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anthony blinken
Rights Group Urges ICC to Probe Biden for 'Aiding and Abetting' Israeli Crimes in Gaza
A veteran war crimes lawyer argues that "there are solid grounds to investigate Joe Biden, Antony Blinken, and Lloyd Austin for complicity in Israel's crimes."
Feb 24, 2025
A human rights group revealed Monday that on the last full day of U.S. President Joe Biden's term, it encouraged the International Criminal Court to investigate him and two of his Cabinet members for "aiding and abetting" Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip.
U.S.-based Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) announced that on January 19, it submitted to the ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan a 172-page communication detailing why the tribunal should probe Biden and his former secretaries of defense and state, Lloyd Austin and Anthony Blinken.
Although a fragile cease-fire took effect in Gaza last month, Israel—backed by the Biden administration and Congress—responded to the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack with a 15-month blockade and military assault that killed tens of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands, of Palestinians and left the territory in ruins.
"There are solid grounds to investigate Joe Biden, Antony Blinken and Lloyd Austin for complicity in Israel's crimes," DAWN board member and veteran war crimes lawyer Reed Brody said in a Monday statement. "The bombs dropped on Palestinian hospitals, schools, and homes are American bombs, the campaign of murder and persecution has been carried out with American support. U.S. officials have been aware of exactly what Israel is doing, and yet their support never stopped."
"By investigating and prosecuting U.S. officials, the ICC can deter and discourage further international support for Israeli crimes in Gaza and demonstrate that no one is above the law."
DAWN's document lays out how the United States, under Biden, "provided unwavering direct military and political support to Israel, even after it became manifest that Israel continued to carry out severe violations of international humanitarian law and human rights." That includes at least $17.9 billion in taxpayer-funded military assistance since October 2023, a 381% increase from the around $3.8 billion a year before Hamas' attack.
"In addition to new arms transfers and sales authorizations, the U.S. used pre-existing contracts and additional emergency military aid measures to expedite the delivery of major arms," the submission continues, also noting "the deployment of U.S.-operated military intelligence and active military operations targeting groups posing threats to Israel on other fronts."
Israel—like the United States—is not a party to the Hague-based ICC, but Palestine is. The court in November issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and Hamas leader Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri, also known as Mohammed Deif, who is dead.
DAWN's submission makes the case that "by continuously and unconditionally providing political support and military
support to Israel while being fully aware of the specific crimes committed by Netanyahu, Gallant, and their subordinates, President Biden, Secretary Blinken, and Secretary Austin contributed intentionally to the commission of those crimes while at least knowing the intention of the group to commit the Israeli crimes, if not aiming of furthering such criminal activity."
The group's executive director, Sarah Leah Whitson, said Monday that "not only did Biden, Blinken, and Secretary Austin ignore and justify the overwhelming evidence of Israel's grotesque and deliberate crimes, overruling their own staff recommendations to halt weapons transfers to Israel, they doubled down by providing Israel with unconditional military and political support to ensure it could carry out its atrocities."
"They provided Israel with not only essential military support but equally essential political support by vetoing multiple cease-fire resolutions at the U.N. Security Council to ensure Israel could continue its crimes," Whitson highlighted. She argued that "by investigating and prosecuting U.S. officials, the ICC can deter and discourage further international support for Israeli crimes in Gaza and demonstrate that no one is above the law."
DAWN also recommended that the ICC consider looking into half a dozen other Biden officials including Jake Sullivan, national security adviser; Gina Raimondo, secretary of commerce; Bonnie Jenkins, under secretary of arms control and international security; Stanley L. Brown, acting assistant secretary for the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs; Amanda Dory, acting under secretary of defense for policy; and Mike Miller, acting director of the Defense Security Cooperation Agency.
"It is important for the international community, and Palestinians in particular, to know that the American people do not support the crimes their elected officials committed in Palestine and that American organizations are doing their part to hold these officials accountable," said Whitson. "We have a duty, not just a right, as American civil society, to exercise our free speech to serve truth and seek justice."
So far, efforts to hold Biden and other U.S. leaders accountable for enabling what many experts around the world have called Israel's genocidal assault on Gaza via the U.S. court system have been unsuccessful. That includes a December lawsuit against Blinken backed by DAWN—which was founded by assassinated Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
"We have tried every available avenue within the U.S. to stop our government's complicity in the outrageous crimes we've witnessed since October 2023 in Gaza," said Raed Jarrar, DAWN's advocacy director. "When domestic institutions fail to uphold black-letter laws prohibiting military support to commit war crimes, we have a particular responsibility as Americans to hold American officials accountable for their roles in those crimes."
Since Biden left office last month, U.S. President Donald Trump has already welcomed Netanyahu to the White House, responded to the warrants by targeting the ICC with sanctions, and promoted a U.S. takeover of Gaza that would involve ethnically cleansing the territory of Palestinians.
"Trump isn't just obstructing justice; he's trying to burn down the courthouse to prevent anyone from holding Israeli criminals accountable," said Jarrar. "His plan to forcibly displace all Palestinians from Gaza should also merit ICC investigation—not just for aiding and abetting Israeli crimes but for ordering forcible transfer, a crime against humanity under the Rome Statute."
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The Democratic Party Deserves Its Image as a Party of War
To explore possibilities for how that might change will require a candid assessment of how that image came into focus in the 21st century.
Dec 21, 2024
While analyzing the tailspin of the Biden presidency and the failed campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris, few pundits have questioned that militarism is a political necessity as well as a vital tool of U.S. foreign policy.
Harris checked a standard box at the Democratic National Convention when she pledged to maintain “the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world.” Yet the erosion of the Democratic Party’s base is partly due to the alienation of voters who don’t want to cast their ballot for what they see as a war party.
That perception is especially acute among the young, and notable among African Americans. Many have viewed President Joe Biden’s resolute support for the Israeli war in Gaza as a moral collapse. When Harris remained loyal to it during the fall campaign, her credibility sank.
Conditions may soon shift for the Democratic Party to start moving beyond its war culture.
Events in recent weeks have done nothing to reassure those repelled by the Democratic administration’s approach. Biden’s purported 30-day deadline for Israel to start allowing adequate food into Gaza expired shortly after the election—without Israeli compliance—while the humanitarian disaster in Gaza actually became worse than ever. Biden’s White House pretended otherwise.
The ongoing hellish realities for Palestinian civilians in Gaza caused 40% of Senate Democrats to vote for Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) post-election resolution to block $20 billion worth of military aid to Israel. But near the end of November, Biden followed up by greenlighting an additional $680 million in arms sales to Israel. While Republicans remained in lockstep for arming Israel, the budding dissent from congressional Democrats remained ineffectual.
On Ukraine war policy, dissent has been rare from Democratic lawmakers. Two years ago, 30 progressive House Democrats sent a letter to Biden that suggested “a proactive diplomatic push” could be useful for achieving a cease-fire—but they quickly withdrew the letter after an angry backlash from hawkish leaders in their own party. (Republican lawmakers are split on Ukraine policy—many want the U.S. to recklessly confront China instead of Russia.)
Few Democrats have mustered more than feeble caveats about open-ended military aid to the Kyiv government, merely watching as the Biden administration repeatedly crosses its own red lines on such matters as approval of longer-range Ukrainian missile strikes into Russia. For the Ukraine war, in the lexicon of high-ranking Democrats, “diplomacy” has been a dirty word.
Overall, the president has accelerated the war train (sometimes hailing more war production as good for the U.S. economy), with party leaders providing fuel and Democratic constituents confined to the caboose. The opinions of the party faithful count for little.
Polling has made clear that an overwhelming majority of Democrats want a U.S. arms embargo against Israel. On Ukraine, a poll early this year found that while less than one-fifth of Democrats wanted to end all military aid to Ukraine, upwards of half wanted to make it conditional on diplomatic talks, a stance firmly rejected by the administration.
Fond of telling the world about the imperative of a “rules-based order” to stop cross-border aggression, Biden and his secretary of State, Antony Blinken, rationalize breaking the rules at will. This year, in the Middle East, the U.S. launched bombing attacks on Yemen, Syria, and Iraq. Objections from leaders of the president’s party have not been audible.
The Democratic Party deserves its image as a party of war. To explore possibilities for how that might change will require a candid assessment of how that image came into focus in the 21st century.
Soon after Barack Obama became president in 2009, he made the “war on terror” explicitly bipartisan. With the Democratic Party in tow, he tripled the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, peaking at 100,000 in 2010—swiftly escalating a war inflicting widespread carnage in rural areas out of media sight.
In Iraq, the war effort persisted as the number of U.S. boots on the ground slowly declined. Meanwhile, Obama stepped up drone attacks in Yemen, Pakistan, and Somalia. And with disastrous consequences for Libya, Obama had the United States lead NATO’s seven-month bombing onslaught of that country in 2011, incubating terrorism that expanded far beyond its borders.
Today, the most powerful Democrats are well attuned to the dominant media messaging and the agendas of megadonors, establishment “think tanks,” Pentagon contractors, and their lobbyists swarming Capitol Hill. With the military budget approaching $1 trillion, along with multibillion-dollar weapons shipments to allied nations, corporations of varied sizes make huge profits from war. And revolving doors between arms sellers and government arms buyers never stop spinning.
Conditions may soon shift for the Democratic Party to start moving beyond its war culture. But that will require a willingness to challenge the assumptions of elected Democrats who are in sync with what Martin Luther King Jr. called “the madness of militarism.”
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House Progressives Say US 'Must Suspend Offensive Weapons' to Israel
"Failure to do so not only risks our leverage in ceasefire negotiations, it undermines our country's own national security and weakens America's commitment to human rights as a cornerstone of our foreign policy."
Dec 17, 2024
Twenty progressives in the U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday wrote to top Biden administration officials arguing that "the United States government must suspend offensive weapons" to Israel over its destruction of the Gaza Strip, citing federal and international law.
Led by Reps. Summer Lee (D-Pa.) and Greg Casar (D-Texas), the incoming Congressional Progressive Caucus chair, the lawmakers began by thanking U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin for their October 13 letter threatening to cut off weapons to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government if it did not dramatically improve humanitarian conditions in Gaza.
"However, despite your administration acknowledging that the Netanyahu government did not fully address the United States' concerns over Gaza and has failed to meet all of the conditions stipulated in this letter, the State Department decided not to take further action, including the suspension of offensive military assistance, to ensure full compliance," the Democrats wrote.
"We believe continuing to transfer offensive weapons to the Israeli government prolongs the suffering of the Palestinian people and risks our own national security by sending a message to the world that the U.S. will apply its laws, policies, and international law selectively," they continued. "Furthermore, a failure to act will put Israeli lives in danger by prolonging Netanyahu's war, isolating Israel on the international stage, and creating further instability in the region."
The new letter comes just over a month away from President Joe Biden leaving office and follows one from last week signed by 77 House Democrats—including Casar—that demanded "a full assessment of the status of Israel's compliance with all relevant U.S. policies and laws, including National Security Memorandum 20 (NSM-20) and Section 620I of the Foreign Assistance Act."
This one goes further, explicitly urging the Biden administration to suspend offensive military transfers and warning that "failure to do so not only risks our leverage in cease-fire negotiations, it undermines our country's own national security and weakens America's commitment to human rights as a cornerstone of our foreign policy."
"We remain committed to saving Palestinian and Israeli lives. This means doing everything possible to prioritize the release of hostages, secure a lasting cease-fire deal, and move toward long-term peace," the 20 progressives concluded.
In addition to Lee and Casar, Tuesday's letter was signed by Democratic Reps. Jamaal Bowman (N.Y.), Cori Bush (Mo.), Joaquin Castro (Texas), Lloyd Doggett (Texas), Veronica Escobar (Texas), Jesús "Chuy" García (Ill.), Al Green (Texas), Sara Jacobs (Calif.), Pramila Jayapal (Wash.), Hank Johnson (Ga.), Jim McGovern (Mass.), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (Minn.), Mark Pocan (Wis.), Ayanna Pressley (Mass.), Delia C. Ramirez (Ill.), Rashida Tlaib (Mich.), and Bonnie Watson Coleman (N.J.).
It came on the same day as a lawsuit filed by Palestinians and Palestinian Americans accusing the U.S. State Department of creating "unique, insurmountable processes to evade the Leahy Law requirement to sanction abusive Israeli units."
As of Tuesday, the 14-month Israeli assault on Gaza in retaliation for the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack has killed at least 45,059 people and wounded another 107,041, according to local officials. Israel's slaughter and starvation of Palestinian civilians have led to a genocide case at the International Court of Justice as well as International Criminal Court arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant.
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