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      Trump’s sanctions against the ICC are disgraceful | Kenneth Roth

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      Donald Trump’s executive order reauthorizing sanctions against international criminal court (ICC) personnel reflects a disgraceful effort to ensure that no American, or citizen of an ally such as Israel, is ever investigated or prosecuted. Quite apart from this warped sense of justice – that it is only for other people – the president’s limited view of the court’s powers was rejected in the treaty establishing the court and repudiated by the Joe Biden administration and even the Republican party. But that didn’t stop Trump.The US government traditionally has had no problem with two of the three ways that the court can obtain jurisdiction because it could control them. Washington is fine with the court prosecuting citizens of states that are members of the court because it has no intention of joining them. And it accepts that the United Nations security council can confer jurisdiction because it can exercise its veto to block prosecutions it doesn’t like.But the court’s founding document, the Rome Statute, allows a third route to jurisdiction. The court can investigate or prosecute crimes that occur on the territory of a member state, even if the perpetrator is the citizen of a non-member state. That was why Trump in his first term objected to an ICC preliminary examination in Afghanistan (and imposed sanctions – freezing assets and limiting travel – on the chief prosecutor at the time, Fatou Bensouda, and one of her deputies) because the investigation might have implicated CIA torturers in that country under George W Bush. Trump in his new executive order alludes to the prosecutor’s actions in Afghanistan, but it is a non-issue because the current ICC chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, has made clear that those past crimes are not his priority.The real issue is Israel. That same territorial jurisdiction is how the ICC was able to charge Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, for their starvation strategy targeting Palestinian civilians in Gaza. Israel never joined the court, but Palestine did, conferring jurisdiction for crimes committed on Palestinian territory, including Gaza, regardless of the perpetrator’s citizenship.Referring to the United States and Israel, Trump’s executive order says: “Neither country has ever recognized the ICC’s jurisdiction, and both nations are thriving democracies with militaries that strictly adhere to the laws of war.” These claims are legally irrelevant.The US opposition to territorial jurisdiction was rejected by the drafters of the ICC treaty by an overwhelming vote of 120-7. The only governments to join the United States in opposing it were China, Iraq, Israel, Libya, Qatar and Yemen.Moreover, there is no ICC exception for “thriving democracies” or governments that purport to respect the laws of war. As any justice institution should, its jurisdiction applies to governments regardless of their character or stated policy. The sole exception is under what is known as the “principle of complementarity”, in which the court defers to good-faith national investigations and prosecutions.But Israel has no history of prosecuting its leaders for war crimes, and despite the ICC charges against Netanyahu and Gallant, it has announced no investigation of their starvation strategy in Gaza. To the contrary, Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency threatened Bensouda – the former ICC prosecutor – and her husband. That hardly reflects good-faith pursuit of possible war crimes.For two decades, the US government objected to territorial jurisdiction, but when the ICC charged Vladimir Putin, it abandoned that position. Putin was charged for kidnapping Ukrainian children and taking them to Russia. Russia has never joined the court, so the sole basis for the court acting was territorial jurisdiction – Putin’s alleged crime took place in Ukraine, which had conferred jurisdiction.That was a game-changer. Biden called the charges “justified”. Even prominent Republicans such as Lindsey Graham, one of the foreign policy leaders in the Senate, shifted. Joined by a long bipartisan list of sponsors, he secured unanimous adoption in March 2022 of a resolution endorsing the ICC’s prosecution of war crimes in Ukraine. Graham said that Putin’s “war crimes spree” had “rehabilitate[d] the ICC in the eyes of the Republican party and the American people”. Other Republicans visited the ICC prosecutor to support the prosecution of Putin.Yet this shift turned out to be only tactical. It did not survive the Israel exception to human rights principles. Now that senior Israeli officials have been charged, Trump has resurrected the objection to the ICC’s territorial jurisdiction.There is nothing the least bit radical about asserting jurisdiction over people who commit a crime on foreign territory. If I, an American citizen, murdered someone in London, Washington could hardly object if British authorities prosecuted me. By the same token, Britain would have every right to delegate that power to the ICC if, because of a crisis such as an occupation, it were unable to pursue the matter itself.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump is inviting trouble with his unprincipled stand. Article 70 of the Rome Statute authorizes prosecution for what Americans call “obstruction of justice” if anyone tries to impede or intimidate an official of the court because of their official duties. Bensouda essentially turned the other cheek when Trump sanctioned her. I would be surprised if Khan, the current prosecutor, were so understanding. The court would have jurisdiction over Trump because he is interfering with a pending prosecution.Trump might try to shrug off ICC charges, figuring that no one would dare to arrest him, but he would face other consequences. Because all 125 ICC member states would have a legal duty to arrest him were he to show up, they would probably tell him quietly that he is not welcome. Trump should ask Putin, who had to skip the August 2023 Brics summit in Johannesburg for the same reason, what it feels like to be a global pariah.Israel has other options. It could open a genuine, independent investigation of the starvation strategy and let the chips fall where they may. Netanyahu and Gallant, if they have a defense, could show up in the Hague and contest the charges, the way former Kenyan president Uhuru Kenyatta did. But Trump obstructing justice is not the answer.

      Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch (1993-2022), is a visiting professor at Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs. His book, Righting Wrongs, will be published by Knopf on February 25 More

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      Trump signs executive order to sanction ICC, accusing court of targeting US and its ‘close ally’ Israel – live

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      Donald Trump has signed an executive order sanctioning the international criminal court (ICC), the White House has confirmed.The order accuses the ICC of having “engaged in illegitimate and baseless actions” targeting the US and its “close ally” Israel, and said the court has “abused its power” by issuing “baseless” arrest warrants targeting Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and its former defense minister, Yoav Gallant. The order states:
      The ICC has no jurisdiction over the United States or Israel, as neither country is party to the Rome Statute or a member of the ICC.
      It’s 1am in Gaza and Tel Aviv, and 6pm in Washington. Here’s a recap of the latest developments:

      Donald Trump signed an executive order imposing sanctions on the international criminal court (ICC). The order accuses the ICC of having “engaged in illegitimate and baseless actions” targeting the US and its “close ally” Israel, and said the court “abused its power” by issuing “baseless” arrest warrants targeting Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and its former defense minister, Yoav Gallant.

      Israel’s defence minister, Israel Katz, ordered the military to prepare plans to allow Palestinians “who wish to leave” Gaza to exit. Asked who should take the residents of Gaza, Katz said it should be countries who have opposed Israel’s military operations since the 7 October attacks. He also claimed that Spain, Ireland, and Norway, who all last year recognised a Palestinian state, are “legally obligated to allow any Gaza resident to enter their territories”.

      Trump doubled down on its Gaza proposal amid widespread opposition. In a Truth Social post, Trump said the Palestinian territory would be “turned over” to the US by Israel after it concludes its military offensive against Hamas. Netanyahu, who is in Washington, said it is “worth listening carefully” to Trump’s proposal.

      The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said Palestinians in Gaza are “going to have to live somewhere else in the interim”. Rubio described Gaza as “not habitable”, in comments that appeared to walk back on Trump’s proposal about transferring Palestinians permanently to neighbouring countries. Rubio is reportedly planning to visit the Middle East later this month.

      The head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa) warned that the agency faces an “existential threat” after Israel formally banned it from operating on its territory. Philippe Lazzarini also described Trump’s Gaza proposal as “totally unrealistic”, adding: “We are talking about forced displacement. Forced displacement is a crime, an international crime. It’s ethnic cleansing.”

      Countries around the world continued to come out in opposition to Trump’s plan to turn Gaza into a “Riviera of the Middle East” after the 2.3 million Palestinians living there were transferred to other countries. Trump’s proposal would “squash” the ceasefire and “incite a return of fighting”, Egypt’s foreign ministry said. Russia called Trump’s proposal “counterproductive” and accused him of fuelling “tension in the region”.

      Human Rights Watch warned that the Trump’s proposal could move the US “from being complicit in war crimes to direct perpetration of atrocities”. Forced or coerced displacement is a crime against humanity, illegal under the Geneva conventions, to which Israel and the US are signatories.

      At least 47,583 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli attacks since October 2023, according to the Palestinian health ministry on Thursday. The ministry’s latest daily update also said a total of 111,633 have now been injured.
      As we reported earlier, the international criminal court (ICC) has been bracing itself for US sanctions since Donald Trump’s inauguration last month.Trump has been a vocal critic of the ICC since it issued arrest warrants for the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his former defense minister Yoav Gallant last November for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, along with several Hamas leaders simultaneously.At the time, the ICC said it had found reasonable grounds to believe that Netanyahu and Gallant “bear criminal responsibility for … the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts”.In addition, the three-judge panel said there were reasonable grounds to believe they bear criminal responsibility “as civilian superiors for the war crime of intentionally directing an attack against the civilian population”.The ICC relies on 125 member states of the Rome statute to execute arrest warrants. Neither Israel nor the US are members.Donald Trump’s executive order warns that the US will impose “tangible” and “significant” consequences on individuals who work on ICC investigations of US citizens or US allies, such as Israel.The sanctions include freezing any US assets of those designated and barring them, or their families from entering the US.Donald Trump has signed an executive order sanctioning the international criminal court (ICC), the White House has confirmed.The order accuses the ICC of having “engaged in illegitimate and baseless actions” targeting the US and its “close ally” Israel, and said the court has “abused its power” by issuing “baseless” arrest warrants targeting Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and its former defense minister, Yoav Gallant. The order states:
      The ICC has no jurisdiction over the United States or Israel, as neither country is party to the Rome Statute or a member of the ICC.
      Benjamin Netanyahu said it is “worth listening carefully” to Donald Trump’s proposal for the US to take control of the Gaza Strip.Netanyahu, in a video statement from Washington DC, described the US president’s plan as “the first original idea that has come up in years”.The Israeli prime minister also spoke about his recent meeting with US congressional and Senate leaders, during which he said: “Everyone expressed enormous appreciation for Israel’s great achievements.”“I said that we are changing the face of the Middle East, and they simply saluted that,” he added.US president Donald Trump has reportedly now signed an executive order sanctioning the international criminal court (ICC), accusing the body of “improperly targeting” the United States and its allies, such as Israel.The Reuters news agency has published the headline and cited an unnamed White House official. We’ll bring you more details as soon as possible.Donald Trump’s efforts to slash and reshape American foreign aid is crippling the intricate global system that aims to prevent and respond to famine.In a wider context than Israel’s war in Gaza, the international famine monitoring and relief system has suffered multiple blows from a sudden cessation of US foreign aid, Reuters reports.The spending freeze is supposed to last 90 days while his administration reviews all foreign-aid programs.The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has said an exception allows emergency food assistance to continue.But much of that emergency aid is at least temporarily halted, compounded by Trump’s move this week to shut the US Agency for International Development (USaid).About 500,000 metric tons of food worth $340m is in limbo, said Marcia Wong, a former senior USaid official who has been briefed on the situation.US-provided cash assistance intended to help people buy food and other necessities in Sudan and Gaza also has been halted, aid workers told Reuters.The UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) has called on the international community to help feed millions of Palestinians in Gaza and rebuild the territory.The UN agency has provided more than 15,000 tonnes of food to feed more than 525,000 people since a fragile 19 January ceasefire between Israel and Hamas came into effect, WFP’s deputy executive director Carl Skau said, according to Agence-France-Presse.“We call on the international community and all donors to continue supporting WFP’s life-saving assistance at this pivotal moment,” Skau said in a statement after his visit to Gaza.
      The scale of the needs is enormous and progress must be maintained. The ceasefire must hold.
      “In critical sectors beyond food – water, sanitation, shelter, even getting children back into school – we need to work together,” he added.The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said it is a “realistic reality” to expect Palestinians in Gaza to “live somewhere else in the interim”.Rubio, taking questions during a press conference in the Dominican Republican, described Gaza as “not habitable”.“Gaza right now has unexploded munitions, lots of rockets and weapons,” he said, adding:
      I think that’s just a realistic reality, that in order to fix a place like that, people are going to have to live somewhere else in the interim.
      Donald Trump’s top officials, including Rubio and the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, have appeared to walk back on some of the US president’s proposals about transferring Palestinians permanently to neighbouring countries.Rubio encouraged other countries in the region to “step forward and provide a solution and an answer to that problem”.The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, is planning to visit the Middle East in mid-February, Axios reports.Rubio is planning to travel to the region after the Munich security conference, which begins on 14 February, the outlet says, citing sources.Rubio reportedly plans to visit Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and possibly more countries.Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly gave Donald Trump a “golden pager” during their meeting in Washington DC this week, in an apparent reference to Israel’s deadly attack against Hezbollah in Lebanon last year.In photos circulating online, the golden pager can be seen mounted on a piece of wood, accompanied by a golden plaque that reads in black lettering: “To President Donald J. Trump, Our greatest friend and greatest ally. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.”Israeli media reported that the Israeli prime minister, who is wanted by the international criminal court for war crimes, also gave the US president a regular pager.The gift was reportedly a nod to Israel’s deadly operation last September against Hezbollah, during which thousands of handheld pager beeper devices and walkie-talkies belonging to Hezbollah detonated simultaneously across Lebanon.The explosions killed at least 37 people, including children as young as nine years old, and left thousands wounded.Benjamin Netanyahu, during his meetings in Washington, presented a plan for ending the war in Gaza in return for Hamas giving up power and its leaders leaving the Palestinian territory, Axios reports.Netanyahu told US officials that he wants to extend the first phase of the Gaza ceasefire deal in order to release more hostages, the outlet said, citing sources. In exchange for additional hostages, Israel would be ready to release more Palestinian prisoners, it said.The report said Netanyahu indicated that if the first phase is extended, he plans to present Hamas with a proposal that includes ending the war in Gaza and releasing “senior” Palestinian prisoners.In return, Netanyahu would demand that Hamas releases the remaining hostages, relinquish power in the Gaza Strip and that its senior leaders, including those who will be released from prison, would go into exile, the report said. A US source said:
      Bibi and Israeli leadership have articulated a plan that includes allowing senior Hamas leadership to go into exile in a third-party country.
      If Hamas relinquishes power and its leaders go into exile, it could open the door for a day-after plan, possibly including Donald Trump’s proposal for the US to “take over” Gaza, according to the report. More

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      Trump imposes sanctions on ICC, accusing it of targeting US and Israel

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      Donald Trump has signed an executive order authorizing sanctions against individuals and their families who assist the international criminal court (ICC), accusing the body of “illegitimate and baseless actions targeting America and our close ally Israel”.Trump has been a vocal critic of the ICC since it issued arrest warrants for the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his former defense minister Yoav Gallant last November for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, along with several Hamas leaders simultaneously.The signing of the order coincides with Netanyahu’s visit to the US Capitol, which included an Oval Office meeting earlier this week.It was unclear how quickly the Trump administration would announce names of people sanctioned.Since facing backlash in Washington for the warrants, the ICC had been bracing itself for retaliatory moves by Trump.The threat of US sanctions has loomed over the court for months, with multiple ICC sources saying that the court’s leadership feared Trump would not wait for legislation to pass but rather would issue a swift executive order creating the legal basis for multiple rounds of sanctions.Officials described it as a “worst case scenario” that the US would impose sanctions against the institution in addition to measures targeting individuals.Trump has previously argued that the ICC had “no jurisdiction, no legitimacy and no authority” in the US during his first term as president. More

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      The Guardian view on the Lebanon ceasefire: a lasting regional peace must go through Gaza | Editorial

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      Unsurprisingly, Joe Biden struck an upbeat, optimistic note on Tuesday as he announced a US-brokered ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hezbollah. “It reminds us that peace is possible,” said Mr Biden, as the deal brought to an end the 14-month conflict, during which close to 4,000 people lost their lives and hundreds of thousands were displaced.For the outgoing American president, who has signally failed to restrain Israel’s excesses after the heinous Hamas massacre of 7 October 2023, the agreement amounts to a valedictory breakthrough after months of weak and ineffective diplomacy. More importantly, it affords the suffering people of Lebanon some respite, after a bombing campaign and ground invasion that paid scant regard to the appalling impact on civilian lives. For the 60,000 citizens of Israel forced to flee the country’s northern border region by Hezbollah rockets, there is the prospect of a return home after spending more than a year in displacement camps.Peace on Israel’s northern front will inevitably spark hopes of wider progress, as the disgraceful, savage destruction of Gaza continues to the south, and hope dwindles for surviving Israeli hostages held captive there. But it would be unwise to overstate the catalytic potential of an agreement that was made on the terms of the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and to suit his interests.Crucially, Hezbollah’s weakness meant that Israel was able to decouple the Lebanon and Gaza wars, reaching a ceasefire that leaves it with a free hand in the latter. Based on a UN security council resolution that ended the 2006 Lebanon war but was never fully implemented, the deal will oblige Israeli forces to depart and Hezbollah to pull back north of the Litani River in southern Lebanon. This time the buffer zone created is more likely to stick. Hezbollah is currently in a state of disarray, denuded of leaders, infrastructure and military hardware.With the live threat of a powerful Iranian proxy on Israel’s doorstep removed, Mr Netanyahu is free to double down on his bellicose objectives elsewhere – notably in relation to Tehran. In Gaza, meanwhile, he has shown no willingness to engage in peace talks brokered by Qatar, which suspended its mediating role this month in exasperation. The unconscionable death toll there now stands at more than 44,000 – the vast majority women and children.In a region on the brink, any lasting settlement must go through Gaza and involve the creation of realistic conditions for a viable Palestinian state. As Óscar Romero, the martyred Salvadoran bishop, once wrote, “Peace is not the silence of cemeteries / Peace is not the silent result of violent repression” – a warning that resonates starkly in Gaza’s ongoing tragedy. But Mr Netanyahu has no desire to be a peacemaker, as he attempts to dodge a corruption trial, and an election that would empower the anger of voters following 7 October. His interest lies rather in perpetuating a sense of national emergency; and in indulging far-right members of his cabinet who could bring him down, and who dream of new settlements in a broken, ethnically cleansed Gaza.As Donald Trump prepares to replace Joe Biden in the White House, the world must hope that his appetite for imposing immediate solutions opens up new possibilities. For now, welcome developments in the north offer little comfort to the desperate inhabitants of the Gaza Strip. More

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      Biden now has his best opening to end Israel’s war on Gaza – and won’t use it | Mohamad Bazzi

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      When the histories of his administration are written, it will be clear that Joe Biden held on to his callous disregard for Palestinians until the end of his presidency. How else to explain why Biden would refuse a final chance to stop Israel’s brutal war on Gaza and save Palestinian lives, when he has nothing to lose?On Tuesday, the Biden administration quietly ignored its own deadline for Israel to increase the minuscule amount of humanitarian aid it allows to enter Gaza. The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, imposed the 30-day deadline in a letter sent to Israeli officials on 13 October, which warned that they must take “concrete measures” to ensure that Palestinian civilians in northern Gaza have access to food, medicine and other necessities. The administration said it could suspend US military support to Israel if conditions did not improve. Despite the US ultimatum, the amount of aid reaching the besieged territory in October had dropped to its lowest level in 11 months.As the deadline passed, the Biden administration did what it has done for more than a year: it caved and continued sending weapons to the government of the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, despite the devastation and famine Israel has inflicted on Gaza. And Washington sheepishly told the world that it would not impose any consequences on Israel, even though the US is legally bound to stop arming an ally that blocks humanitarian aid in a conflict zone.It’s the latest in a long series of decisions by Biden over the past 13 months that show his disdain for Palestinian lives. But his lack of action this week is especially egregious because Biden is politically unrestrained: the presidential election is over, and Donald Trump won. Biden can do whatever he wants without incurring a political cost. He doesn’t even have to worry about a transition to his fellow Democrat and vice-president, Kamala Harris. If there was ever a time for Biden to use his considerable power to save Palestinians, this was it. Yet he squandered this final opportunity to make the right and moral choice – and help end the Gaza war before leaving office.Biden’s decision to keep supplying weapons to Israel reinforces his legacy as the primary enabler of the slaughter in Gaza, and Netanyahu’s campaign to expand the war into Lebanon. While Biden and his allies have done a lot of hand-wringing about Trump’s disregard for the rule of law, the Biden administration failed to uphold US law and its own policies – and it has undermined US credibility around the world even before Trump takes office once again.Biden has been fully complicit in Israel’s destruction of Gaza, in which more than 43,000 Palestinians have been killed, although the true figure is probably much higher. One estimate published by researchers in the Lancet, a medical journal, found that the death toll could eventually reach 186,000. That accounts for “indirect casualties” of war, such as widespread hunger, a cholera epidemic, unsanitary conditions and the destruction of Gaza’s health system.Following a relentless Israeli military assault that started after the Hamas attacks of 7 October 2023, nearly all of Gaza’s 2.1 million people have been displaced at least once, and are now living in makeshift tents or in the ruins of bombed-out buildings. Last week, a UN-affiliated group of experts warned that famine is imminent, or may already be unfolding, in northern Gaza – and that the enclave’s entire population faces acute food insecurity, which is one step below a full-blown famine.Days after Biden decided to continue arming Israel into the twilight of his presidency, Human Rights Watch (HRW) released a devastating 154-page report that contradicted most US and Israeli assurances that Israel is not violating international law. The report, issued on Thursday, concluded: “Israeli authorities have caused the massive, deliberate forced displacement of Palestinian civilians in Gaza since October 2023 and are responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity.” HRW urged western governments to impose sanctions and suspend their arms shipments to Israel.The US has provided Israel with nearly $18bn in weapons and other military assistance since October 2023, according to a report released last month by Brown University. Washington spent another $4.8bn on its own military activities in the Middle East due to the conflict. Overall, the Biden administration spent at least $22.7bn in US taxpayer funds to enable Netanyahu and his government to prolong the Gaza war.But the US administration did not have to become so deeply complicit in Israel’s war crimes. Biden and his aides had the leverage, policy tools and legal mechanisms to restrain Israel, end the conflict, and save thousands of Palestinian lives. For months, Biden, along with his secretary of state, squandered any influence they could have exerted over Netanyahu by refusing to enforce US law and their own administration’s policies on weapons transfers.In February, as Biden faced pressure from a handful of Democrats in Congress critical of his unwavering support for Israel, he issued a new national security memo which required the state department to certify that recipients of US weapons would allow the delivery of humanitarian aid during active conflicts and abide by international law. Biden’s memo did not set new policies for arms transfers to foreign countries, but instead used provisions of existing US laws, especially under the 1961 Foreign Assistance Act.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWashington can suspend shipments if it suspects that a foreign military will use US weapons to carry out violations of international law, or to countries that block the delivery of humanitarian aid – as Israel has done throughout its war in Gaza. By May, the state department sent a 46-page report to Congress full of bureaucratic double-speak to justify Biden’s decision to flout US and international laws to protect Netanyahu.Long before the administration’s report, the UN and human rights groups had amply documented that Israel was using starvation as a weapon of war – a violation of international law – and deliberately blocking food and other supplies from entering Gaza.Yet the report avoided concluding that the Israeli military had obstructed humanitarian aid, or violated international law while using US weapons. Such findings would have forced Biden to suspend most weapons shipments to Israel under the policies outlined in his own national security memo. But instead of upholding US law and using the suspension of military support to force Netanyahu to accept a ceasefire, Biden sat by and enabled Israel to kill thousands of Palestinians since May.Back then, Biden was still running for re-election and could have feared political repercussions for breaking with Netanyahu. But this week, the US president was as free from politics as he’s ever been in his entire career. He simply decided that Palestinians don’t matter – and sealed his legacy as the enabler of Israel’s war crimes.

      Mohamad Bazzi is director of the Hagop Kevorkian center for Near Eastern studies, and a journalism professor at New York University More

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      How can I vote for Kamala Harris if she supports Israel’s war? Here is my answer | Bernie Sanders

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      I understand that there are millions of Americans who disagree with Joe Biden and Kamala Harris on the terrible war in Gaza. I am one of them.While Israel had a right to defend itself against the horrific Hamas terrorist attack of 7 October 2023, which killed 1,200 innocent people and took 250 hostages, it did not have the right to wage an all-out war against the entire Palestinian people.It did not have the right to kill 42,000 Palestinians, two-thirds of whom were children, women and the elderly, or injure over 100,000 people in Gaza. It did not have the right to destroy Gaza’s infrastructure and housing and healthcare systems. It did not have the right to bomb every one of Gaza’s 12 universities. It did not have the right to block humanitarian aid, causing massive malnutrition in children and, in fact, starvation.And that is why I am doing everything I can to block US military aid and offensive weapons sales to the rightwing extremist Netanyahu government in Israel. And I know that many of you share those feelings. And some of you are saying, “How can I vote for Kamala Harris if she is supporting this terrible war?” And that is a very fair question.And let me give you my best answer. And that is that even on this issue, Donald Trump and his rightwing friends are worse. In the Senate and in Congress Republicans have worked overtime to block humanitarian aid to the starving children in Gaza. The president and vice-president both support getting as much humanitarian aid into Gaza as soon as possible.Trump has said that Netanyahu is doing a good job and that Biden is holding him back. He has suggested that the Gaza Strip would make excellent beachfront property for development. It is no wonder Netanyahu prefers to have Donald Trump in office.But even more importantly, and this I promise you, after Harris wins we will, together, do everything we can to change US policy toward Netanyahu – including an immediate ceasefire, the return of all hostages, a surge of massive humanitarian aid, the stopping of settler attacks on the West Bank, and the rebuilding of Gaza for the Palestinian people.And let me be clear. We will have, in my view, a much better chance of changing US policy with Harris than with Trump, who is extremely close to Netanyahu and sees him as a like-minded, rightwing extremist ally.But let me also say this, and I deal with this every single day as a US senator. As important as Gaza is, and as strongly as many of us feel about this issue, it is not the only issue at stake in this election.If Trump wins, women in this country will suffer an enormous setback and lose the ability to control their own bodies. That is not acceptable.If Trump wins, to be honest with you, the struggle against the climate crisis is over. While virtually every scientist who has studied the issue understands that the climate crisis is real and an existential threat to our country and the world, Trump believes it is a “hoax”. And if the United States, the largest economy in the world, stops transforming our energy system away from fossil fuel, every other country – China, Europe, all over the world, they will do exactly the same thing. And God only knows the kind of planet we will leave to our kids and future generations.If Trump wins, at a time of enormous income and wealth inequality, he will demand even more tax breaks for the very richest people in our country, while cutting back on programs that working families desperately need. The rich will only get richer, while the minimum wage will remain at $7.25 an hour, and millions of our fellow workers will continue to earn starvation wages.Did you all see the recent Trump rally at Madison Square Garden? Well, I did, and what I can tell you is that as a nation, as all of you know, we have struggled for years against impossible odds to try to overcome all forms of bigotry – whether it is racism, whether it’s sexism, whether it’s homophobia, whether it’s xenophobia, you name it.We have tried to fight against bigotry, but that is exactly what we saw on display at that unbelievable Trump rally. It was not a question of speakers getting up there and disagreeing with Kamala Harris on the issues. That wasn’t the issue at all. They were attacking her simply because she was a woman and a woman of color. Extreme vulgar sexism and racism. Is that really the kind of America that we can allow?So let me conclude by saying this. This is the most consequential election in our lifetimes. Many of you have differences of opinion with Harris on Gaza. So do I. But we cannot sit this election out. Trump has to be defeated. Let’s do everything we can in the next week to make sure that Kamala Harris is our next president.

      Bernie Sanders is a US senator, and chair of the health education labor and pensions committee. He represents the state of Vermont, and is the longest-serving independent in the history of Congress More

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      US warns Israel of potential halt to arms transfers if Gaza aid is not distributed

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      The Biden administration has warned Israel that it faces possible punishment, including the potential stopping of US weapons transfers, if it does not take immediate action to let more humanitarian aid into Gaza.A letter written jointly by Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, and Lloyd Austin, the defence secretary, exhorts Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to ease humanitarian suffering in the territory by lifting restrictions on the entry of assistance within 30 days or face unspecified policy “implications”.The four-page missive, dated 13 October, was sent to Yoav Gallant, the Israeli defence minister, and Ron Dermer, the strategic affairs minister, and came to light after being posted on social media by Barak Ravid, an Israeli journalist who works for Axios, after apparently being leaked.Its authenticity was confirmed by a state department spokesperson, Matthew Miller, at a news briefing on Tuesday.Humanitarian groups have made repeated calls for increased deliveries of food and medicine to Gaza, but aid shipments to the embattled territory are currently at their lowest level in months, the UN said last week.Miller said the US side had intended the letter to be a private diplomatic communication and said its timing was not influenced by next month’s presidential election, which features a knife-edge contest in the battleground state of Michigan, where many Arab American voters have voiced anger over the White House’s support for Israel’s conduct of the war.Democrat strategists harbour fears that discontent over Gaza could result in Kamala Harris, the vice-president and party nominee, losing the state to Donald Trump in the 5 November poll.The letter complains of delays to US-funded aid at crossing points into Gaza and says the flow of assistance into the war-devastated territory has dropped by more than 50% since Israel promised last March to allow more deliveries.“We are particularly concerned that recent actions by the Israeli government … are contributing to an accelerated deterioration in the conditions in Gaza,” it says.White House national security spokesman John Kirby said that the letter was not intended as a threat, but “was simply meant to reiterate the sense of urgency we feel and the seriousness with which we feel it, about the need for an increase, a dramatic increase in humanitarian assistance”.After an uptick in assistance following communications between the US and Israel in March and April, aid volumes entering the strip in September fell to their lowest level, Blinken and Austin wrote, since last October, when Israel launched a massive military offensive in retaliation for an attack by Hamas that killed about 1,200 Israelis, and led to more than 250 being taken hostage.“To reverse the downward humanitarian trajectory and consistent with its assurances to us, Israel must, starting now and within 30 days, act” on a series of specific steps, including letting in at least 350 aid trucks daily and instituting humanitarian pauses to Israeli military activity.The letter adds: “Failure to demonstrate a sustained commitment to implementing and maintaining these measure may have implications for US policy under NSM-20 and relevant US law.”NSM-20 refers to a memorandum issued by the White House national security council, which allows for “appropriate next steps” if a country receiving US military aid is deemed by the state department or the Pentagon not to be meeting prior assurances of allowing the delivery of humanitarian assistance.“Such remediation could include actions from refreshing the assurances to suspending any further transfers of defense articles or, as appropriate, defense services,” the memorandum states.Congressional Republicans have called on the White House to revoke NSM-20 calling it “redundant” and dismissing it as aimed at “placat[ing] critics of security assistance to our vital ally Israel”.Other relevant legislation that could be invoked include section 620I of the Foreign Assistance Act and the Leahy Act, which preclude the US government from providing military assistance or selling arms to countries that restrict humanitarian aid or violate human rights.Miller, the state department spokesperson, declined to go into specific when asked what consequences Israel might face for refusing to meet American demands for greater aid access.He said that a previous letter Blinken had written in April had increased humanitarian aid flows. An Israeli official confirmed that the latest letter had been received but did not discuss the details, the Associated Press reported.Miller also said that Blinken had seen footages showing at least one Palestinian burned alive after an Israeli strike set tents ablaze outside a Gaza hospital.“We all saw that video, and all know that it’s horrifying to see people burned to death. We have made clear our serious concerns about the matter directly with the government of Israel.”The US has made repeated exhortations to allow increased aid into the enclave, but Netanyahu has frequently ignored such entreaties to moderate its conduct of the war in Gaza.Last week, UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said that the three hospitals still operating in northern Gaza face “dire shortages” of fuel, medicine and blood, while food supplies are dwindling.Israeli authorities facilitated just one of 54 UN attempts to get aid to north Gaza this month, Dujarric said. Eighty-five percent of the requests were denied, with the rest impeded or canceled for logistical or security reasons.Israel insists that much of the aid has dual-use capacity that could help Hamas fighters and also says it has been subject to looting.More than 42,000 Palestinians have been killed and the majority of buildings in Gaza destroyed or badly damaged in Israel’s yearlong offensive with the stated aim of rooting out Hamas.The Pentagon described the letter as “private correspondence” and declined to discuss it in detail. More