Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan) introduced legislation on Friday to recognize Israel’s genocide of Palestinian people in Gaza and call for the U.S. to take concrete actions like an arms embargo to end the ongoing slaughter.
“The Israeli government’s genocide in Gaza has not ended, and it will not end until we act,” said Tlaib, the only Palestinian American in Congress.
The resolution, introduced with 20 cosponsors in the House, formally recognizes that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
It raises the U.S.’s obligations as a party to the UN genocide convention to end military assistance to Israel, ensure compliance with proceedings against Israel and Israeli officials in the Hague, and lift the U.S.’s sanctions against the International Criminal Court.
The resolution calls for the U.S. to implement targeted sanctions on Israel and organizations and individuals involved in or enabling the genocide. It also calls for the investigation and prosecution of U.S. officials complicit in the genocide.
“Impunity only enables more atrocity. As our government continues to send a blank check for war crimes and ethnic cleansing, Palestinian children’s smiles are extinguished by bombs and bullets that say made in the U.S.A.,” Tlaib said. “To end this horror, we must reject genocide denial and follow our binding legal obligations under the Genocide Convention to take immediate action to pursue justice and accountability to prevent and punish the crime of genocide.”
Cosponsors of Tlaib’s legislation include figures like Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas), head of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, as well as other left-leaning lawmakers like Representatives Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York).
The resolution cites numerous expert groups that have labelled the assault a genocide, including the UN Commission of Inquiry in a report this September, and the International Association of Genocide Scholars — the world’s leading group on the subject — in a declaration the same month.
Over two years into Israel’s assault, very few members of Congress have identified Israel’s assault as a genocide, despite a deluge of evidence of Israel’s indiscriminate slaughter. The U.S.’s complicity in the genocide has been well-documented, and the majority of U.S. voters — including 77 percent of Democrats — say that Israel is committing genocide, Quinnipiac found in August.
Tlaib’s resolution has been endorsed by over 100 organizations, including human rights groups like Amnesty International USA, left-wing groups like the Democratic Socialists of America, Muslim and Arab rights groups, and the International Association of Genocide Scholars.
Human rights lawyer and activist Noura Erakat spoke out in favor of the resolution.
“The United States has used its role as global superpower to undermine the international legal order and its constitutive instruments in order to facilitate Israel’s genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza and now to impose a framework for permanent occupation of the Gaza Strip,” Erakat said. “Failure to recognize the genocide by its name and to achieve accountability for its Palestinian survivors exposes the entire world to cruel forms of unadulterated state violence.”
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