[AP reports: “The United States under the Biden and Trump administrations has provided at least $21.7 billion in military assistance to Israel since the start of the Gaza war two years ago, according to a new academic study published Tuesday.”]
Also on Tuesday, Taxpayers Against Genocide, the National Lawyers Guild International Committee, and Palestinian-American petitioners filed an expanded legal complaint with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), a body of the Organization of American States. See their nearly 200-page complaint. The groups assert that the United States government — through the actions of both the Biden and Trump administrations, as well as Congress — has been “complicit in Israel’s ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and has violated its binding obligations under the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man. This is the only legal complaint in the world that directly takes on the U.S. government as a whole for its leading role in the genocide. The complaint is born of grief, outrage, and a refusal to accept that human life can be erased with impunity.”
TAG is a “grassroots movement of thousands of taxpayers across the U.S. Approximately 3,800 taxpayers have signed onto this legal complaint. The legal team filing the complaint is led by Huwaida Arraf, Palestinian-American human rights attorney and co-founder of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition.”
[For the latest information on the flotillas — Israel just attacked another boat on Wednesday, The Conscience, which was carrying 93 journalists, doctors and activists — see: @globalsumudf.]
The Palestinian-American petitioners include:
Susan Abulhawa, Palestinian-American human rights activist and best-selling author, with eyewitness experience in Gaza. Contact: susan@palestinewrites.org, @susanabulhawa
Monadel Herzallah, Palestinian-American activist and co-founder of the U.S. Palestinian Community Network, who has lost 44 family members to the genocide.
Hadil El Wahidy, Palestinian-American business owner, community leader, and activist who has lost more than 100 family members to the genocide.
Tarik Kanaana, a Palestinian-American activist and co-founder of TAG.
The complaint requests “precautionary measures” to expedite consideration by the IACHR Commissioners, “given the urgency of the ongoing situation. While the IACHR does not have the authority to criminally prosecute U.S. officials, it can determine that the United States is in violation of its binding obligations under the American Declaration. Such a finding would carry significant weight and can be used by human rights advocates to strengthen broader efforts to hold the U.S. government accountable at the international level.”
Click here for quotes by the legal team, petitioners and victims, and civil society leaders endorsing the legal complaint.
For more information and to arrange interviews, please contact:
Seth Donnelly, co-founder, TAG, [email protected]