The United States bears a responsibility to rein in Israeli violence against Palestinians. The only real question is whether the Biden administration will use the leverage it has.
The Biden administration has pressed forward with the military aspects of the Abraham Accords’ vision, letting it be known at the end of 2022 that Israel, as part of its new position in CENTCOM, had been elevated to “full military partner” in terms of strategizing and planning with the United States.
The move sets a dangerous precedent, which if it results in an official alliance, runs the risk of an American commitment to Israel’s defense that could easily drag the U.S. into more fighting in the Middle East, even if that’s not Washington’s intention. And it would mean that commitment happens without any kind of public debate.
The U.S. is enabling the ethnic cleansing of Masafer Yatta by providing Israel with military aid and supplying the weapons used to terrorize the Palestinians in the perpetually threatened region, in the South Hebron Hills.
Israel’s settler-colonial and apartheid regime is a crime against humanity that violates international law. It is time the U.S. follows its own laws, and cut off the funding that makes this possible.
From July 13 to 16, President Joe Biden will visit the governments of Israel and Saudi Arabia, deepening his complicity in their human rights abuses. As Black and Palestinian organizers in the U.S. who visited Palestine last week, we see President Biden’s widely criticized trip for what it is: a war crimes tour. If Biden cares about human rights at all, he should #CancelTheTrip—as thousands of grassroots activists have demanded—and stop funding the weapons behind their war crimes.
The conflict over Iron Dome funding in congress is undeniably a result of the Unity Intifada and the global solidarity it engendered with Palestinians. As we come to the end of 2021, it is important that we seize the opportunity to disrupt the business as usual of unbridled US military support for Israel.
Rand Paul is no champion for Palestine, but Democrats are still far to his right when it comes to funding Iron Dome.
Giving Israel $1 billion in fungible money for a weapon system will only encourage further war crimes. The progressive legislators who wanted to remove those billion dollars from the spending bill were doing the right thing.
A new poll shows support for restricting US military aid to Israel, and a growing acceptance for a one-state solution.
Why is the “open secret” of Israel’s nuclear weapons kept secret? Because if the US government revealed what it knows it would immediately raise uncomfortable questions about the legality of foreign aid to Israel.