US court on Biden’s complicity in Gaza genocide

Following an ICJ order demanding “Israel” halt all military action that aligns with genocide, a US federal court will listen to a case accusing Biden and two other top US officials of facilitating Israeli acts of genocide.

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A scheduled hearing for a case accusing US President Joe Biden, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin of complicity in Israeli against of genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip will be commenced on Friday.

A US federal court in Oakland, California, will move forward with the hearing, on January 26, 2024, just after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordered “Israel” to adhere to several actions, including the cessation of military action that aligns with genocide.

Several Palestinian human rights groups and individuals filed the case with the help of the nonprofit Center for Constitutional Rights. The case, Defense for Children International- Palestine v. Biden, seeks to halt US aid and support to “Israel’s” war on the Gaza Strip, which has cost those filing the case the lives of family members.

“We have lost so many people, but there are still many more who are living, and we owe it to them to do everything possible to stop this genocide,” Mohammad Herzallah, a plaintiff in the case who has family in Gaza, said as quoted by The Times.

Plaintiffs such as Mohammad hope that the case will contribute to stopping the Israeli genocide in the Gaza Strip.

Biden admin seeks to shut the case down

Despite domestic pressure building up against these actions, the Biden administration seeks to dismiss the case filed in the US federal court, according to The Times.

Palestinians testify in federal court against Biden’s ‘complicity’ in genocide

Plaintiffs in an unprecedented courtroom hearing are asking a judge to restrain the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s campaign in Gaza, Alex Woodward reports

r Omar Al-Najjar called into a federal courtroom in Oakland, California from an administrative building at a hospital in Rafah, the only room where he could get an internet connection.

Sitting on the floor in his scrubs, the doctor testified by video, explaining how his family in Gaza was repeatedly violently displaced under Israeli bombardments, enduring random bursts of gunfire and rockets.

At the hospital in Rafah, thousands of patients arriving daily lack adequate care, he said on Friday. There is severe dehydration and hunger. Patients with chronic diseases don’t have the medication they need.

His dreams and plans “are lost,” he said. “I have nothing left but my grief … They weakened us for years and continued to unleash bullets and missiles on our lifeless bodies.”

Dr Al-Najjar was the first among several Palestinians testifying in an unprecedented case against President Joe Biden, who is being sued by a group of American Palestinians and aid groups accusing him of failing to prevent genocide in Gaza under obligations to international and federal law.

They are asking a judge for an injunction that would halt any additional military aid or diplomatic support to Israel in its ongoing siege of Gaza, where more than 25,000 Palestinians, including more than 10,000 children, have been killed within the last 126 days, according to Gaza’s health ministry.

The judge is expected to issue a decision in the coming days.

The case is “monumental” in that it marks the first time Palestinians have testified in federal court to the impact of US support for Israel’s campaign, according to Defence for Children International – Palestine advocacy officer Miranda Cleland, whose organisation is the lead plaintiff in the case.

“So many of these atrocities are broadcast live on social media, and everyday people around the world can see for themselves what is happening,” she told The Independent. “Courts move slower than the people, of course, and the people have made it clear to Biden and his administration that most Americans do not support this.”

Hours before the hearing, a ruling from the International Court of Justice at The Hague urged Israel to prevent acts of genocide and to allow aid into the beleaguered strip, marking an initial step in a case brought by South Africa that laid out its accusations of Palestinian genocide, and heightened pressure against Israel by world powers to end its retaliatory devastation.

White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told reporters at the White House on Friday that “it’s hard to see” the Biden administration changing its approach to its support for Israel following the World Court’s ruling.

“This is obviously just a provisional order by the court. We’ll have to watch how the process plays out. But it’s difficult to see that it alone is going to change the approach,” Mr Kirby said. “The president believes the approach we have been taking has been getting results and we’re going to keep at that.”

<p>Palestinians arrive in Rafah after fleeing an Israeli ground and air offensive in the nearby city of Khan Younis on 26 January. </p>
Palestinians arrive in Rafah after fleeing an Israeli ground and air offensive in the nearby city of Khan Younis on 26 January. (AP)

The federal lawsuit against Mr Biden, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Secretary of State Antony Blinken was filed in November by the Center for Constitutional Rights on behalf of Dr Al-Najjar with aid groups Defence for Children International – Palestine and Al-Haq, as well as plaintiffs with families in Gaza, all of whom have lost loved ones from Israel’s attacks or are among the tens of thousands who have been violently displaced.

“I’ve never seen anything like this. We would never have imagined something like this,” said plaintiff Ahmed Abofoul, who was born and raised in Gaza and works as a legal researcher for Palestinian civil rights group Al-Haq.

“We heard stories about the Nakba … I never imagined we would live it and witness it ourselves,” he told the court on Friday. “The Gaza that we know no longer exists. Everything has been destroyed. … Every place I have memories with has been destroyed.”

His neighbourhood and the walls where families wrote messages over the years, the churches where he celebrated friends’ weddings, and the city archives preserving Gaza’s history have all been destroyed, he said.

Israeli forces have killed several members of the family of Leila El-Haddad, a mother of four in Maryland who writes about Gaza’s culinary heritage.

“I felt it was my duty as an American whose taxes and government have been directly responsible for the deaths of my family… to do what I can to put an end to this genocide,” she told the court on Friday.

News of the devastation, attempts to contact her remaining family in Gaza, and her pleas to end the violence have “consumed every aspect of my life,” she said.

“I spend my days just… it all revolves around this,” she said.

Mohammed Monadel Herzallah of Fairfield, California, has lost at least seven members of his family, one of whom was a four-year-old girl.

“I feel horrible. I feel dehumanised … and the world is numb about it,” he said in his testimony.

“I’m asking this court to raise the voice of our people in Gaza, hold people who are responsible and who have the authority and duty to hold them responsible, the ability to stop this madness, to stop this genocide,” he said.

<p>Smoke billows after an Israeli strike in Rafah in southern Gaza on 26 January. </p>
Smoke billows after an Israeli strike in Rafah in southern Gaza on 26 January. (AFP via Getty Images)

US District Judge Jeffrey S White, in laying out the facts of the case before him on Friday, described Israel’s “brutal” campaign that has killed “tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians,” displaced more than 2 million people, destroyed “critical civilian infrastructure”, levelled hospitals, schools, and “safe havens”, while people are “living in fear” without food, medical care, clean water or sufficient aid.

The United States has “provided substantial support to Israel” and continued to “reinforce” its support for Israel in the wake of Hamas attacks that killed more than 1,200 people on October 7, he said.

But the questions before the judge involve the limitations of the court’s reach, and whether the courts are constitutionally restricted against “political questions” of White House foreign policy.

The plaintiffs, however, argue that the case has nothing to do with political questions, but whether the courts can intervene if US officials have violated international and federal law.

“Here the United States is choosing to avoid its binding legal obligations,” according to Center for Constitutional Rights attorney Katherine Gallagher.

The court must have legal discretion to act against genocide, under both the terms of the Genocide Convention and US law adhering to it, she told the court on Friday.

Jean Lin, an attorney for the US Department of Justice, argued the court has no jurisdiction whatsoever.

“We submit that the court has no jurisdiction … even though we concede Genocide Convention is the law of the land,” she told the judge. “But … that elevated status does not mean that it may be enforced by the courts.”

Judge White asked what mechanisms, then, would anyone have to ensure the government adhered to international law.

Ms Lin argued that governments could be held accountable through the United Nations and “political accountability” through elected members of Congress, but she conceded that the plaintiffs in this case wouldn’t be able to join the proceedings at The Hague, for example.

Plaintiffs’ attorneys also noted that the US wields veto power at the United Nations Security Council, effectively being able to void any charges against it.

Dr Barry Trachtenberg, a Jewish history professor and genocide scholar at Wake Forest University in North Carolina, explained to the court how US and world governments, in the wake of the Holocaust, “now have a framework” under international law to combat genocide.

“As we’ve seen in nearly every genocidal effort since, the legal actions always seem to come afterwards, they come late … and then there’s an attempt to bring justice against the victims,” he said. “What makes this situation so unique is we’re watching the genocide unfold as we speak. … The reason why I’m weighing in is we’re seeing it happen before our eyes.”

History shows us “there are moments of intervention,” he added, “and it’s only afterwards that we have to have this reckoning.”

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11 responses to “US court on Biden’s complicity in Gaza genocide”

  1. Joseph Tillotson Avatar
    Joseph Tillotson

    This evil, vindictive carnage that the world has witnessed is a distillation of Talmudic teachings which guides and informs the Zionists who will stop at nothing until the Greater Israel project is completed.

    1. Sam Avatar
      Sam

      The appalling truth is that it has been going on for over a hundred years. As surely as the British colonized India, the Jewish Tribe has colonized Palestine and by countless lies and obfuscation in this period it has now succeeded in corrupting most Western nations. So the Jews have under their belt both the Conquest of Palestine and the Conquest of the West.

  2. chrisirish67 Avatar
    chrisirish67

    Bidette?lol its the entire blackmailed govt.

    1. Marten Avatar
      Marten

      Yup, big time and you can add the Zionist Trump also !!!!

  3. Capo Avatar
    Capo

    Israel’s murderous behavior is based on the fact that any accountability for their actions will never be made as The United States congress is bought and paid by Israel.American politicians purposely ignore the situation in Gaza to retain their careers and corrupt monies.
    Utterly devoid of any moral fibers.

  4. prairiedog Avatar
    prairiedog

    Name one president in the last 50 years who isn’t guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity?

  5. Widia Avatar
    Widia

    “Dr Barry Trachtenberg” -. “What makes this situation so unique is we’re watching the genocide unfold as we speak. … The reason why I’m weighing in is we’re seeing it happen before our eyes.”

    I think this has a lot of observational utility. If like me, you grew up in a Christian Church environment where otherwise very kind and sane people accepted a rationale that a creator God suddenly decided one day at random that a certain group of people needed to murder every single living creature / human in a region of the eastern Mediterranean, so that they alone would forever control this land, and populate it alone, it does not seem a ‘new’ phenomenon except for the fact that today it is not merely old words in a dusty book – you are seeing toddlers with their legs blown off (on both sides of the conflict).

    I think that you have to review the past in a sensible and factual fashion before you can go anywhere functional in the future – if your belief in the past is false, you will have significant portions of the population who can be led to ANY atrocity in the present because they are intellectually disarmed by the accepted abuses of the past. The fact is, if the creator God was intent at all costs to reestablish and ‘support’ the current state of Israel, no one and no entity could stop that from happening. No weapons or plot could stand in the way of a creator God, and he does not need you to hack anyone’s phone, prostitute children for kompromat against influential figures, or mass murder anyone who has something you want.

    If you dont really address the underlying issue – this claim that the Bible dictated that the early HBRW / ‘Hebrews’ slaughter everyone (and their livestock) to take over this region, then you cannot address the current conflicts, because the theology insists that these groups cannot live together, and as long as that is the standard, they will not do so. Instead of insulting people or screaming epithets or dehumanizing each other, what I did last night was list the clear and factual basis of why none of this supposed biblical slaughter for control of the land CAN BE true. These are not supernatural claims, and as such they can be tested by the pertinent cuneiform writings that in recent times have become available to us to compare to the OT stories of Moses and Joshua.

    Is Joshua TRUE? Is this book actually handed down from the instructions of a supernatural creator God, or is this actually the work of men who were seeking to justify and sanctify their own slaughter, as we see among men in our own time?…

    EA No.288-
    “Behold Zimmreda, the townsmen of Lachish have smitten him, Slaves who have become ‘Apiru”

    “Now the ‘Apiru capture the cities of the King. There is not a single governor remaining to the king my lord – all have perished.”

    What you are reading above is a tiny part of the first hand account from ‘on the ground’ of the conquest of the Levant during the reign of Pharoah Akhenaton, as documented by Palestinian local governors pleading for help against the Habiru/Hapiru/’Apiru. The likelyhood that there were multiple “Slave armies” overrunning the cities of the Levant is quite unlikely (with the same personal tribal and population group names, even less likely).

    The Habiru (HBRW) are a class of people who are clearly synonymous with the ‘Hebrews’, who were reportedly given ‘Gods’ license in the OT to kill every man, woman, child and animal in order to possess the lands of the Levant, entirely for themselves. This first hand version of events, however, does not come from the book of Joshua – written long after the events – it is taken from the personal correspondence library (Amarna) of Pharaoh Akhenaton, dating to the time of the actual conquest.

    As an example, the City called ‘Ai’ in Joshua was long since destroyed at the time Joshua was written, since the name given for the city means ‘a ruin’. ‘Joshua’ did not attack an abandoned desolate ruin, but those writing the story during the time of Josiah knew the place as ‘Ai’ and use the term for what it has long been – a mysterious ruin.

    The Habiru leader that Pharaoh Akhenaton is warned about in these letters, as he conquers levantine cites is ‘Laba’ya’ – being recognizable as a cognate of ‘Laban’ (the name of the uncle/father-in-law of ‘Jacob’ in the OT, who later is known by his adopted theophoric name – ‘Isra-El’), and the theophoric element ‘Ya’ ( common to both pagan Eya / Yahwi-El).

    Pharaoh Akhenaton is notable as the ONLY Pharaoh of Egypt – in its entire history – who adopts a mono-theistic belief system, that of the Sun Disc, at the time of this conquest of the Levant buffer zone, an area that the Egyptians have little interest in other than preventing incursions by empires that could threaten them. Pharaoh Akhenatons’ famous monotheistic “Hymn to the Aton” poem is the direct source for the material reworked into multiple HBRW Bible Psalms.

    The UNwillingness to identify the Labaya ‘slave’ army conquest of the Levant with the HBRW army of the OT becomes more obvious with Laba’ya in EA No. 256, who writes directly to Pharaoh Akhenaton, calling him ”my lord, and my sun-god, at the feet of the king my lord and my sun god seven times I fall.” “Further, if the king should write for my wife, how could I withhold her? If the king should write to me ‘plunge a bronze dagger into thy heart and die’, how could I refuse to carry out the command of the king?”

    This is a far cry from the defiant characters that we are familiar with in the OT, stories written long after the fact – its a letter in the actual hand of the scribe of Laba’ya to the Pharaoh, in an (unsuccessful) effort to avoid having the Pharaoh arrest or kill him.

    Notable also is that most of the local governors and ‘princes’ presiding over these Levantine cities are Indo-Euro individuals, probably in most cases residual from Hittite or Hittite-dominated Mitanni-era contol of this region. “Widia” the prince of Ashkelon would not sound out of place leading a band of Germans or Slavic tribes during migrations period Europe thousands of years later in time..

    The Amoritic / Amurru ‘Sutu’ tribe attacks the population, in conjunction with the ‘Apiru in these letters (they cooperate all the way back to the Sumerians), and the lead sub-tribe of the Sutu were the ‘Yaminites’ from cuneiform writings- i.e. Bin-Yamin / ‘Benjaminites’, later listed as one of the 12 tribes of ‘Isra-El’.

    The ‘Apiru specfically are mentioned in their attack on Urushalim (Jerusalem) and Bit-Lahmi (Bethlehem) during this series of conquests in letters from Ahkenaton’s cuneiform archives. I remember reading Israel Finkelstein years ago, when he remarked that certain cities named (as well as the oasis of Kadesh-Barnea) in the conquests of ‘Joshua’ were totally unoccupied in the periods of relevance, archeologically, or were ONLY occupied much later during the reign of Josiah and his contemporaries.

    Not only is the force attacking these small Levantine cities NOT a giant army, as asserted in Joshua, it is actually easily repelled by a mere 50 chariots of Prince Indaruta (Indo-European names) and Prince Zurata when they choose to fight, instead of begging the Egyptians for aid.

    The Pharaoh’s only interest in defending this Levantine buffer zone is in exchange for slave girls from the region being sent to his court, per his Amarna correspondence. Today, we actually have the Y-dna and MTdna from the mummified bodies of Pharaoh Akhenaton, his father and son (King Tut), thanks to Zahi Hawass, and this offers additional clues to what was taking place in this region –

    Pharaoh Akhenaton had a paternal Y-dna profile that is so typical of a modern Western European male that no one would release his STR’s initially, thinking that it was modern DNA contamination. It was only when his paternal relatives had the same Y-dna that it could be confirmed that his paternal Y-lineage was unlike those of middle-easterners or Egyptian’s. If you run Akhenaton’s recovered STR’s through a Haplogoup calculator, it shows him R1b-U152 (which I am more than a little familiar with), which should not even be present in ‘European’s’ yet at this time in history, based on current archaeology.

    This is a very common AMH set of STR’s, so the U152 SNP is not assured without an expanded marker set, however I would assume that his paternal ancestor is possibly a soldier or diplomat from Hittite (IE) lands that gained access to the Egyptian court (not unlike the Moses story of being adopted into the Pharoahs’ houshold). In any case Akhenaton is paternally descended from a brother population to the IE peoples, who seem to run most of the cities of the Levant during this period, and who soon begin to settle in and dominate Western and Central Europe.

    The son of Akhenaton, King Tut, is Maternally mt K, which had a ancestral link to the peoples of Canaan, and is found in 1/3 of all Ashkenazim today.. It is quite likely that this enters Egypt with Canaanite slave girls bound for the court of the Pharaoh, as we clearly see being requested in the Amarna papers correspondence.

    I am not suggesting that their is no truth in the various books of the HBRW bible, or in the NT teachings of Jesus which totally conflict with the abuses sanctified in some of the HBRW books – we have ancient records from the first-hand actors involved in these stories of biblical genocide, in their own writing, telling you what actually happened, that long predate ‘Joshua’. IF you refuse to process or examine that information, preferring the ‘comfort’ that god wanted everyone mass murdered as your ‘faith’, you are no longer engaging in faith, but in denial.

  6. Fritz Avatar
    Fritz

    “An honest politician is one who, when he is bought, will stay bought.”
    — Simon Cameron

    The US government has the best politicians Zionist money can buy.
    The judges of the US court system are paid employees of the US government.

    Even if a US court ruled against the hand that feeds them, the courts themselves have no more power to enforce their ruling than does the ICJ.

    On this planet Might is Right, so the slaughter will continue and the Zionists will continue to smear any entity that brings to light that which they are doing as proof of antisemitism, the ICJ was accused of this after their ruling against Israel’s genocide.

    The USA refuses to join any entity which it does not have veto power over. The USA as a non member then states it is under no obligation to abide by a finding against it by such an entity.

  7. gloria Avatar
    gloria

    America is failing–although the rich are doing fine. The American people are getting laid off in droves. What will they eat, where will they live? And yet Israel gets over 3 trillion a year and Biden wants to send them even more money? NO—absolutely NOT! Just , why elected ones, why are Americans being ignored while Israel gets the cash???? Biden and Blinken need to stay in Israel, and America needs a new President, and it’s not the Trump idiot either.
    America is dying and none of the elected ones seem to notice.

    1. Sam Avatar
      Sam

      According to a new Oxfam analysis, the world’s five richest men have more than doubled their fortunes from $405 billion to $869 billion since 2020—at a rate of $14 million per hour—while nearly five billion people have become poorer.

  8. Realist Avatar
    Realist

    Exactly which lie is this hypocritical professional liar refuting? That Israel did not commit the heinous acts of which they are charged? Or that these murderous acts are not considered genocide by normal reasonable and moral people?

    Of course, old Genocide Joe may well not know the difference between the truth and a lie since every time he opens his gob, usually nothing but clearly demonstrable bull shit spews forth, ranging from the trivial and mundane to unquestionable proof of a highly dangerous and psychopathic mind. The extent of his many hatreds and mad threats directed at opponents both foreign and domestic are truly stunning and scary. Frankly, he comes off as unhinged. Those who do not notice or even share his mental derangements include some highly famous extremists in the political universe, especially several from the lunatic fringe in South Carolina.

    Every minute this evil and vile man remains in office puts the entire world at risk of annihilation. I would exhort the Congress to impeach and remove him from office ASAP. Then prosecute, convict and jail him for all the graft, fraud, extortion and other corruption that he and his wretched criminal family committed for personal gain and against the interests of the collective United States of America and its citizens. Old Joe is vastly the greater danger and more serious law breaker, yet the US justice system itself is illicitly manipulated clearly to gain political advantage for his thoroughly corrupt Democratic party over Mr. Trump and the largely clueless or colluding Republicans.

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