SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
To donate by check, phone, or other method, see our More Ways to Give page.
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
Israel urgently requires leaders who embrace international law over military force, humility over arrogance, and peacemaking over brutality.
It is easy to be cynical about the international rule of law. No sooner had the International Court of Justice (ICJ) found that Israel is plausibly committing genocide against the Palestinian people than the U.S. State Department declared, “We continue to believe that allegations of genocide are unfounded and note the court did not make a finding about genocide or call for a ceasefire in its ruling…” Israeli leaders declared the case to be “outrageous” and “antisemitic.” Yet the risks for Israel of the ICJ ruling, and its follow-up in the next year or two, are profound. If Israel spurns the Genocide Convention, it imperils its place within the community of nations.
True, the ICJ provisional ruling by itself will not end Israel’s war in Gaza or perhaps the mass killing of the Palestinian people, already at 26,000 and rising (with 70 percent women and children). The ruling by itself will not end America’s complicity in Israel’s slaughter of Palestinians. Israel could not fight the war in Gaza one more day without the U.S. providing the munitions and other military support.
Yet the ruling has started the clock on Israel’s future. If Israel continues to act with impunity and finds itself declared as genocidaire in the ICJ’s final ruling, Israel will become a pariah state. Young Americans in particular will pull the plug on U.S. backing for Israel. Israel will stand utterly alone, condemned by the world.
Israelis should understand that the U.S. cannot—and will not—save Israel in the long run.
Most of the 193 governments in the United Nations already disdain Israel’s behavior. Most see a country that has occupied the neighboring territories of Palestine for 57 years (since the 1967 war), that has scorned and failed to act on dozens of votes by the UN Security Council and the UN General Assembly, and illegally and blatantly settled more than 700,000 Israelis in the occupied territories.
Most UN member states hear clearly the expressions of visceral hatred by many Israeli leaders toward the people of Palestine. For example, the statement by Israeli President Herzog blaming all of the people of Gaza, as cited by the ICJ; and they understand clearly the intention of today’s Israeli government to occupy Palestine and rule over the 7 million Palestinian Muslims and Christians living in Israel and Palestine today. South Africa brought the ICJ case against Israel in part because it knows murderous apartheid rule when it sees it, and it sees apartheid rule in Israel’s ongoing domination over the Palestinian people.
Israel has so far not been deterred by global opinion because of its nuclear weapons, its messianic zeal, and most importantly, the military, financial, and public backing of the United States, including its votes in the UN Security Council and General Assembly. Moreover, the U.S. and Israel have acted on the belief that the offer of American money and weapons systems to the Arab nations would induce them to turn their backs on Palestinian people. Israel and the U.S. act with supreme arrogance, believing that military might makes right and that money talks. Yes, Israel also acts out of fear of the Palestinians, but that is the overbearing and grossly unjustified fear of the underdog, the conquered, and the displaced. By recognizing and making peace with an independent state of Palestine, Israel would remove the hate and humiliation that fuels support for Hamas, and thereby diminish the threats that lead to Israel’s own fears.
Israelis should understand that the U.S. cannot—and will not—save Israel in the long run. It will not do so any more than America has “saved” South Vietnam; Iran after the U.S.-U.K. coup in 1953; Afghanistan after 2001; Iraq after the U.S. overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003; Syria after the U.S. attempted overthrow of Bashar al-Assad in 2011; Libya after the NATO overthrow of Moammar Qaddafi in 2011; or Ukraine since the U.S.-led coup in 2014. American military force is useless or worse in sustaining regimes that lack broad international support and legitimacy. America tires of each misguided military adventure and moves on, and will eventually do so vis-à-vis Israel if Israel becomes a pariah and outlaw state.
Nor will U.S. money and weapons systems carry the day with the Arab neighbors. The U.S. is at the end of its financial largesse. The U.S. public debt is already 122.9 percent of GDP and rising rapidly. There is no consensus in Washington, D.C. on how to stabilize the U.S. budget, but one point is clear: large support for foreign countries will not be part of the bargain. The cutoff of U.S. financing for Ukraine, despite the intense lobbying by the politically powerful military-industrial complex, is a vivid case in point. Even access to advanced U.S. weapons systems will not persuade Arab nations to abandon the cause of a Palestinian state. In any event, Russian, Iranian, North Korean, Chinese, and other advanced weapons systems will be on highly competitive offer in future years, and with better financing terms.
At the moment, the Israeli public ardently backs Israel’s brutality and slaughter in Gaza. The public is gripped by a combination of overwhelming fear, religious zealotry, and state propaganda. Israelis widely believe that the Arab nations are implacably out to destroy Israel. They do not travel in the Arab countries and do not know or understand the attitudes and policies of those neighboring societies. They do not attend to the statements of Arab and Islamic leaders calling for peace based on the two-state solution because Israeli mainstream media, like U.S. mainstream media, is in the grips of relentless state propaganda, brain-deadening patriotism, and relentless war-mongering.
Israeli society is immeasurably traumatized by the Nazi Holocaust, which remains the central fact of modernity and memory of every Jewish family of European roots in any part of the world. An eventual finding by the world’s highest court that Israel itself has now become a perpetrator of genocide will therefore shake Israeli society to the roots and will rupture Israel’s social contract with world Jewry. At that very painful and very dire stage, Israeli public opinion may begin to reconsider its current assumptions.
Yes, despite the ICJ ruling Israel’s killing goes on, but under greatly heightened legal and political scrutiny. Every Israeli murder in cold blood, every bombing of a hospital, every destruction of a Palestinian school or university, every Israeli denial of food and water for Gazans, will be meticulously recorded by South Africa’s superb legal team, and by highly respected legal institutes around the world, including the Center for Constitutional Rights and Law for Palestine. All will be duly conveyed to the ICJ.
Palestine will survive the current horrific ordeal, deeply wounded but with strong worldwide backing. Israel’s future, by contrast, hangs in the balance, as it could soon find itself banished by the community of nations as a stark violator of international law. Israel urgently requires leaders who embrace international law over military force, humility over arrogance, and peacemaking over brutality. And Israel—no less than the United States—must come to understand the self-destructive futility of deploying military force to deny justice and political rights for the Palestinian people.
Political revenge. Mass deportations. Project 2025. Unfathomable corruption. Attacks on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Pardons for insurrectionists. An all-out assault on democracy. Republicans in Congress are scrambling to give Trump broad new powers to strip the tax-exempt status of any nonprofit he doesn’t like by declaring it a “terrorist-supporting organization.” Trump has already begun filing lawsuits against news outlets that criticize him. At Common Dreams, we won’t back down, but we must get ready for whatever Trump and his thugs throw at us. As a people-powered nonprofit news outlet, we cover issues the corporate media never will, but we can only continue with our readers’ support. By donating today, please help us fight the dangers of a second Trump presidency. |
It is easy to be cynical about the international rule of law. No sooner had the International Court of Justice (ICJ) found that Israel is plausibly committing genocide against the Palestinian people than the U.S. State Department declared, “We continue to believe that allegations of genocide are unfounded and note the court did not make a finding about genocide or call for a ceasefire in its ruling…” Israeli leaders declared the case to be “outrageous” and “antisemitic.” Yet the risks for Israel of the ICJ ruling, and its follow-up in the next year or two, are profound. If Israel spurns the Genocide Convention, it imperils its place within the community of nations.
True, the ICJ provisional ruling by itself will not end Israel’s war in Gaza or perhaps the mass killing of the Palestinian people, already at 26,000 and rising (with 70 percent women and children). The ruling by itself will not end America’s complicity in Israel’s slaughter of Palestinians. Israel could not fight the war in Gaza one more day without the U.S. providing the munitions and other military support.
Yet the ruling has started the clock on Israel’s future. If Israel continues to act with impunity and finds itself declared as genocidaire in the ICJ’s final ruling, Israel will become a pariah state. Young Americans in particular will pull the plug on U.S. backing for Israel. Israel will stand utterly alone, condemned by the world.
Israelis should understand that the U.S. cannot—and will not—save Israel in the long run.
Most of the 193 governments in the United Nations already disdain Israel’s behavior. Most see a country that has occupied the neighboring territories of Palestine for 57 years (since the 1967 war), that has scorned and failed to act on dozens of votes by the UN Security Council and the UN General Assembly, and illegally and blatantly settled more than 700,000 Israelis in the occupied territories.
Most UN member states hear clearly the expressions of visceral hatred by many Israeli leaders toward the people of Palestine. For example, the statement by Israeli President Herzog blaming all of the people of Gaza, as cited by the ICJ; and they understand clearly the intention of today’s Israeli government to occupy Palestine and rule over the 7 million Palestinian Muslims and Christians living in Israel and Palestine today. South Africa brought the ICJ case against Israel in part because it knows murderous apartheid rule when it sees it, and it sees apartheid rule in Israel’s ongoing domination over the Palestinian people.
Israel has so far not been deterred by global opinion because of its nuclear weapons, its messianic zeal, and most importantly, the military, financial, and public backing of the United States, including its votes in the UN Security Council and General Assembly. Moreover, the U.S. and Israel have acted on the belief that the offer of American money and weapons systems to the Arab nations would induce them to turn their backs on Palestinian people. Israel and the U.S. act with supreme arrogance, believing that military might makes right and that money talks. Yes, Israel also acts out of fear of the Palestinians, but that is the overbearing and grossly unjustified fear of the underdog, the conquered, and the displaced. By recognizing and making peace with an independent state of Palestine, Israel would remove the hate and humiliation that fuels support for Hamas, and thereby diminish the threats that lead to Israel’s own fears.
Israelis should understand that the U.S. cannot—and will not—save Israel in the long run. It will not do so any more than America has “saved” South Vietnam; Iran after the U.S.-U.K. coup in 1953; Afghanistan after 2001; Iraq after the U.S. overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003; Syria after the U.S. attempted overthrow of Bashar al-Assad in 2011; Libya after the NATO overthrow of Moammar Qaddafi in 2011; or Ukraine since the U.S.-led coup in 2014. American military force is useless or worse in sustaining regimes that lack broad international support and legitimacy. America tires of each misguided military adventure and moves on, and will eventually do so vis-à-vis Israel if Israel becomes a pariah and outlaw state.
Nor will U.S. money and weapons systems carry the day with the Arab neighbors. The U.S. is at the end of its financial largesse. The U.S. public debt is already 122.9 percent of GDP and rising rapidly. There is no consensus in Washington, D.C. on how to stabilize the U.S. budget, but one point is clear: large support for foreign countries will not be part of the bargain. The cutoff of U.S. financing for Ukraine, despite the intense lobbying by the politically powerful military-industrial complex, is a vivid case in point. Even access to advanced U.S. weapons systems will not persuade Arab nations to abandon the cause of a Palestinian state. In any event, Russian, Iranian, North Korean, Chinese, and other advanced weapons systems will be on highly competitive offer in future years, and with better financing terms.
At the moment, the Israeli public ardently backs Israel’s brutality and slaughter in Gaza. The public is gripped by a combination of overwhelming fear, religious zealotry, and state propaganda. Israelis widely believe that the Arab nations are implacably out to destroy Israel. They do not travel in the Arab countries and do not know or understand the attitudes and policies of those neighboring societies. They do not attend to the statements of Arab and Islamic leaders calling for peace based on the two-state solution because Israeli mainstream media, like U.S. mainstream media, is in the grips of relentless state propaganda, brain-deadening patriotism, and relentless war-mongering.
Israeli society is immeasurably traumatized by the Nazi Holocaust, which remains the central fact of modernity and memory of every Jewish family of European roots in any part of the world. An eventual finding by the world’s highest court that Israel itself has now become a perpetrator of genocide will therefore shake Israeli society to the roots and will rupture Israel’s social contract with world Jewry. At that very painful and very dire stage, Israeli public opinion may begin to reconsider its current assumptions.
Yes, despite the ICJ ruling Israel’s killing goes on, but under greatly heightened legal and political scrutiny. Every Israeli murder in cold blood, every bombing of a hospital, every destruction of a Palestinian school or university, every Israeli denial of food and water for Gazans, will be meticulously recorded by South Africa’s superb legal team, and by highly respected legal institutes around the world, including the Center for Constitutional Rights and Law for Palestine. All will be duly conveyed to the ICJ.
Palestine will survive the current horrific ordeal, deeply wounded but with strong worldwide backing. Israel’s future, by contrast, hangs in the balance, as it could soon find itself banished by the community of nations as a stark violator of international law. Israel urgently requires leaders who embrace international law over military force, humility over arrogance, and peacemaking over brutality. And Israel—no less than the United States—must come to understand the self-destructive futility of deploying military force to deny justice and political rights for the Palestinian people.
It is easy to be cynical about the international rule of law. No sooner had the International Court of Justice (ICJ) found that Israel is plausibly committing genocide against the Palestinian people than the U.S. State Department declared, “We continue to believe that allegations of genocide are unfounded and note the court did not make a finding about genocide or call for a ceasefire in its ruling…” Israeli leaders declared the case to be “outrageous” and “antisemitic.” Yet the risks for Israel of the ICJ ruling, and its follow-up in the next year or two, are profound. If Israel spurns the Genocide Convention, it imperils its place within the community of nations.
True, the ICJ provisional ruling by itself will not end Israel’s war in Gaza or perhaps the mass killing of the Palestinian people, already at 26,000 and rising (with 70 percent women and children). The ruling by itself will not end America’s complicity in Israel’s slaughter of Palestinians. Israel could not fight the war in Gaza one more day without the U.S. providing the munitions and other military support.
Yet the ruling has started the clock on Israel’s future. If Israel continues to act with impunity and finds itself declared as genocidaire in the ICJ’s final ruling, Israel will become a pariah state. Young Americans in particular will pull the plug on U.S. backing for Israel. Israel will stand utterly alone, condemned by the world.
Israelis should understand that the U.S. cannot—and will not—save Israel in the long run.
Most of the 193 governments in the United Nations already disdain Israel’s behavior. Most see a country that has occupied the neighboring territories of Palestine for 57 years (since the 1967 war), that has scorned and failed to act on dozens of votes by the UN Security Council and the UN General Assembly, and illegally and blatantly settled more than 700,000 Israelis in the occupied territories.
Most UN member states hear clearly the expressions of visceral hatred by many Israeli leaders toward the people of Palestine. For example, the statement by Israeli President Herzog blaming all of the people of Gaza, as cited by the ICJ; and they understand clearly the intention of today’s Israeli government to occupy Palestine and rule over the 7 million Palestinian Muslims and Christians living in Israel and Palestine today. South Africa brought the ICJ case against Israel in part because it knows murderous apartheid rule when it sees it, and it sees apartheid rule in Israel’s ongoing domination over the Palestinian people.
Israel has so far not been deterred by global opinion because of its nuclear weapons, its messianic zeal, and most importantly, the military, financial, and public backing of the United States, including its votes in the UN Security Council and General Assembly. Moreover, the U.S. and Israel have acted on the belief that the offer of American money and weapons systems to the Arab nations would induce them to turn their backs on Palestinian people. Israel and the U.S. act with supreme arrogance, believing that military might makes right and that money talks. Yes, Israel also acts out of fear of the Palestinians, but that is the overbearing and grossly unjustified fear of the underdog, the conquered, and the displaced. By recognizing and making peace with an independent state of Palestine, Israel would remove the hate and humiliation that fuels support for Hamas, and thereby diminish the threats that lead to Israel’s own fears.
Israelis should understand that the U.S. cannot—and will not—save Israel in the long run. It will not do so any more than America has “saved” South Vietnam; Iran after the U.S.-U.K. coup in 1953; Afghanistan after 2001; Iraq after the U.S. overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003; Syria after the U.S. attempted overthrow of Bashar al-Assad in 2011; Libya after the NATO overthrow of Moammar Qaddafi in 2011; or Ukraine since the U.S.-led coup in 2014. American military force is useless or worse in sustaining regimes that lack broad international support and legitimacy. America tires of each misguided military adventure and moves on, and will eventually do so vis-à-vis Israel if Israel becomes a pariah and outlaw state.
Nor will U.S. money and weapons systems carry the day with the Arab neighbors. The U.S. is at the end of its financial largesse. The U.S. public debt is already 122.9 percent of GDP and rising rapidly. There is no consensus in Washington, D.C. on how to stabilize the U.S. budget, but one point is clear: large support for foreign countries will not be part of the bargain. The cutoff of U.S. financing for Ukraine, despite the intense lobbying by the politically powerful military-industrial complex, is a vivid case in point. Even access to advanced U.S. weapons systems will not persuade Arab nations to abandon the cause of a Palestinian state. In any event, Russian, Iranian, North Korean, Chinese, and other advanced weapons systems will be on highly competitive offer in future years, and with better financing terms.
At the moment, the Israeli public ardently backs Israel’s brutality and slaughter in Gaza. The public is gripped by a combination of overwhelming fear, religious zealotry, and state propaganda. Israelis widely believe that the Arab nations are implacably out to destroy Israel. They do not travel in the Arab countries and do not know or understand the attitudes and policies of those neighboring societies. They do not attend to the statements of Arab and Islamic leaders calling for peace based on the two-state solution because Israeli mainstream media, like U.S. mainstream media, is in the grips of relentless state propaganda, brain-deadening patriotism, and relentless war-mongering.
Israeli society is immeasurably traumatized by the Nazi Holocaust, which remains the central fact of modernity and memory of every Jewish family of European roots in any part of the world. An eventual finding by the world’s highest court that Israel itself has now become a perpetrator of genocide will therefore shake Israeli society to the roots and will rupture Israel’s social contract with world Jewry. At that very painful and very dire stage, Israeli public opinion may begin to reconsider its current assumptions.
Yes, despite the ICJ ruling Israel’s killing goes on, but under greatly heightened legal and political scrutiny. Every Israeli murder in cold blood, every bombing of a hospital, every destruction of a Palestinian school or university, every Israeli denial of food and water for Gazans, will be meticulously recorded by South Africa’s superb legal team, and by highly respected legal institutes around the world, including the Center for Constitutional Rights and Law for Palestine. All will be duly conveyed to the ICJ.
Palestine will survive the current horrific ordeal, deeply wounded but with strong worldwide backing. Israel’s future, by contrast, hangs in the balance, as it could soon find itself banished by the community of nations as a stark violator of international law. Israel urgently requires leaders who embrace international law over military force, humility over arrogance, and peacemaking over brutality. And Israel—no less than the United States—must come to understand the self-destructive futility of deploying military force to deny justice and political rights for the Palestinian people.
"When comparing natural gas and renewables for energy security, renewables generally offer greater long-term energy security due to their local availability, reduced dependence on imports, and lower vulnerability to geopolitical disruptions."
As Republican President-elect Donald Trump prepares to further accelerate already near-record liquefied natural gas exports after taking office next week, a report published Friday details how soaring U.S. foreign LNG sales are "causing price volatility and environmental and safety risks for American families in addition to granting geopolitical advantages to the Chinese government."
The report, Strategic Implications of U.S. LNG Exports, was published by the American Security Project, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, and offers a "comprehensive analysis of the impact of the natural gas export boom from the advent of fracking through the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and provides insight into how the tidal wave of U.S. exports in the global market is altering regional and domestic security environments."
According to a summary of the publication:
The United States is the world's leading producer of natural gas and largest exporter of liquefied natural gas (LNG). Over the past decade, affordable U.S. LNG exports have facilitated a global shift from coal and mitigated the geopolitical risks of fossil fuel imports from Russia and the Middle East. Today, U.S. LNG plays a critical role in diversifying global energy supplies and reducing reliance on adversarial energy suppliers. However, rising global dependence on natural gas is creating new vulnerabilities, including pricing fluctuations, shipping route bottlenecks, and inherent health, safety, and environmental hazards. The U.S. also faces geopolitical challenges related to the LNG trade, including China's stockpiling and resale of cheap U.S. LNG exports to advance its renewable energy industry and expand its global influence.
"When comparing natural gas and renewables for energy security, renewables generally offer greater long-term energy security due to their local availability, reduced dependence on imports, and lower vulnerability to geopolitical disruptions," the report states.
American Security Project CEO Matthew Wallin said in a statement that "action needs to be taken to ensure Americans are insulated from global price shocks, the impacts of climate change, and new health and safety risks."
"Our country must also do more to protect its interests from geopolitical rivals like China that subsidize their growth and influence by reselling cheap U.S. LNG at higher spot prices," Wallin asserted. "U.S. LNG has often been depicted as a transition fuel, and our country must ensure that it continues working towards that transition to clean sources instead of becoming dependent on yet another vulnerable fuel source."
Critics have
warned that LNG actually hampers the transition to a green economy. LNG is mostly composed of methane, which has more than 80 times the planetary heating power of carbon dioxide during its first two decades in the atmosphere.
Despite President Joe Biden's 2024 pause on LNG export permit applications, his administration has presided over what climate campaigners have called a "staggering" LNG expansion, including Venture Global's Calcasieu Pass 2 export terminal in Cameron Parish, Louisiana and more than a dozen other projects. Last month, the U.S. Department of Energy acknowledged that approving more LNG exports would raise domestic energy prices, increase pollution, and exacerbate the climate crisis.
In addition to promising to roll back Biden's recent ban on offshore oil and gas drilling across more than 625 million acres of U.S. coastal territory, Trump—who has nominated a bevy of fossil fuel proponents for his Cabinet—is expected to further increase LNG production and exports.
A separate report published Friday by Friends of the Earth and Public Citizen examined 14 proposed LNG export terminals that the Trump administration is expected to fast-track, creating 510 million metric tons of climate pollution–"equivalent to the annual emissions of 135 new coal plants."
While campaigning for president, Trump vowed to "frack, frack, frack; and drill, baby, drill." This, as fossil fuel interests poured $75 million into his campaign coffers, according to The New York Times.
"This research reveals the disturbing reality of an LNG export boom under a second Trump term," Friends of the Earth senior energy campaigner Raena Garcia said in a statement referring to her group's new report. "This reality will cement higher energy prices for Americans and push the world into even more devastating climate disasters. The incoming administration is poised to haphazardly greenlight LNG exports that are clearly intended to put profit over people."
"Academics will make careers out of writing about past atrocities while ignoring the ones happening in real time," said one critic.
In what one observer decried as an "absolutely shameful" rebuff of American Historical Association members' overwhelming approval of a resolution condemning Israel's annihilation of education infrastructure in Gaza, the elected council of the nation's oldest learned society on Thursday vetoed the measure over a claimed technicality.
AHA members voted 428-88 earlier this month in favor of a resolution opposing Israeli scholasticide—defined by United Nations experts as the "systemic obliteration of education through the arrest, detention, or killing of teachers, students, and staff, and the destruction of educational infrastructure"—during the 15-month assault on the Gaza Strip.
However, the AHA's 16-member elected council voted 11-4 with one abstention to reject the measure, according to Inside Higher Ed, which noted that the panel "could have accepted the resolution or sent it to the organization's roughly 10,450 members for a vote."
While the council said in a statement that it "deplores any intentional destruction of Palestinian educational institutions, libraries, universities, and archives in Gaza," it determined that the resolution does not comply with the AHA's constitution and bylaws "because it lies outside the scope of the association's mission and purpose."
Council member and University of Oklahoma history professor Anne Hyde told Inside Higher Ed that she voted to veto the resolution "to protect the AHA's reputation as an unbiased historical actor," adding that the Gaza war "is not settled history, so we're not clear what happened or who to blame or when it began even, so it isn't something that a professional organization should be commenting on yet."
However, Van Gosse, a co-chair and founder of Historians for Peace and Democracy—the resolution's author—told the outlet that "we are extremely shocked by this decision," which "overturns the democratic decision" of members' "landslide vote."
Lake Forest College history professor Rudi Batzell said on social media: "Shame on the AHA leadership for vetoing the scholasticide in Gaza resolution. Members voted overwhelmingly to support, and the resolution was written so narrowly and so carefully to meet exactly this kind of procedural objection. Craven."
The AHA council's veto follows last week's move by the Modern Language Association executive council, as Common Dreams reported, to block members of the preeminent U.S. professional group for scholars of language and literature from voting on a resolution supporting the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement for Palestinian rights.
"Israel chose not to go to war simply against Hamas, but has instead waged an all-out war against the entire Palestinian people," Sanders wrote.
With a cease-fire deal between Hamas and Israel set to go into effect as soon as Sunday, Senator Bernie Sanders released a statement Friday saying that he's please the Israeli security cabinet has signed off on the agreement, but highlighted the approved deal "is essentially the same agreement that Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu and his extremist government rejected in May of last year."
"More than 10,000 people have died since that proposal was presented, and the suffering of the hostages and innocent people in Gaza only deepened," he wrote.
On Wednesday, President Biden announced the breakthrough, saying “this is the ceasefire agreement I introduced last spring."
What's more, the independent senator from Vermont said that Americans must "grapple with our role in this dark chapter." The U.S. government, he said, "allowed this mass atrocity to continue by providing an endless supply of weapons to Netanyahu and failing to exert meaningful leverage."
The U.S. has provided Israel with at least $17.9 billion in military aid to its ally in the Middle East since October 2023, when Israel's military campaign in Gaza commenced following an attack by Hamas on Israel. In early January the State Department informed Congress of a planned $8 billion arms sale.
Local health officials in Gaza say the death toll in the enclave stands at over 46,000. However, a recently published peer-reviewed analysis estimates that Israel's assault on Gaza had actually killed 64,260 people—mostly civilian men, women, and children—have been killed between October 7, 2023 and June 30, 2024—a figure significantly higher than the official one reported by the enclave's health ministry.
Multiple human rights organizations have said that Israel's conduct in Gaza constitutes genocide or acts of genocide, and the International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli defense chief Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes in Gaza. The body has also issued an arrest warrant for Hamas leader Ibrahim Al-Masri for alleged crimes against humanity,
In his Friday remarks, Sanders called Hamas' October 7, 2023 attack on Israel "barbaric" and stated that Israel "clearly had the right to defend itself against Hamas."
However, he said, "Israel chose not to go to war simply against Hamas, but has instead waged an all-out war against the entire Palestinian people."