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israeli genocide
40 Faith Leaders Lead Gaza Pray-In at House Minority Leader Jeffries' DC Office
"You cannot continue with business as usual while Israel commits genocide in Gaza with full U.S. backing. Cease-fire is the only moral choice, and the world is watching your next move."
Oct 24, 2023
As the death toll from Israel's relentless and indiscriminate bombardment of Gaza approached 5,800 Palestinians—including over 2,300 children—a group of around 40 faith leaders calling for an immediate cease-fire led a Tuesday afternoon pray-in at the Washington, D.C. office of U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.
The Christian, Jewish, and Muslim faith leaders and activists occupied the New York Democrat's office in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill, where demonstrators opened their action with prayers for the thousands of Palestinians who have been killed since October 7.
Participants "highlighted the devastating impact of each bomb that has been dropped and each life cut short through a reading of nearly 200 names of those killed by American-made weapons, including entire families across generations," the organizers of the pray-in said.
"The actions send a clear message to the Democratic Party: You cannot continue with business as usual while Israel commits genocide in Gaza with full U.S. backing," the coalition added. "Cease-fire is the only moral choice, and the world is watching your next move."
The activists raised mirrors with the phrase "The whole world is watching" painted on the back in a symbolic move to compel members of Congress "to take a long, hard look at themselves and reckon with their complicity in Israeli war crimes."
Prayer leaders included Rev. André Greene of Varick Memorial AME Zion; Rabbi Alissa Wise; Imam Suhaib Webb; Rev. Dayna Edwards of Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Congregation; Minister Jessica Anderson, a Howard University divinity student; and Rev. William T. Young of Covenant Baptist United Church of Christ.
Groups leading the event included the Adalah Justice Project; U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights; Jewish Voice for Peace; Dream Defenders; Rising Majority; and the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights, and Social Justice.
"Today we stood at the office of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries to ask for a cease-fire from the Israeli government because of the innocent deaths. We ask that he act swiftly in this moment of history," said Greene. "Peace must prevail! This is the moral thing to do!"
Wise said that "I am part of a growing, vocal segment of the American Jewish community that is pleading with our elected officials to not allow our grief to be used as justification for more deaths in Gaza."
"It is impossible to overstate the urgent need for Congress and the Biden administration to push for a cease-fire," the rabbi added. "Congressman Jeffries, as House minority leader, should play a key role in making that happen. Our prayers today were for peace, for a cease-fire, for justice before another life, another entire world, is lost."
Webb asserted that Democrats' failure to support a cease-fire "undermines their dedication to racial, economic, and environmental justice."
Like President Joe Biden, Jeffries has repeatedly declared his staunch support for Israel, despite a warning from hundreds of international legal scholars that Israeli forces may be committing genocide in Gaza.
According to a survey published last week by Data for Progress, 80% of Democratic and 68% of all U.S. voters believe the United States should support a cease-fire in Gaza.
However, as of Tuesday afternoon, only 17 other congressional Democrats had backed a resolution introduced last week by Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) calling on the Biden administration to push for a cease-fire.
Meanwhile, the Biden administration is asking Congress to approve $14 billion in new U.S. military aid for Israel—which already receives nearly $4 billion from American taxpayers annually, with almost no conditions attached.
"Every Democrat in Congress who is allowing Israel to carry out mass atrocities in Gaza should know that the world is watching," Adalah Justice Project executive director Sandra Tamari said.
"The only moral choice is cease-fire," Tamari added. "We will continue disrupting business as usual until Hakeem Jeffries and the Democratic Party stop this genocide."
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Amnesty Probe Finds 'Damning Evidence of War Crimes' by Israel in Gaza
"Our entire family has been destroyed," said one survivor of an Israeli bombing in the besieged Palestinian territory.
Oct 20, 2023
As Israel's assault on Gaza continued Friday with 4,100 Palestinians—including over 1,600 children—killed and at least 13,000 others wounded by relentless bombardment that's destroyed or damaged nearly a third of the besieged strip's homes, Amnesty International shared "damning evidence of war crimes as Israeli attacks wipe out entire families."
Amnesty interviewed survivors and eyewitnesses, analyzed satellite imagery, and verified photos and videos to investigate the Israeli aerial bombardments of Gaza, documenting "unlawful Israeli attacks, including indiscriminate attacks, which caused mass civilian casualties and must be investigated as war crimes."
Agnès Callamard, Amnesty's secretary-general, said in a statement: "In their stated intent to use all means to destroy Hamas, Israeli forces have shown a shocking disregard for civilian lives. They have pulverized street after street of residential buildings killing civilians on a mass scale and destroying essential infrastructure, while new restrictions mean Gaza is fast running out of water, medicine, fuel, and electricity."
"Testimonies from eyewitnesses and survivors highlighted, again and again, how Israeli attacks decimated Palestinian families, causing such destruction that surviving relatives have little but rubble to remember their loved ones by," she added.
Amnesty's report focused on five specific incidents the group said amount to war crimes, including the October 7 bombing of a three-story residential building in the al-Zeitoun neighborhood of Gaza City that killed 15 members of the al-Dos family, including seven children.
"Two bombs fell suddenly on top of the building and destroyed it," said Mohammad al-Dos, whose 5-year-old son Rakan was killed in the attack. "My wife and I were lucky to survive because we were staying on the top floor. She was nine months pregnant and gave birth at al-Shifa Hospital a day after the attack. Our entire family has been destroyed."
The report also details an airstrike on the Gaza City home of the Hijazi family that killed 12 relatives, including three children, as well as four neighbors. Amnesty found no evidence of any military targets in the area at the time of the attack.
According to the Palestinian Health Ministry, more than 50 entire families have been removed from the civil registry after most or all of their members were killed in Israeli attacks.
"The five cases presented barely scratch the surface of the horror that Amnesty has documented and illustrate the devastating impact that Israel's aerial bombardments are having on people in Gaza," Callamard said. "For 16 years, Israel's illegal blockade has made Gaza the world's biggest open-air prison—the international community must act now to prevent it becoming a giant graveyard."
"We are calling on Israeli forces to immediately end unlawful attacks in Gaza and ensure that they take all feasible precautions to minimize harm to civilians and damage to civilian objects," she added. "Israel's allies must immediately impose a comprehensive arms embargo given that serious violations under international law are being committed."
Other possible war crimes perpetrated by Israeli forces not specifically covered in the Amnesty report include but are not limited to collective punishment; an order to evacuate more than 1.1 million people from northern Gaza ahead of an expected ground invasion; Israel's stated focus on "damage and not accuracy" in its war on Hamas; bombing a civilian convoy heeding the evacuation order that killed around 70 people on a route Israeli authorities said was "safe"; use of white phosphorus munitions in a densely populated area; bombing schools and civilian shelters; and deadly attacks by Israeli settlers and soldiers on West Bank Palestinians.
Amnesty also said that Hamas and other Palestinian militants have committed war crimes including the deliberate killing of 1,400 Israelis—most of them civilians—during last week's surprise attack on Israel, the taking of around 200 Israeli and international hostages during the incursion, and the indiscriminate firing of rockets at civilian targets.
"Amnesty International is calling on Hamas and other armed groups to urgently release all civilian hostages, and to immediately stop firing indiscriminate rockets," said Callamard. "There can be no justification for the deliberate killing of civilians under any circumstances."
The Amnesty analysis came amid reports of possible fresh Israeli war crimes, including an airstrike on the Church of Saint Porphyrius, an 873-year-old Christian Orthodox house of worship crowded with people seeking shelter from the bombing. Officials said at least 18 people were killed in the attack, including numerous children.
The Palestinian Health Ministry also said Friday that at least 13 people including seven children were killed during a Thursday raid by around 200 Israeli troops on the Nur Shams refugee camp in Tulkarem in the northern part of the illegally occupied West Bank.
Many Palestinians have compared the mass killing and displacement they're experiencing today with the Nakba, the ethnic cleansing of over 750,000 Arabs—often by massacre or threat thereof—from Palestine during the establishment of the modern state of Israel 75 years ago.
Others—including hundreds of international legal scholars—have signed a public statement arguing that the Israeli military may be committing genocidal acts against Palestinians. Raz Segal, an Israeli Holocaust scholar, said earlier this week that Israel is committing "a textbook case of genocide" in Gaza.
Numerous Israeli leaders and U.S. supporters of Israel have been accused of using genocidal language while advocating for the destruction of Gaza and its people.
"We are sounding the alarm: There is an ongoing campaign by Israel resulting in crimes against humanity in Gaza," a group of United Nations humanitarian experts said on Thursday. "Considering statements made by Israeli political leaders and their allies, accompanied by military action in Gaza and escalation of arrests and killing in the West Bank, there is also a risk of genocide against the Palestinian people."
Earlier this week, lawyers with the U.S.-based Center for Constitutional Rights warned that the Biden administration is rendering itself complicit in possible genocide against Palestinians by providing weapons, political support, and diplomatic cover for Israel's war.
On Wednesday, the U.S. vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning violence against civilians in Israel and Gaza and calling for "humanitarian pauses" to allow aid to enter the enclave.
At least 18 progressive U.S. lawmakers, meanwhile, have endorsed a congressional resolution urging President Joe Biden to push Israel to pursue a cease-fire in Gaza.
U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres on Wednesday demanded an "immediate humanitarian cease-fire" to allow aid into Gaza. A U.S.-brokered deal to allow 20 truckloads of humanitarian aid into Gaza from Egypt was announced late Wednesday, but the aid remains stranded at the Egyptian border.
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