Summary:
My latest blog tackles the little known but significant case of Palestine v. Biden head-on, exploring Biden’s support for Israel amid the genocide against Palestinians. From dissecting weapon shipments to unraveling the complexities of international law, this blog pulls no punches. Join the conversation on geopolitical alliances, human rights violations, and the urgent need for accountability in the face of ongoing conflict.
Legal Case
A legal case has been filed against President Joe Biden and key members of his administration by the Center for Constitutional Rights. The case is Palestine v. Biden, charging President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, with support and failure to prevent Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. The lawsuit states that the Biden administration has been tethered to Israel’s campaign of genocide against Palestinians for the last 100 days. The case was filed November 13, 2023 in the Northern District of California on behalf of Defense for Children International Palestine, Al-Haq, a non-governmental human rights organization based in Ramallah and three plaintiffs who reside in Gaza.
On January 31,2024, the court found that Israel’s “assault and siege of the Palestinian people in Gaza plausibly constitute genocide” and implored the Biden administration to examine its unflagging support for Israel. The case was dismissed because the court opined that it lacked jurisdiction to interfere with the conduct of foreign policy.
Plaintiffs disagreed. They filed an appeal on March 7th, 2024 to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Their disagreement is based on sections of the Geneva Convention Act, which indicate that every day acts of genocide cannot be evaded under the cover of foreign policy. The U.S. is a signatory to the agreement (see below). Eight briefs of amici curiae, friend of the court, were filed on March 14,2024. A trial date is awaited.
What is interesting is that the case brought by South Africa in an 84-page brief against Israel for genocide to the International Court of Justice, January 30, 2024, in an initial opinion, found that there was sufficient evidence to proceed on “acts and omissions by Israel that are genocidal in character.” This is before the court for further review now.
Case Origins
Palestine v. Biden draws upon The Geneva Convention, which was the first human rights treaty adopted by the United Nations, December 9,1948. This document codifies legal consequences for inhumanity and genocide. And, importantly, it stipulates that government leaders or representatives are not exempt from being held accountable for their actions. The admonishment ‘Never Again’, which informed the original legal document, means never again for all peoples not just Nazis who committed genocide against Jews in World War II.
The United States took 40 years to sign the agreement, the Geneva Convention Act (GCA), 1988. Ironically, it was Senator Joe Biden who was the original sponsor of the bill. Mr. Biden, therefore, fully recognizes the obligations and responsibilities to ‘prevent and punish genocide’ at all levels, under both international and domestic law.
Genocide is defined under the GCA as the “intention to destroy, in whole or part, a group based on their ethnic, religious, racial, or national identity.” There are five underlying acts that inform genocide including killing, inflection of serious physical or mental harm or creations of conditions to destroy, in whole or in part, that group previously referred to. The burden of proof is based on evidence including policy, directives, and individual actions.
Israel’s Policy & Actions
The leaders of Israel have crafted a policy to liquidate Palestinians. Prime Minister Netanyahu, using the Torah as reference in a national setting, has directly stated: “Now go and smite Amalek and utterly destroy all that they have and slay both man and woman, infant and suckling”; slay them all.
Yoav Gallant, Defense Minister, ordered a ‘complete siege’ of Gaza. Echoing Mr. Netanyahu, he stated that “there will be no electricity, no water, no fuel, everything will be closed.” Israel, as part of its policy, has blocked or delayed deliveries of food, clean water and medicine to Palestinians causing mass hunger, sickness and starvation.
Avner Gvaryahu, Executive Director, Break The Silence, an Israeli based non-profit composed of former Israeli Defense Forces personnel has noted that the IDF has ‘loosened’ regulations on target identification, bombings, artillery use, warnings to civilians, and use of weapons for street fighting and killing civilians. The IDF, according to Mr. Gvaryahu, has lost its identity as a moral army, killing Palestinians with impunity.
The IDF are using American weapons to kill witnesses of their actions as well. To date, 83 journalists, photographers and media workers have been killed by IDF in Gaza, 3 in Lebanon, and 13 writers and poets in Gaza as well; 25 journalists have been arrested by Israel, according to news sources. Recently, the IDF bombed a tent which is widely known as a meeting place for reporters and journalists. They have also killed 190 humanitarian & aid workers, including World Central Kitchen workers—-who cook food for destitute Palestinians, hardly terrorists.
Human rights groups have also detailed executions of 19 civilians by the IDF in Gaza City, where women and girls were separated from their families and stripped searched. Gaza is a ‘free fire zone’, where the IDF are free to shoot whomever they want in the name of fighting terrorism. Not one IDF person, not one, has been held accountable, nor one UN warning heeded.
U.S. Support for Genocide
After October 7th, the US shipped to Israel 15,000 bombs, 57,000 artillery shells, and 13,000 rounds of tank ammunition. Recently, amidst world criticism, and court warnings on charges of ‘genocide’, President Biden and Antony Blinken increased Israel’s weapons cache, supplying 1,800 MK 84, 2,000-pound, bunker busting, unguided bombs and 500 MK 82 500-pound bombs, and 155 millimeter artillery tank munitions.
A 2,000-pound bomb, referred to by the U.S. military as a “free-fall, non-guided bomb,” was originally intended for targets such as artillery and artillery sites, radar stations, trucks, Scuds, surface-to-air missile sites, and supply points (Military Analysis Network, MK 84 bombs). Instead, they were dropped on Gaza, one of the most densely populated places on Earth—14,000 people per square mile– decimating approximately 157,000 buildings, 40 to 70 percent of dwellings in Gaza (CNN, satellite images). This bomb, when exploded, severely wounds or kills individuals at distances of up to 1,198 feet, the equivalent of 58 soccer fields. It leaves a crater 40 feet in diameter. International humanitarian law prohibits the bombing of civilian areas.
President Biden, among others named in the lawsuit, approved shipments of these weapons with knowledge of their purposes. He even commented that Israel’s killing of civilians is “over the top”, yet continued to approve shipments. According to Marc Garlasco, former US intelligence analyst at the Pentagon and former UN war crimes investigator, the extent of the weapons transfer and their use “is beyond anything that I have seen in my career.”
U.S. arms shipments not only violate international humanitarian laws, but U.S. law as well: the Leahy Laws are U.S. human rights laws enacted by Congress that prohibit the Departments of State and Defense from providing military assistance to foreign security forces that violate human rights with impunity. Secondly, weapons were shipped without the required approval from Congress, and it took place at the same time that Biden was calling for a cease fire, which the U.S. subsequently vetoed at the UN.
New shipments of weapons are in addition to the following: the US has funded $300 billion worth of weapons to Israel since its beginning; recent funding of $3.8 billion annually, and $4 billion in stockpiled weapons, $500 million for missile defense programs, sale of 50 of the most advanced aircraft, F-35 stealth fighters, roughly $50 billion, and in addition, the U.S. has approved a current supplemental war budget for Israel of $14.3 billion (U.S. State Department documents, 2024).
This does not include over $300 million spent annually for high tech military surveillance of Gaza, from drones to installed cameras in neighborhoods. Each Palestinian, as a child, is photographed, cataloged, and circulated in an Israeli military database. Any infractions of Israeli law are subject to trial in military court. Palestinians have no civil rights. Any Palestinian caught protesting for human rights, for example, is subject to arrest, including over 10,000 kids who have been hooded and hauled off to prison without parent knowledge or legal representation. Once in the system, Palestinian protesters, no matter how young, are digitally labeled and followed for life.
Genocide
Israel’s policies, use of U.S. weapons, and systematic destruction of Palestinians and infrastructure have occurred with the knowledge and approval of President Biden, Antony Blinken, and Lloyd Austin. Their complicity in Israel’s systematic killing, maiming, displacement and starvation of Palestinians in Gaza is captured abstractly in the data below as of April 3, 2024:
- 32,000 + Palestinians killed, mostly women and children, 75,000 wounded
- 17,000 children orphaned without families, 7,000 reported missing
- 1.9 million persons displaced
- 1.2 million hungry, starving or sick, multiple deaths of infants who cannot be treated
- All major neighborhoods, schools, universities, and health care facilities have been bombed, and most infrastructure has been rendered a wasteland of rubble.
Young adults in Gaza have taken to preparing for death by using pens to write their names and contact information on their hands, feet and legs so that their bodies can later be identified by their families. Medical supplies are blocked by Israeli forces, and operations are conducted without anesthesia. Some children who were operated on have asked to die.
Why Palestine v. Biden matters
A positive outcome in Palestine v. Biden would have major implications for strengthening
the international order of law, which is currently violated by Israel and the United States. It would hold our leaders accountable for their actions, building on the watch words of the Geneva Conventions, “Never Again”. It is necessary to witness and condemn the unfolding genocide as an act of conscience, as an act of humanity.
What you can do:
- Email the Center For Constitutional Rights, and thank the lead attorney in the case, Katherine Gallagher, for her efforts. Read the legal briefs located on their website, some of which are submitted by Jewish organizations.
- Email President Biden and remind him about Palestine v. Biden, and to do what’s right
- Email letters to the editor of news organizations, and post reference to the case on your social media.
- Refer this blog to friends.
- Tune into the Intercept, online news, for complete program: “The legal case against Joe Biden for enabling Israel’s Genocide against Gaza”, January 17, 2024.
*Special thanks to the Intercept, Center for Constitutional Rights, CNN News, U.S. State Department documents and Al Jazeera for data referred to in this blog