April, 30 2024, 01:56pm EDT
Medea Benjamin Arrested for Disrupting “Defense” Secretary Austin in House Armed Services Committee Hearing
Medea Benjamin, co-founder of CODEPINK, was arrested this morning for disrupting testimony from Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin during a House Armed Services Committee hearing on the 2025 budget request.
During the hearing, Benjamin voiced her opposition to the United State’s support for the genocide in Gaza, calling it illegal, immoral, and disgraceful. She directly confronted Secretary Austin, emphasizing the global scrutiny on the actions in Gaza and condemning the shipment of weapons that violates US and international laws, as well as basic principles of decency.
"The whole world is watching what we are doing in Gaza right now. Secretary General, you are supporting a genocide,” Benjamin shouted.
While being arrested, Benjamin highlighted the urgency of speaking out against this genocide, donning a T-shirt “Another Jew That Speaks Out Against Genocide” she drew attention to the allocation of billions of dollars for Israel, urging for a redirection of resources towards humanitarian efforts.
View Video of Disruption and Arrest Here.
Despite facing arrests activists and state-sanctioned violence students, peace activists, and constituents across the country will continue to do everything in their power to stop the genocide in Gaza, end the occupation of Palestine, and cease U.S. military and financial support of Israel’s war crimes.
CODEPINK is a women-led grassroots organization working to end U.S. wars and militarism, support peace and human rights initiatives, and redirect our tax dollars into healthcare, education, green jobs and other life-affirming programs.
(818) 275-7232LATEST NEWS
Louisiana GOP Moves Classify Abortion Pills as 'Controlled Dangerous Substances'
"Mischaracterizing misoprostol... as a dangerous drug of abuse creates confusion and misinformation, and harms women seeking high quality maternal care," said more than 280 healthcare providers.
May 21, 2024
Ignoring the pleas of nearly 300 doctors and other healthcare professionals, the Republican-controlled Lousiana state House on Tuesday was poised to vote on a bill that would reclassify two drugs used in medication abortions as "controlled dangerous substances"—and potentially limiting healthcare providers' access to the frequently prescribed pills.
Senate Bill 276, originally proposed by state Sen. Thomas Pressly (R-38), centers on making it a crime in the state to use the pills to induce an abortion "on an unsuspecting pregnant mother without her knowledge or consent," but after its passage in the Senate, Pressly added amendments to reclassify mifepristone and misoprostol.
Under the legislation, a person found with the pills without a prescription could be convicted of a felony, punishable with up to 10 years in prison.
Healthcare workers across Louisiana have called on Pressly to reconsider his amendments, which were co-written by the powerful pro-forced pregnancy group Louisiana Right to Life, and have warned they could dangerously delay or eliminate care for other health conditions for which the medications are prescribed.
"Mischaracterizing misoprostol, a drug routinely and safely used on labor units throughout the state, as a dangerous drug of abuse creates confusion and misinformation, and harms women seeking high quality maternal care," wrote more than 280 health professionals in a recent letter to Landry.
The doctors emphasized that with one of the country's most stringent abortion bans in place in Louisiana, healthcare workers have not recently been prescribing misoprostol for abortion care.
But the drug is used on a daily basis in the state's hospitals and doctor's offices, they said, to treat people who have suffered miscarriages, to induce labor, to prepare the cervix for intrauterine device (IUD) insertions, and to stop postpartum hemorrhaging—the third leading cause of maternal mortality.
"Misoprostol is such a literal life-saver," New Orleans OB-GYN Dr. Nicole Freehill toldRolling Stone on Tuesday. "It's a very inexpensive medication and very effective at preventing hemorrhage, for IUD insertions, for endometrial biopsies, to prep a patient's cervix when they have a miscarriage. It's utilized for so many things and on a very regular basis."
State Rep. Mandie Landry (D-91) called the effort to reclassify mifepristone and misoprostol as dangerous drugs "harmful and malicious."
"It is purely the product of Louisiana Right to Life and their politics," Landry toldRolling Stone. "Doctors and common sense are all against it."
The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC) said that the "first-in-the-nation" bill would further endanger pregnant people in a state where a near-total abortion ban has already "ravaged reproductive healthcare."
A report released in March by Physicians for Human Rights showed that unnecessary cesarean sections have been performed more frequently under the ban in cases of preterm labor, in order "to preserve the appearance of not doing an abortion" and to protect physicians from potential prosecutions. The pregnant patients were not given a choice regarding whether to have the major abdominal surgery. Doctors in the state have also begun delaying routine prenatal care until the second trimester to avoid suspicion, in the case of a miscarriage, that they performed an abortion.
"Patients across the country should be put on notice—we know Republicans across the country will soon feel emboldened to follow in Louisiana's footsteps and criminalize abortion medication too," said Ahbi Rahman, communications director for the DLCC. "The DLCC will continue to sound the alarm on egregious attacks on women and healthcare providers—in Louisiana and across the nation. State legislatures are the battlegrounds determining the whole spectrum of reproductive care."
On Monday, the Louisiana Society of Addiction Medicine submitted a letter to state House Speaker Phillip R. DeVillier (R-41), saying Pressly's proposal "goes against the spirit of the drug scheduling system, which is designed to classify drugs based upon their danger, potential for misuse, and medical benefits."
"Simply put, S.B. 276 represents a clear and worrying interference in the patient-clinician relationship that will negatively impact populations that we serve," said the group.
Keep ReadingShow Less
AP and Free Press Defenders Blast Israeli Shutdown of Gaza Live Feed
One NGO called the move "yet another attempt by Israel to hide its war crimes against Palestinians."
May 21, 2024
The White House and press freedom advocates were among those who on Tuesday criticized the Israeli government's shutdown of The Associated Press' live video shot of northern Gaza for violating a new media law by providing access to the banned Al Jazeera network.
The APsaid Israeli authorities confiscated its camera and broadcasting equipment from a home in the southern Israeli city of Sderot. The live shot was broadcast from a balcony on the home.
"The Associated Press decries in the strongest terms the actions of the Israeli government to shut down our long-standing live feed showing a view into Gaza and seize AP equipment," said Lauren Easton, vice president of corporate communications at the New York-based news organization.
"The shutdown was not based on the content of the feed but rather an abusive use by the Israeli government of the country's new foreign broadcaster law," Easton added. "We urge the Israeli authorities to return our equipment and enable us to reinstate our live feed immediately so we can continue to provide this important visual journalism to thousands of media outlets around the world."
The law to which Easton referred empowers the Israeli government to shut down the operations of foreign media outlets if they are deemed national security threats. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's far-right Cabinet used the law to ban Qatar-based Al Jazeera—the sole international media outlet providing 24/7 live coverage from Gaza—from operating in Israel.
Israeli Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi said the AP broke the foreign broadcaster law by providing the live feed to Al Jazeera, one of thousands of AP clients. Karhi accused the AP of "causing real harm to the security of the state."
"It should be noted that a warning was given to the AP agency already last week that according to the law and the government's decision they are prohibited from providing broadcasts to Al Jazeera, however they decided to continue broadcasting on the channel," Karhi said.
Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One en route to New Hampshire on Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said that U.S. President Joe Biden believes journalists should be free to do their jobs. Addressing Israel's shutdown of the AP live feed, Jean-Pierre said, "Obviously this is concerning and we want to look into it."
Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (RSF) was one of several press freedom groups that condemned Israel's shutdown of the AP live feed.
"After having banned Al Jazeera, Israel is lashing out at the AP," RSF said in a statement. "RSF denounces the seizure of the news outlet's camera and the interruption of the continuous feed that films Gaza under the pretext that these images are supplying, among others, Al Jazeera."
The U.S. advocacy group Freedom of the Press Foundation
said on social media that "Israel is now using its Al Jazeera ban as a pretext to seize equipment belonging to one of the world's largest news agencies, stripping millions of people of a view into Gaza at a time of war and mass atrocities."
Kenneth Roth, a visiting professor at Princeton University in New Jersey and former head of Human Rights Watch,
said that "rather than stop the war crimes charged yesterday by the International Criminal Court, Israel tries to cover them up."
Roth was referring to Monday's
decision by ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan to seek arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar, Ismail Haniyeh, and Mohammed Deif for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in connection with the October 7 attacks on Israel and that country's genocidal retaliation—which has killed, wounded, or left missing more than 126,000 Palestinians, according to Gazan and international officials.
More than 100 journalists, the vast majority of them Palestinians, have been
killed by Israeli forces since October 7 in what the Committee to Protect Journalists and others say are often intentional targetings of not only media workers but also their families. Previous investigations—including the probe of Israeli troops' 2022 killing of Palestinian American Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh—have confirmed that Israel has deliberately targeted journalists.
Israeli forces have also attacked newsrooms during every major Gaza war, including in May 2021 when the 11-story al-Jalaa Tower—which housed offices of Al Jazeera, AP, and other media outlets—was leveled in an airstrike.
Even Yair Lapid, who leads Israel's political opposition and is a former journalist, called the AP shutdown "an act of madness."
"This is an American media outlet that has won 53 Pulitzer Prizes," Lapid said in a statement. "This government behaves as if it has decided to make sure at any cost that Israel will be outcast all over the world. They went mad."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Biden Could Win Back Key Voters With Cease-Fire, Conditioning Israeli Aid: Poll
The president "can win over votes with a serious change" in his Gaza policy, said a leader at AJP-Action, which commissioned the survey.
May 21, 2024
Polling results released Tuesday offer U.S. President Joe Biden's campaign even more evidence that his support for Israel's assault on the Gaza Strip—which critics around the world have condemned as "genocidal" and a "crime against humanity"—is politically fraught, especially given the stakes in this election year.
As Israel has decimated the Palestinian enclave since the Hamas-led October 7 attack, polls and political observers have suggested that the Democrat's support for the war risks losing votes he needs to beat former Republican President Donald Trump in November.
The new poll was commissioned by Americans for Justice in Palestine-Action (AJP-Action), which lobbies for Palestinian rights. YouGov surveyed Democratic and Independent voters in five swing states Biden won in 2020: Arizona, Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
"It's clear that Palestine is a critical issue in key battleground states," said Ayah Ziyadeh, director of advocacy for AJP-Action, in a statement. "It's not a passing protest effort that the Democratic Party can continue to ignore; people want an end to this war and a key margin of them will vote that way. But Biden can win over votes with a serious change in policy."
Specifically, the pollsters found that across the five key states, about 40% of potential Biden voters disapprove of the president's handling of the war—and 1 in 5 of all surveyed are less likely to vote for him because of it.
While Biden has slowly increased his criticism of Israel's "indiscriminate bombing" of Gaza—where the death toll is now 35,647—and threatened to withhold some weapons, his administration has largely backed the war and boosted arms support for Israel, which already received nearly $4 billion in annual military aid from the United States before October 7.
The survey also shows that around 40% of respondents would be more likely to vote for Biden this year if he conditioned military aid to Israel or imposed an immediate and permanent cease-fire. In all five states, it's over 40% if those policies are combined; that's also the case for enabling full entry of humanitarian aid to Gaza.
All of the states had some form of an "uncommitted" campaign for the Democratic primary—because the president didn't face any strong Democratic challengers, voters took the opportunity to call on Biden to end U.S. complicity in genocide and use his leverage to pressure Israel to stop slaughtering civilians in Gaza.
A majority of respondents in all five states said they somewhat or strongly supported the uncommitted campaign. The highest figure was in Pennsylvania (63.1%), where the largest shares of voters also said they would be more willing to vote for Biden if he imposed a cease-fire (45.8%), conditioned aid to Israel (46.6%), pursued both of those policies (48.2%), or enabled full entry of humanitarian aid (48.7%).
As The Interceptnoted Tuesday, Pennsylvania is "home to Democratic Sen. John Fetterman, who has been one of Israel's most vocal supporters in Congress," as well as Democratic Congresswoman Summer Lee, an outspoken critic of the Israeli government and war who won her primary last month.
"Pennsylvanians, like folks across the country, are horrified by the continued violence being perpetrated by the Israeli government in Gaza and the West Bank, and want to see their leaders fight back against having our taxpayers' dollars fund more death and destruction," Lee told the outlet. "We must listen to them."
The AJP-Action survey follows polling released earlier this month in which approximately 13% of respondents across Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin who backed Biden last cycle but would not do so this year cited his foreign policy or Israel's war on Gaza as the top issues informing their vote.
Another survey published earlier this month shows that 56% of Democrats and nearly 40% of all voters nationwide believe Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians. A majority also said they support suspending all U.S. arms sales to the country until it stops blocking U.S. humanitarian aid from entering Gaza.
Gallup polling from March revealed that 75% of Democratic voters disapproved of "the military action Israel has taken in Gaza." In another survey the previous month, just under 60% of all voters said Biden is not handling "the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas" well.
"What is certain is that the war in Gaza has turned into an electoral issue this year," AJP-Action executive director Osama Abu Irshaid said Tuesday, as his group's survey bolstered previous results. "What this opinion poll suggests is that President Biden cannot continue to ignore the convictions and demands of a large segment of the Democratic electoral base if he wants to maintain his chances of winning the upcoming November elections."
"A large percentage of Democrats oppose Biden's handling of the Israeli war in Gaza—and an even larger percentage of them want to see a real change toward an immediate and permanent cease-fire," he added. "Either Biden does the morally and politically right thing and preserves his chances in the November elections, or he continues on the current path and risks jeopardizing his reelection bid."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular