News Releases

JAKE JOHNSTON, johnston@cepr.net, @JakobJohnston
Senior research associate at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, Johnston is author of Aid State: Elite Panic, Disaster Capitalism, and the Battle to Control Haiti, which was released earlier this year.

He said today: “The world has been inundated by sensationalist headlines of Haiti in crisis for the last two weeks. There is no question that, indeed, Haiti is facing an incredibly difficult situation. Yet part of the story has been left out of much of the coverage: the role played by foreign powers in causing this crisis.”

Johnston just put out a backgrounder “Haitian Prime Minister Henry Agrees to Resign as CARICOM Announces Formation of Presidential Council,” which reads in part: “What is clear is that the announcement in Kingston late last night is unlikely to lead to a solution to the current crisis by itself. After criticizing Henry for relying on the support of the U.S. and other foreign powers, an agreement pushed by those same foreign powers is likely to face legitimacy concerns from the moment it forms. Though negotiations have been taking place for the better part of a week, none of the participants or discussions have been made public, leaving the vast majority of Haitians in the dark. Notably, CARICOM set conditions for participation, including accepting deployment of a Kenyan-led intervention force. …

“It was U.S. and foreign support for Henry that pushed the situation to its dire state. But rather than letting a truly Haitian-led process play out, those same foreign powers have opted for a stability pact that, it would seem, is likely to lock in an unsustainable status quo at least in the short term.”

See NPR interview with Daniel Foote, a former American diplomat who resigned in protest over U.S. policy.

Last month, Congress decided to abandon its attempt to reform pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs). Advocates say other drug pricing issues need special attention right now. 

STEVE KNIEVEL; sknievel@citizen.org 
    Knievel is an advocate for Public Citizen’s Access to Medicines program. 

Knievel told the Institute for Public Accuracy: “PBMs have had some pernicious effects on the drug system and on independent pharmacies as well. But as Peter [Maybarduk, Knievel’s colleague at Public Citizen] said [on February 9, during the Senate HELP Committee hearing on drug pricing], ‘the fish rots from the head.’ The drug corporations are the ones who set the prices. They could set different prices if they chose to. PBMs can arguably exacerbate some of these problems, but it’s the drug corporations that have the monopoly power that is the primary basis of our excessive, out-of-control drug prices.”

PBMs “are only a distraction insofar as policymakers allow it to be one,” Knievel added. “It would have been a misstep to only do PBM reform and exclude various other measures to address monopoly abuses. None of those [reforms] were in the cards to be included in a package, even if PBMs were included this time around. 

“Another point that fell by the wayside was the out-of-pocket caps for insulin… Majority Leader Schumer talked about extending that [$35 out-of-pocket monthly cap for insulin] to everyone. We wanted to make sure that the uninsured got low-cost coverage for insulin as well. We were hoping to see PBM reforms, patent abuse reforms, and insulin coverage expansion. But we got none of it. For the foreseeable future, it’s not going to happen. The political realities of an election year are becoming evermore present.”

Right now, one important aspect of progressive drug pricing reform focuses on patents and the Bayh-Dole Act. Bayh-Dole allows government contractors and grantees that make inventions to retain ownership of the patent of that invention; in exchange, the government retains some public interest protections of the patent. For instance, the Federal Trade Commission explains that under Bayh-Dole, “the federal government has the right to ‘march in’ on patents on inventions created using taxpayer funds,” requiring the patent holder to license the federally-funded patent to other applicants. Petitions have previously been sent to agencies like HHS and NIH to exercise march-in rights for prohibitively-expensive drugs like prostate cancer medicines, but this power has never been employed. In pursuit of increasing drug affordability, the Biden administration is currently undergoing an inner-agency review of when march-in rights ought to be employed; in December 2023, the National Institute of Standards and Technology released a draft framework to guide the government’s exercise of march-in rights. In February, the 60-day comment period closed on that draft framework. 

“Once that guidance is finalized and comes out,” Knievel said, “we will be looking for ways that agencies can act upon it and explore what more the administration can do with its executive tools to lower drug prices in the coming year. This is an important piece of our work, because as much progress as we have made through the Medicare drug price negotiation system, there are serious limitations there. By using these sorts of mechanisms [like potential expansions to march-in rights], we can do more to expand access to medicines.”

Knievel noted that there is “insufficient public recognition about the benefits of the law that are already kicking in right now. As much as I’m profuse about the limitations of the law, it does go a long way. Progressives need to know about the progress we’ve made. We haven’t had wins like this in years—maybe ever—against Pharma. We can’t be overly jaded about what we haven’t gotten. If we sit back, Pharma is going to roll over us and take it all back.” 

Reuters reports: “UNRWA report says Israel coerced some agency employees to falsely admit Hamas links.”

CHRISTOPHER GUNNESS, cgunness@outlook.com
Gunness is a former spokesperson for UNRWA. He said today: “These allegations are shocking but unsurprising. Numerous UN reports attest to the fact that the Israelis have subjected Palestinians to these abhorrent violations on a very large scale for decades as a routine instrument of occupation. What’s new is that the Israelis are doing this to force confessions from UNRWA staff that they were involved in the October attack. This further undermines the original Israeli claims against UNRWA.” See his recent interviews on CBC News and Al Jazeera.

Canada and Sweden are restoring their funding of UNRWA. Nearly 50 members of the U.S. Congress have called for a restoration of the U.S. government funding of UNRWA.

In the suit brought by South Africa, The ICJ on Jan. 26 ordered: “Israel must take immediate and effective measures to enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance to address the adverse conditions of life faced by Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.” Hours later, Israel made its charges regarding UNRWA and the U.S. government and other donors then halted funding.

The U.S. similarly used tortured false confessions about Iraq and Al Qaeda working together that it presented to the UN, see piece from last year by Sam Husseini: “Twenty Years Ago: How Powell Used Tortured ‘Evidence’ for War Against Iraq.”

See B’Tselem page on torture by Israel.

Gunness was on the IPA news release “UK Channel 4 Finds Israeli Documents ‘Provide No Evidence’ in Charges Against UNRWA,” which contains background on the relief agency.

See Doctors Without Borders statement: “U.S. plan for temporary pier in Gaza a ‘glaring distraction.’“

Hundreds of organizations from over 50 countries have signed on to a letter denouncing the use of starvation as a tool of genocide.

The following are available for interviews:

Fuad Abu Saif, Union of Agricultural Work Committees, based in Ramallah, fuad@uawc-pal.org
Pawel Wargan, Progressive International, pawel.wargan@progressive.international
Dr. Karameh Hawash-Kuemmerle, Doctors Against Genocide

The letter states that the groups, which represent hundreds of millions of people, “vehemently denounce the Israeli occupation’s use of starvation as a tool of genocide in the Gaza Strip. The Israeli occupation’s systematic destruction of Palestinian food systems, deliberate targeting of civilian infrastructure, and obstruction of humanitarian aid constitute egregious violations of international law and fundamental human rights principles.

“We call on all states and international institutions to undertake any and all action possible including sanctions and arms embargoes to bring an immediate end to the obstruction of humanitarian, life sustaining, and life-saving supplies to Palestinians in Gaza, to investigate all state and non-state actors who have directly and indirectly participated in the obstruction and/or destruction of supplies to Gaza, and we ask that the campaign to de-fund UNRWA be investigated as a possible act toward furtherance and facilitation of starvation and/or genocide.

“The deliberate withholding of essential resources, including food, with the intent of starving the Palestinian population of Gaza constitutes a gross violation of international law, human rights, and the principles of justice and humanity. Article II (c) of the Genocide Convention defines as genocide ‘Deliberately inflicting on [a national, ethnical, racial or religious] group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.’ The Israeli occupation’s deliberate destruction of Palestinian food systems and obstruction of humanitarian aid by Israel clearly fall within the ambit of this definition. These actions also flagrantly violate the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, which safeguards the rights of civilians during times of armed conflict, and constitute crimes against humanity, as recognized under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. …

“The disruption and destruction of Palestinian food systems by the Israeli occupation exacerbate the dire situation in Gaza and are not merely intended to starve the population in the short term. The current deliberate targeting by Israel of agricultural lands, livestock, and fishing boats (a genocidal intensification of 75 years of brutal settler colonial occupation that has denied Palestinians their right to self-rule) further undermines the ability of Palestinians to access and produce food, and is intended to ensure their ongoing poverty and malnutrition, and deny them the fundamental right to food sovereignty.” The letter was initiated by the International Coalition to Stop Genocide in Palestine.

The groups, including the large global peasant movement La Via Campesina, are calling for various actions including for Saturday, March 9 to be a global day of fasting in solidarity with the people of Gaza.

Fuad Abu Saif said: “This is not just a matter of law; it is a test of our collective humanity. Let us come together to demand an immediate halt to this brutality, to ensure that food and hope flow freely into Gaza once again.”

Pawel Wargan said: “This week, Israeli forces in Gaza massacred starving people as they lined up to receive the paltry humanitarian aid that is allowed through the blockade — another grim episode in the long, wretched history of Zionist colonialism in Palestine. In Gaza, Zionism and its imperialist backers are striking at the very foundations of humanity. That is why it is imperative for progressive forces to mobilize — with love, courage, and organization more powerful than the inhumanity that threatens to crush the world in its death march.”

See recent Democracy Now segment: “What I Witnessed in Gaza Is a Holocaust: Palestinian Writer Susan Abulhawa.”

FRANCIS BOYLE, fboyle@illinois.edu
Boyle is professor of international law at the University of Illinois College of Law. Boyle’s books include The Bosnian People Charge Genocide (1996) Palestine, Palestinians and International Law (2009) and World Politics, Human Rights and International Law (2021). He was just on the Rachel Blevins Show and has recently been on Flashpoints, Democracy Now and MSNBC.

He said today: “As many have noted, Biden administration rhetoric is meaningless as it arms and backs Israel. In fact, by saying that Israel needs to have a plan in place for civilians before going into Rafah, as it has been doing, the Biden administration is effectively giving Israel a greenlight to do just that. That plan seems to include camps that have been built by Egypt. What Blinken’s trips to the Mideast have been about isn’t about making peace, they have almost certainly been about hatching a scheme whereby the Israelis force Palestinians into Egypt and the Egyptian government — which hates the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas — runs the camps and other corrupt Arab governments fund the illegal scheme.

“Clearly, with the Israelis rejecting a permanent ceasefire, an increasing threat to peace is quite possible.

“Seeing such threats, South Africa has just returned to the International Court of Justice, stating ‘in light of the new facts and changes in the situation in Gaza — particularly the situation of widespread starvation — brought about by the continuing egregious breaches of the’ Genocide Convention by Israel ‘and its ongoing manifest violations of the provisional measures indicated by’ the ICJ on Jan. 26.” [See PDF of South Africa’s application, filed on Wednesday.]

Boyle represented Bosnia and Herzegovina at the ICJ and the South African application quotes his second request for provisional measures of protection: “The extreme gravity of the situation facing Palestinian men, women, children and babies, and the existential risk the Palestinian people in Gaza as a part of the Palestinian national or ethnical group face as a result of Israel’s genocidal military campaign demands further action by the Court. To this end, the Court is reminded of the application for additional provisional measures made by Bosnia in 1993 in the Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide … case. The written application entreated: ‘Make no mistake about it: This will be the last opportunity that this Court shall have to save both the people and State of Bosnia and Herzegovina from extermination and annihilation by means of genocide by the Respondent. God will record your response to our Request for the rest of eternity.'”

Boyle also notes that Nicaragua has recently brought suit at the ICJ against Germany. The Nicaraguan application states: “In 2004, well before the most recent assault of Israel against the Gaza Strip, the Court had reaffirmed that Palestine was an occupied territory and that the Palestinian people had a right to self determination. The Court also recalled that all States had the obligation not to render aid or assistance in maintaining that situation. [PDF of 2004 ICJ ruling] Germany ignored this obligation then and has compounded this breach by continuing to aid and assist Israel after the most recent and even grosser violations of peremptory norms of general international law and conventional obligations. …

“Germany has provided political, financial and military support to Israel fully aware at the time of authorization that the military equipments would be used in the commission of great breaches of international law by this State and in disregard of its own obligations. In particular, the military equipment provided by Germany enabling Israel to perpetrate genocidal acts and other atrocities, included supplies to the front line and warehouses, and assurances of future supplies such as ammunition, technology and diverse components necessary for the Israeli military.” [See PDF of Nicaraguan application.]

Boyle added that he “expects that the ICJ will shortly call for an expedited hearing on the Nicaragua case. I expect Nicaragua will get some sort of provisional measures. It’s noteworthy that this is being done by Nicaragua — my teacher, colleague and friend, Abram Chayes successfully represented Nicaragua in its suit against the U.S. government in the 1980s which was used by the solidarity movement to stop the U.S. attack on Nicaragua then.

“Such legal action is difficult for Nicaragua or any other state to take against the U.S. government now since it has a reservation on Article 9 of the Genocide Convention granting the ICJ powers to adjudicate disputes. Other states backing Israel, like Canada, Britain and other European states, as with Germany, are vulnerable to such suits.”

ARUN GUPTA, arun.indypendent@gmail.com, @arunindy
The latest piece by investigative reporter Gupta was just published by YES Magazine: “Claims of Mass Rape by Hamas Unravel Upon Investigation.” His piece “American Media Keep Citing Zaka — Though Its October 7 Atrocity Stories Are Discredited in Israel” was published last month by The Intercept.

Gupta said today: “For more than three months the media and Israeli civil organizations have recycled the same allegations of sexual violence to claim Hamas committed mass rape on Oct. 7. They have treated unsubstantiated allegations of rape as solid proof. But there is zero forensic evidence, zero photo evidence, and no survivor testimony. These dodgy rape claims are being explicitly used by Israel as cover for its total war on Palestinians.

“The Israeli military sent in untrained Zaka volunteers into massacre sites instead of soldiers specially trained to collect human remains and preserve evidence. Once inside, Zaka reportedly turned the sites into a war room for donations, used corpses as fundraising props, and spread accounts of atrocities that never happened. In exchange, the Israeli government got Zaka volunteers to spread fake atrocity stories throughout the media, giving Israel legitimacy to carry out total war against Palestinians.”

For his investigative report published Wednesday by YES Magazine, Gupta interviewed the author of Physician for Human Rights Israel paper widely cited as proof of rape on Oct. 7. In reality, Gupta states, “Hadas Ziv acknowledged numerous problems with the PHRI paper. She admitted many sources had credibility problems, she did not review all available evidence, she was unaware sources had fabricated atrocity stories, and conceded there could be other explanations for instances of sexual violence that she cited. …

“In addition, the PHRI, the controversial New York Times Dec. 28 investigation on Oct. 7 sexual violence, and 10 other media investigations rely on 12 individuals for nearly all claims of rape. Of those 12 individuals, eight fabricated other Oct. 7 atrocities, and all but one are connected to Israeli military and police. Even if you consider all claims credible, they are unsubstantiated claims: There is no photo evidence, no forensic evidence, and no survivor testimony. …

“What’s even more disturbing than media abandoning basic evidentiary standards, these dodgy claims have buried actual gender-based and sexual violence that Israel is committing against Palestinian women and girls, as documented by U.N. experts and women’s groups. The media have the ability to correct their utterly biased reporting, but it is an open question if they are willing to challenge powerful forces to do so.”

RALPH NADER, via Info@csrl.org, @RalphNader
Available for a limited number of interviews, Nader just wrote the piece “Stop the Worsening UNDERCOUNT of Palestinian Casualties in Gaza,” which states: “Since the Hamas raid penetrated the multi-tiered Israeli border security on October 7, 2023 (an unexplained collapse of Israel’s defensive capabilities), 2.3 million utterly defenseless Palestinians in the tiny crowded Gaza enclave have been on the receiving end of over 65,000 bombs/missiles plus non-stop tank shelling and snipers.

“The extreme right-wing Netanyahu regime has enforced its declared siege of, in its genocidal words, ‘no food, no water, no electricity, no fuel, no medicine.’

“The relentless bombing has destroyed apartment buildings, marketplaces, refugee camps, hospitals, clinics, ambulances, bakeries, schools, mosques, churches, roads, electricity networks, critical water mains — just about everything.

“The U.S.-equipped Israeli war machine has even uprooted agricultural fields, including thousands of olive trees on one farm, bulldozed many cemeteries and bombed civilians fleeing on Israeli orders, while obstructing the few trucks carrying humanitarian aid from Egypt.

“With virtually no healthcare left, no medications, and infectious diseases spreading especially among infants, children, the infirm and the elderly, can anybody believe that the fatalities have just gone over 30,000? With 5,000 babies born every month into the rubble, their mothers wounded and without food, healthcare, medicine and clean water for any of their children, severe skepticism about the Hamas Health Ministry’s official count is warranted.

“Netanyahu and Hamas, which he helped over the years, have a common interest in lowballing the death/injury toll. But for different reasons. …

“The Health Ministry is intentionally conservative, citing that its death toll came from reports only of named deceased by hospitals and morgues. But as the weeks turned into months, blasted, disabled hospitals and morgues cannot keep up with the bodies, or cannot count those slain laying on roadsides in allies and beneath building debris. Yet the Health Ministry remains conservative and the ‘official,’ rising civilian fatality and injury count continues to be uncritically reported by both friend and foe of this devastating Israeli state terrorism. …

“Then came the December 29, 2023, opinion piece in The Guardian by the Chair of Global Public Health at the University of Edinburgh, Devi Sridhar. She predicted half a million deaths in 2024 if conditions continue unabated.

“In recent days, the situation has become more dire. In the March 2, 2024, Washington Post, reporter, Ishaan Tharoor writes: ‘The bulk of Gaza’s more than 2 million people face the prospect of famine — a state of affairs that constitutes the fastest decline in a population’s nutrition status ever recorded, according to aid workers. Children are starving at the fastest rate the world has ever known. Aid groups have been pointing to Israel restricting the flow of assistance into the territory as a major driver of the crisis. Some prominent Israeli officials openly champion stymying these transfers of aid.’

“Tharoor quotes Jan Egeland, chief of the Norwegian Refugee Council: ‘We must be clear: civilians in Gaza are falling sick from hunger and thirst because of Israel’s entry restrictions.’ ‘Life-saving supplies are being intentionally blocked, and women and children are paying the price.’

“Martin Griffiths, the United Nations lead humanitarian officer, said ‘Life is draining out of Gaza at terrifying speed.'”

Nader cites other sources and then writes: “Yet, and get this, in this article, the Post still stuck with the ‘more than 30,000 people in Gaza have been killed since the ongoing war began.’

“Just like the entire mass media, many governments, even the independent media and critics of the war would have us accept that between 98 percent and 99 percent of Gaza’s entire population has survived — albeit the sick, injured and more Palestinians about to die. This is lethally improbable!

“From accounts of people on the ground, videos and photographs of deadly episode after episode, plus the resultant mortalities from blocking or smashing the crucial necessities of life, a more likely estimate, in my appraisal, is that at least 200,000 Palestinians must have perished by now and the toll is accelerating by the hour. …”

Nader is author of many books including Unsafe at Any Speed: The Designed-In Dangers of the American Automobile, Unstoppable: The Emerging Left-Right Alliance to Dismantle the Corporate State and most recently, The Rebellious CEO: 12 Leaders Who Did It Right.

The far right is exploiting the public’s distress over corporate health care and the dire lack of universal health care in the U.S. 

RICHARD ESKOW; rjeskow@gmail.com 
    Eskow is a writer and the host and managing editor of The Zero Hour on radio and TV. He was the head writer for the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign in 2016. 

Eskow described some of the most important political actors now at play: 

1. Libertarians, the libertarian element of the Republican Party, and more broadly, the anti-Obamacare faction. 
2. Christian pastors who are using issues like transgender health care and abortion rights to mobilize the public against public healthcare. 
3. A movement that grew during Covid: the spiritual/religious right, which has been infiltrated by the wellness movement and vice versa.

Eskow told the Institute for Public Accuracy: “If you break out these various groups, you see people like Megan McArdle [the Washington Post columnist and blogger], who was groomed and prompted by the Koch brothers to make their extremist ideas seem mainstream.” McArdle has formerly argued that healthcare is a business, not a right. “That argument relies on a fundamental misunderstanding, and the libertarian argument in general is a misunderstanding of how healthcare works. 

“The Libertarian Party and other libertarian advocates say the market can bring down costs and improve [health] care. But healthcare is not a market; it never is. Your doctor tells you what you need. There is no professional who tells me I need a Buick instead of a Chevrolet, but there’s a professional who says I need a chest X-ray. So the idea of ‘healthcare shopping’ is flawed. [Further,] insurance companies are intermediaries. You can only shop for insurance companies, whose incentive is to give you as little care as possible. And you have to do it prospectively, [since you] don’t know what sickness you will get next year.

“The flip side is ‘freedom’: that you should have the freedom to choose your doctor and your care. But you don’t have that freedom now; your insurance company decides that. And you certainly don’t have the freedom if you can’t afford it. [Libertarians] heavily promote things like health IRAs and other tax arrangements. But most people don’t pay enough in taxes to cover potential healthcare costs. That’s another deception. [Libertarians] slide around the fact that Medicare is very popular. With the help of Democrats, they slip private healthcare into Medicare through Medicare Advantage, which people like until they get sick and realize they don’t have any choices.” 

Other organizations, like the Heritage Foundation, suggest that Biden’s Medicare drug plan is “central planning” that will create “price fixing.” The idea, Eskow says, “is that we should celebrate paying more for drugs because that’s how we know we’re getting the best.”

Eskow also argues that there is an “unholy alliance” between some Christian pastors and Republicans. These pastors were mobilized against national healthcare on the grounds that Medicare for All is an “interference in your God-given right to healthcare.” 

Finally, the far right has exploited spiritual communities’ distrust of authority. “They are adept at making the government the authority—forgetting that in our system, insurance companies are the authority… So much of the far right’s [approach] is taking wholesome instincts and perverting them, taking the instinctive awareness that something is wrong with our system and exploiting it. Like by saying the NIH is lying to you. It resonates… Covid was a turning point. People felt alone and abandoned, and there was a lack of direction. It subverted a shared understanding of public health. They intuit part of the truth and the right builds an entire superstructure off of that.”

Donald Trump’s 2024 vision for healthcare and Social Security is still vague. Trump is once again running on not cutting Social Security, but Eskow notes that it is unclear what role the far right will have when it comes to healthcare rhetoric and policy in electoral politics this year. “Trump says that he doesn’t want to terminate Obamacare, he just wants to replace it with better healthcare because Obamacare sucks.” Medicare for All is “not on the radar this year. The progressive Democrats have folded their cards on that one.” 

[The Center for Economic and Policy Research just released a poll showing “A solid majority of Americans support ending arms shipments to Israel until it stops its attacks on Gaza.” Al-Jazeera reports: “Palestinians seeking aid attacked by Israeli forces again.” Ralph Nader estimates Palestinian deaths in Gaza are being massively undercounted, estimating them at 200,000.] [Veterans For Peace will be joining former U.S. intelligence officer Josephine Guilbeau at a news conference at the Capitol on March 6, 2024, 10:30 a.m., by 3rd Street, NW. see profile.]

In sixteen U.S. cities, March 5 to 7, members of Veterans For Peace will “hand deliver an exhaustively researched letter [PDF] to U.S. State Department offices that has gotten no response from the department’s Inspector-General since February 11.

The cities are Buffalo, New York, Minneapolis, St. Louis, Portsmouth, NH, Greensboro, NC, Boston, San Diego, Tucson, Chicago, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Bridgeport, Conn., Los Angeles, Dallas and Houston.

Josh Paul, former State Department senior official who resigned over weapons shipments to Israel said, “The Secretary and all relevant officials under his purview should take this letter from Veterans For Peace with the utmost seriousness. It is a stark reminder of the importance of abiding by the laws and policies that relate to arms transfers.”

The letter from Veterans For Peace alleges violations by U.S. government officials of:

* “The Conventional Arms Transfer Policy, which prohibits U.S. weapons transfers when it’s likely they 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 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 willful killing, torture or inhuman treatment, willfully 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.

Mike Ferner, VFP National Director, said, “Just as any good soldier can recognize when they are given an unlawful order, we believe some State Department staff are horrified at the orders they’re given and will decide to uphold the law, find the courage to speak out and demand an end to the carnage. VFP enthusiastically supports Josh Paul for what he did and we believe the public does, too. The IDF has killed over 30,000 Palestinians and is utterly destroying Gaza. These actions amount to genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, and VFP wants them investigated.”

Veterans For Peace has over 100 chapters in the U.S. Since 1985 it has “exposed the true costs of war and militarism. Its goal is to abolish war as an instrument of national policy.”

National contacts:
Mike Ferner, mike@veteransforpeace.org, @VFPNational
Jack Gilroy, jgilroy1955@gmail.com

Local contacts available upon request.

At the National Religious Broadcasters convention in Nashville, Tenn., last month, former President Donald Trump told the audience that Christianity is “under attack.” NRB is a trade association of radio and TV evangelists with millions of listeners.

FREDERICK CLARKSON; f.clarkson@politicalresearch.org 
    Clarkson is a senior research analyst at Political Research Associates, a progressive think tank. He has been researching and writing about religion and politics for four decades. He is the author of Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy and editor of Dispatches from the Religious Left: The Future of Faith and Politics in America.

Clarkson told the Institute for Public Accuracy: Trump’s premise is that “there is an attack on Christianity going on, allegedly from the ‘radical Left.’ He calls Joe Biden a ‘communist.’ This is 21st Century McCarthyism, acting as if Christianity is under attack by communism. But it shouldn’t come as a surprise, since Trump’s advisor was Roy Cohn [the McCarthy-era prosecutor]. He learned politics from Roy Cohn” in the 1970s and 1980s. “This is his default mode: sleazy, fact-free demagoguery. He says [Democrats] want to tear down crosses where they can and replace them with ‘social justice flags.’ I don’t know where that is happening anywhere in the country. It’s made-up stuff. You could arguably say it’s a metaphor for what [Democrats] want to do. But [Trump] is saying it’s real. ‘No one will touch the cross under the Trump administration,’ he swears.”

Trump is seeking to maximize support from evangelical Christians. His claim to be defending Christianity “suggests that their kind of Christianity is the Christianity—that it is Christianity. But there are plenty of [religious] sectors—Catholicism, mainline Protestantism—that don’t agree. There is no one Christianity. [Trump’s idea] is not just factually wrong, but it’s counter to the values of American constitutional democracy. Constitutional democracy is not [about] the defense of Christianity but the defense of religious freedom, by which the framers of the Constitution meant religious equality under the law, in which your religious or non-religious identity would have no bearing on your status as a citizen: neither an advantage or disadvantage. That’s a core piece of the American experiment… a constellation of freedom, respect for religious pluralism, and separation of church and state. If you’re not talking in those terms, you’re not talking about religious freedom but [rather] religious supremacy or bigotry. 

“This is best expressed in the red and white hats they were giving out at the [National Religious Broadcasters] convention, which said ‘Make America Pray Again.’

“The Democrats should be prepared to say how offensive this is. I would like to see Joe Biden, or anyone in the Democratic Party, say [what it means to defend religious freedom]. It doesn’t mean just protecting one sector of Christianity. If you’re going to deal with the religious right and the politicians who pander to them, you have to engage with this.”