANTONY BLINKEN FAILS TO ACT ON RECOMMENDATIONS TO SANCTION ISRAELI MILITARY AND POLICE UNITS
Reporting by the investigative journalism site ProPublica last week revealed that Secretary of State Antony Blinken has failed to act on recommendations to disqualify Israeli military and police units from receiving US weapons due to serious human rights abuses. The recommendations, made in December by the Israel Leahy Vetting Forum, came after the panel investigated incidents which happened mostly in the West Bank before October 7th, including “extrajudicial killings by the Israeli Border Police; an incident in which a battalion gagged, handcuffed and left an elderly Palestinian American man for dead; and an allegation that interrogators tortured and raped a teenager who had been accused of throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails.”
The Secretary of State must comply with the Leahy Law and sanction Israeli military units that have committed gross violations of human rights.
IN THE NEWS
POLICE ARREST DOZENS OF PRO-PALESTINIAN PROTESTERS AT COLUMBIA, INCLUDING CONGRESSWOMAN’S DAUGHTER
New York City police removed a pro-Palestinian protest encampment at Columbia University on Thursday and arrested more than 100 demonstrators, including Isra Hirsi, the daughter of Rep. Ilhan Omar. Several students involved in the protest said they also were suspended from Columbia and Barnard College. Columbia students had been protesting on campus since early Wednesday, opposing Israeli military action in Gaza and demanding the school divest from companies that “profit from Israeli apartheid.”
BIDEN’S HANDLING OF GAZA SHAKES HIS SUPPORT IN THE BLACK COMMUNITY
Washington Post’s Cleve R. Wootson writes that many Black Philadelphians are no longer planning to vote for President Biden given his support for Israel’s war on Gaza, including the senior pastor of an AME Church, who is planning to attend the Democratic National Convention this summer. He said he has lost count of the number of conversations he has had with parishioners about Gaza.
PALESTINE/ISRAEL DEVELOPMENTS
⭕ HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH FINDS ISRAEL RESPONSIBLE FOR ABUSE AND VIOLENCE IN THE WEST BANK
Bill Van Esveld, Associate Children’s Rights Director at Human Rights Watch, said, “Settlers and soldiers have displaced entire Palestinian communities, destroying every home, with the apparent backing of higher Israeli authorities.” Israeli settlers have assaulted, tortured, and committed sexual violence against Palestinians, stolen their belongings and livestock, threatened to kill them if they did not leave permanently, and destroyed their homes and schools under the cover of the ongoing hostilities in Gaza.
🏥 ISRAELI DOCTOR: “ISRAELI ARMY TORTURES DETAINED PALESTINIANS, FORCING SYSTEMATIC AMPUTATIONS”
An Israeli doctor at Israel’s Sde Teiman army base – who did not share their name in a Haaretz report – recounted instances of routine torture that the Israeli army inflicts on Palestinian detainees, including violent handcuffing practices that lead to systematic amputations.The doctor said, “Just this week, two prisoners had their legs amputated due to handcuff injuries, which unfortunately is a routine event.” The doctor reported that “inmates are fed through straws, defecate in diapers and are held [in] constant restraints, which violate medical ethics and the law.” He added that inappropriate care at the detention facility has led to “complications and sometimes even in the patient’s death,” adding that “this makes all of us – the medical teams and you, those in charge of us in the health and defense ministries, complicit in the violation of Israeli law.”
📺 VIDEO: SHOCKING DRONE FOOTAGE CAPTURES ISRAEL’S DESTRUCTION OF GAZA
A drone captured video footage that compares Palestinians’ lives before and after Israel’s destruction of the majority of homes, schools, and hospitals in Gaza. More than two million Palestinians have been forced to flee Israel’s violence, and they are now displaced in Rafah under harsh conditions of starvation and widespread infectious diseases, living in anxiety-inducing anticipation of a potential Israeli invasion of Rafah.