SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
jared moskowitz
80+ Groups Have Message for Biden: 'No War With Iran!'
"It is not in the national interest for the U.S. to be led into a war with Iran," the groups stressed.
Oct 03, 2024
On the same day that President Joe Biden said his administration and Israeli leaders are "discussing" an attack on Iranian oil infrastructure, a coalition of over 80 advocacy groups on Thursday implored the U.S. leader to "halt Israel's march toward regional war."
The National Iranian-American Council (NIAC) led the groups in a letter to Biden asserting that "it is not in the national interest for the U.S. to be led into a war with Iran" by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyhu's far-right government.
The letter's signers include Just Foreign Policy, Friends Committee on National Legislation, IfNotNow, U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights, CodePink, Peace Action, and the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.
"The primary ask behind this letter is that the Biden administration utilize the significant leverage it has to rein in Netanyahu as he continues to proceed with a consistently failed 'deescalation through escalation' approach throughout the region that has cost countless civilian lives," NIAC explained.
As stated in the letter, "It is in the strong national interest to utilize diplomacy, backed by full American leverage—including withholding further offensive weapons transfers to Israel's military—to move all the parties back from the brink and toward a cease-fire that ends the devastation of Gaza and Lebanon and reverses the slide to regional war."
"Moreover, we urge you to recognize and respect that Congress has not authorized military force against Iran or militias backed by Iran, and that any potential military action against Iran could only proceed following a debate and passage of a war authorization before entering our troops into any imminent hostilities in the region," the groups continued.
"President Biden has recently spoken of steps he has taken to wind down America's military footprint abroad," the letter adds. "However, unless he acts quickly and decisively through diplomacy, it appears that a new endless war will be his legacy."
The U.S. provides Israel with billions of dollars worth of armed aid and diplomatic cover for its yearlong war on Gaza, which has killed or wounded more than 148,000 Palestinians and is the subject of an International Court of Justice genocide case.
Fears of a full-blown regional war have mounted recently as Israel escalates hostilities by assassinating Hamas and Hezbollah leaders in Tehran and Beirut and as Israeli forces invade southern Lebanon accompanied by a bombing campaign that has left thousands of Lebanese dead and wounded.
Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based political and paramilitary group, has been engaged in limited cross-border projectile attacks on Israel in solidarity with Gaza, resulting in scores of deaths and injuries.
"The wars in the Middle East are just getting more and more dangerous, not only with Lebanon, but now with Iran," CodePink co-founder Medea Benjamin said Wednesday in a video urging Americans to call their members of Congress to demand peace. "Netanyahu has been trying to drag the U.S. into a war with Iran for years, and unfortunately, there are many members in this Congress... who are all too eager to go along with him."
Benjamin highlighted remarks by U.S. lawmakers including Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) who said Tuesday that attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities are "fair game."
"Let's remember it's Israel that has nuclear weapons, not Iran," said Benjamin, who added that attacking Iran would encourage Tehran's allies "to strike U.S. soldiers in the region."
Benjamin also noted Sen. Robert Wicker's (R-Miss.) call for regime change in Tehran—one of the latest in a long line of such calls over the past 45 years—and admonished U.S. officials for "forgetting the disastrous attempts of regime change that the U.S. did recently in Iraq, in Libya, in Afghanistan," and that "the present government in Iran is there precisely because of the U.S. overthrowing their democratically elected government in 1953."
"We want to live in peace," Benjamin added. "We want to stop supporting the genocide that Israel is carrying out... We don't want any more weapons sent to the region... We the American people don't want war with Iran. We want to live in peace."
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Genocide Denial': Tlaib, Lee Slam Bipartisan Effort to Suppress Gaza Death Toll
"They want to erase the Palestinians who are living," said Rep. Rashida Tlaib, "and now they are trying to erase the Palestinians who are dead."
Jun 27, 2024
Congresswomen Rashida Tlaib and Barbara Lee took to the House floor Wednesday to denounce an amendment to next year's State Department spending bill that would ban U.S. officials from using agency funding to cite casualty figures provided by the Gaza Ministry of Health.
Rep. Jared Moskowitz's (D-Fla.) amendment to H.R. 8771, the State Department Foreign Operations and Related Programs Appropriations Act of 2025, passed by a vote of 269-144 on Thursday with broad bipartisan support. The bipartisan measure—co-sponsored by Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.), Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.), Joe Wilson (R-S.C.), and Carol Miller (R-W.Va.)—bans State Department officials from using agency funds to cite any statistics from the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry.
"How absolutely unconscionable that my colleagues are offering an amendment to prevent our U.S. government from even citing the Palestinian death toll," said Tlaib (D-Mich.). "Since 1948... there has been a coordinated effort, especially in this chamber, to dehumanize Palestinians and erase Palestinians from existence."
"The ethnic cleansing of Palestinians did not end in 1948," Tlaib continued. "Today... we are witnessing the Israeli apartheid government carry out a genocide in Gaza, and in real time, and this amendment is an attempt to hide it."
Noting the "more than 15,000 Palestinian children" killed by Israel's bombs, bullets, and starvation-inducing siege, Tlaib said that "six children... are killed in Gaza every single hour."
"But Palestinians are not just numbers," she said. "Behind these numbers are real people—mothers, fathers, sons, daughters who have their lives stolen from them and their families torn apart, and we should not be trying to hide it."
"These are innocent children and babies who have been bombed in their tents, burned alive, dismembered, and deliberately starved to death. Where is our shared humanity in this chamber?" Tlaib asked. "There is so much anti-Palestinian racism in this chamber that my colleagues don't even want to acknowledge that Palestinians exist at all—not when they're alive, and now, not even when they're dead."
"It's absolutely disgusting," she said. "This is genocide denial."
"I won't remain silent as the only Palestinian-American serving in Congress, while folks attempt to erase those who were killed with our own weapons," the congresswoman vowed, holding up a thick ream of paper that she said was a list of Palestinians killed during the war, to be entered into the Congressional Record.
"The list is too long that I can't even submit it because of the text limit," she added.
Lee (D-Calif.) said that the Gaza Health Ministry's data is "often the only information available about what is happening on the ground in Gaza."
"This amendment would severely inhibit the United States government's ability to assess the situation," she warned.
"Israel has sealed Gaza's borders barring foreign journalists and others who can offer this reporting," Lee added. "The journalists and medical professionals who are there are unable to account for all of the bodies trapped under rubble and discovered in mass graves."
Lee noted that the Gaza Health Ministry's figures "have been found to be credible in the past, holding up to United Nations scrutiny, independent investigations, and even Israel's tallies."
Israel Defense Forces officials have also concurred with the roughly 2:1 civilian-to-militant fatality figure claimed by the Gaza Health Ministry.
In February, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin acknowledged that "over 25,000" Palestinian women and children had been killed in Gaza up to that date, although the Pentagon subsequently attempted to walk back his admission.
President Joe Biden has been accused of genocide denial for casting aspersions on Gaza Health Ministry casualty reports.
"The president paved the way for horrific amendments like these when he questioned Palestinian death counts that were deemed credible by independent human rights organizations and our own State Department," said Tariq Habash, a former U.S. Education Department official who resigned earlier this year over the Biden administration's support for Israel's war on Gaza.
Moskowitz—whose all-time top campaign contributor is the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)—contended Wednesday that "at the end of the day, the Gaza Ministry of Health is the Hamas Ministry of Health" while disdaining "the idea that the United States government would rely on a terrorist organization for statistics."
However, the State Department has repeatedly—and uncritically—cited the ministry's figures in past reports on previous Israeli attacks on Gaza.
In November, Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Barbara Leaf testified before Congress that the true death toll from the current Israeli war on Gaza is likely "even higher" than reported, as thousands of Palestinians are missing and presumed dead and buried beneath the rubble of hundreds of thousands of bombed-out buildings.
According to the Gaza Health Ministry, at least 37,765 Palestinians—mostly women and children—have been killed during Israel's 265-day assault on the embattled strip. More than 86,400 Gazans have been wounded, and over 11,000 others are missing.
Israel's conduct in the war is the subject of an ongoing genocide trial at the International Court of Justice. The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court is also seeking to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity including extermination and forced starvation, as well as three Hamas leaders for alleged extermination and other crimes.
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres also recently added Israel and Hamas—whose political wing has governed Gaza for a generation—to its "List of Shame" of countries and governments that kill and harm children.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Here Are the Members of Congress Who Dumped Bank Stocks Amid Fears of Financial Crisis
"We need to ban trading in individual stocks by members of Congress to begin to restore the public's faith in elected officials," said one critic.
Apr 20, 2023
As Democratic lawmakers renew their push for a stock trading ban on Capitol Hill, an analysis released Wednesday found that several members of Congress or their close relatives sold bank equities last month as fears of a financial crisis spread in the wake of Silicon Valley Bank's collapse.
On March 10, the day SVB failed, Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) sold $65,000 to $150,000 worth of Seacoast Banking Corporation shares, according to disclosure data compiled by Capitol Trades.
The New York Timesreported Wednesday that 48 hours after the Florida Democrat's stock sale, he "said in a television interview that he had attended a bipartisan congressional briefing on the tumult."
"And on March 13, as investors fretted over the failure of Silicon Valley Bank and two other, smaller banks, Seacoast Banking shares fell nearly 20%," the Times noted. "A spokesman for Mr. Moskowitz said in an email that the Seacoast share sales had been suggested by the congressman's financial adviser as a means to diversify his young children's holdings. Mr. Moskowitz said the congressional briefing on the bank crisis had taken place just before the television interview and after the shares were sold."
Moskowitz wasn't alone in selling his bank holdings as the run on SVB and its subsequent fall sparked concerns of contagion, prompting federal regulators to bail out the California-based firm—as well as Signature Bank—and effectively backstop the entire banking sector.
Citing Capitol Trades, the Times reported that Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) "sold shares of First Republic Bank, the large depositor that was rapidly losing both cash and clients, on March 15, the day before it received an industry bailout of $30 million."
"The wife and children of Rep. Ro Khanna, Democrat of California, sold First Republic shares that same day," the Times continued. "Rep. John Curtis, Republican of Utah, sold shares in First Republic from a joint account with his spouse on March 16, the day the industry bailout occurred. By that time, First Republic shares had already fallen nearly 80 percent from a February peak. The timing of the sales by those three lawmakers or their relatives meant that the sellers averted an additional price swoon that was still to come."
"People need to have confidence that policymakers are making decisions based on what's best for the country, not what's best for their stock portfolios."
Details of the lawmakers' suspiciously well-timed transactions came a day after Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) led a group of House and Senate members in introducing the Ending Trading and Holdings in Congressional Stocks (ETHICS) Act, legislation that would prohibit members of Congress, their spouses, and their dependent children from trading individual stocks.
Just one Republican, Rep. Michael Cloud of Texas, has cosponsored the new bill.
Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), a longtime proponent of banning stock trading in Congress and a cosponsor of the ETHICS Act, said during a Tuesday press conference that lawmakers "were trading bank stocks" amid widespread turmoil in the financial sector last month.
"We know what position members of Congress can be in, and we know that the temptations are too great for some members of Congress to resist," said Brown, the chair of the Senate Banking Committee. "That's why this legislation is so important. People need to have confidence that policymakers are making decisions based on what's best for the country, not what's best for their stock portfolios."
Earlier this month, The Wall Street Journalreported that two lawmakers—Reps. Nicole Malliotakis (R-N.Y.) and Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.)—"reported trades in bank stocks last month as they worked on government efforts to address fallout from two of the largest bank failures in American history."
"Malliotakis... bought stock in a regional bank before a subsidiary agreed to take over Signature Bank's deposits following its closure," the Journal reported. "Days before she bought the stock, she said she met with financial regulators to discuss the bank’s closure."
Blumenauer, who signed onto legislation that would impose stricter regulations on mid-sized banks, "reported selling between $1,001 and $15,000 in Bank of America stock on March 9, as panic was spreading and shares of the four biggest U.S. banks—including Bank of America—slid," the newspaper added. "A week after the sale, the stock was down 5%."
Adam Smith, vice president for democracy initiatives at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, tweeted Wednesday that "corrupt or not, stories like this make the institution look bad."
"We need to ban trading in individual stocks by members of Congress to begin to restore the public's faith in elected officials," Smith wrote.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular