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leslie angeline
'Unprecedented' Lawsuit Targets 2 US Lawmakers for Backing Israeli Military Aid
"This class action is only the beginning of the people's exercise of power against the violence of the American government," said one plaintiff.
Dec 20, 2024
More than 500 California residents on Thursday took the latest legal action against U.S. leaders in an effort to stop the government's support for Israel's assault on Gaza, with taxpayers represented by two Democratic U.S. House members filing a class action lawsuit against the lawmakers for voting in favor of Israeli military aid.
The plaintiffs, who are represented by the law firm Szeto-Wong Law, live in 10 counties in Northern California and are represented by Democratic Reps. Jared Huffman and Mike Thompson.
The specific legal tactic being used by the plaintiffs is "unprecedented," according to the group Taxpayers Against Genocide, and hinges on Huffman and Thompson's votes in favor of the Israel Security Supplemental Appropriations Act in April.
The funding package allocated $26.28 billion in military aid to Israel, which at the time was six months into its bombardment of Gaza and a near-total blockade on humanitarian aid that was pushing the enclave's population of 2.3 million people toward starvation.
Now, Israel has been attacking Gaza for 440 days, and more than 45,000 Palestinians have been killed since the onslaught began. At least 77 Palestinians were killed in Israeli attacks on Thursday, the same day the class action lawsuit was filed and Doctors Without Borders published a report that detailed how the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have imposed "apocalyptic conditions" on the enclave and how humanitarian workers have seen "clear signs of ethnic cleansing as Palestinians are forcibly displaced, trapped, and bombed."
The plaintiffs in the class action lawsuit argued that Huffman and Thompson's votes in favor of billions of dollars for the IDF abused the lawmakers' "tax and spend" authority and "illegally forced their constituents into being complicit in genocide."
Huffman and Thompson voted for the funding package, the plaintiffs noted, months after the International Court of Justice issued a preliminary ruling in South Africa's genocide case against Israel, finding that Israel's actions had threatened Palestinians' right to be protected from genocide. The case has proceeded for ongoing litigation since the preliminary ruling was announced.
The votes were also taken weeks after Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, issued an extensive report that found Israel was committing acts of genocide in Gaza.
"I trusted Congressman Huffman to call for a cease-fire and to demand that the U.S. follow our own laws in addition to international law," said Robie Tenorio, one of the plaintiffs. "But despite overwhelming documented and corroborated evidence, Congressman Huffman voted in April 2024 to send Israel more offensive weapons, all paid for by U.S. taxpayers."
In March, a month before the vote, Democratic lawmakers urged President Joe Biden to enforce the Humanitarian Aid Corridor Act—Section 620I of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, which prohibits the U.S. from providing military aid to any country that is blocking U.S. humanitarian assistance.
The administration threatened in October to cut off military aid within one month if Israel did not prove that it was allowing in sufficient food, water, medicine, and other relief, but the U.S. State Department did not follow through on the threat despite the U.N.'s finding that conditions had not improved.
In January, the Center for Constitutional Rights sued Biden and members of his Cabinet on behalf of several Palestinian groups and individuals, accusing them of failing to prevent genocide in Gaza. The case was dismissed in July.
The lawsuit filed on Thursday argues that Huffman and Thompson violated the U.S. Constitution, the U.N. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, and U.S. federal laws.
Norman Solomon, co-founder of the grassroots advocacy group RootsAction, said at a press conference on Thursday that Huffman has consistently said he supports U.S. military aid to Israel because he "opposes antisemitism."
"As a Jewish-American I find that kind of rationale disgusting, outrageous, and sickening," said Solomon.
Leslie Angeline, a plaintiff from Marin County, California and an organizer with the peace group CodePink, wrote at Common Dreams on Thursday about her hunger strike in protest of U.S. support for Israel, which she ended as the lawsuit was announced.
"I want to tell you what 30 days with no food does to a person, and my experience is made easier by the fact that I have a roof over my head, access to clean water, and a certainty that I won't have to flee my home at any moment," Angeline wrote. "The women my age in Gaza are not given the same luxuries."
"I wake up each morning worrying about the genocide that is happening in Gaza, knowing that if it wasn't for my government's partnership with the Israeli government this couldn't continue. Our government is sending billions upon billions of our tax dollars to slaughter innocent children, mothers and fathers, entire families with bombs and artillery funded by our country," she continued. "I understand that 'my trauma' is nothing compared to what the people of Gaza must be suffering. I can't even imagine the horrors they're being forced to live through or die from."
Maria Barakat, a Palestinian-Lebanese American and plaintiff from Sonoma County, said it was significant that hundreds of Californians "feel empowered by the ability to take meaningful action."
"This class action is only the beginning of the people's exercise of power against the violence of the American government," said Barakat, "and our refusal to be complicit."
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Contradicting Biden, US Official Says Gaza Death Toll May Be 'Even Higher' Than Reported
U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Barbara Leaf also accused Hamas—but not Israel—of "genocide" and was confronted by CodePink activists, one of whom was arrested.
Nov 09, 2023
Contradicting her bosses in the Biden administration who have rejected official Palestinian casualty reports, a high-ranking U.S. State Department official on Wednesday said the death toll from Israel's war on Gaza may be "even higher" than reported—an assessment that came during a congressional hearing interrupted by peace activists.
"In this period of conflict and conditions of war, it is very difficult for any of us to assess what the rate of casualties are," U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Barbara Leaf told members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. "We think they're very high, frankly, and it could be that they're even higher than are being cited. We'll know only after the guns fall silent."
"We take in sourcing from a variety of folks who are on the ground," she added. "I can't stipulate to one figure or another, it's very possible they're even higher than is being reported."
Leaf's remarks stood in stark contrast with those of President Joe Biden, who was accused of "genocide denial" last month after he expressed "no confidence" in Palestinian health officials' Gaza casualty reports—figures deemed reliable by United Nations agencies, human rights groups, and Israeli and international media.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken—who heads an agency that has often cited Gaza Health Ministry casualty figures—and other Biden administration officials have also cast aspersions upon Palestinian officials' reports, with National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby last month calling the ministry "just a front for Hamas."
The Gaza Health Ministry said Thursday that Israel's relentless asssault on Gaza by air, land, and sea has killed at least 10,812 people—including more than 4,400 children and 2,900 women—while wounding nearly 27,000 others and forcibly displacing around 70% of the strip's 2.3 million residents.
On Wednesday, Vedant Patel, the State Department's principal deputy spokesperson,
said during a press briefing that the U.S. government has "a rigorous process for evaluating whether something constitutes genocide, and we have not made that assessment in this case."
At least hundreds of jurists and other experts,
including one of Israel's leading Holocaust scholars, have accused Israeli forces of genocidal violence in Gaza.
Members of the women-led peace group CodePink confronted Leaf and Deputy Assistant Defense Secretary for the Middle East Dana Stroul during Wednesday's hearing.
When Leaf and Stroul responded affirmatively to House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Michael McCaul's (R-Texas) question of whether Hamas committed genocide by killing over 1,400 Israeli civilians and soldiers during an October 7 surprise attack on Israel, one CodePink activist shouted, "What about Israel?"
CodePink's Leslie Angeline—who is currently on a hunger strike for a Gaza cease-fire—yelled out, "It's a genocide!"
"It's slaughter! It's genocide! It's ethnic cleansing! That's the truth," Angeline shouted as she was forcibly removed from the chamber by a U.S. Capitol Police officer and arrested.
"Call it what it is! Call it by its name," she added. "You're slaughtering Gazans!"
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