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sanctions
45 House Dems Help GOP Pass ICC Sanctions Bill to 'Protect Genocidal Maniac'
"As fires rage across Los Angeles, the priority of American officials is to sanction the ICC," said one critic.
Jan 09, 2025
Forty-five congressional Democrats on Thursday voted with the U.S. House of Representatives' Republican majority in favor of legislation to sanction International Criminal Court officials following the tribunal's issuance of arrest warrants for Israel's prime minister and his former defense chief for alleged crimes against humanity in Gaza.
House lawmakers voted 243-140 in favor of H.R. 23, the Illegitimate Court Counteraction Act. Introduced by Reps. Chip Roy (R-Texas) and Brian Mast (R-Fla.), the bill would "impose sanctions with respect to the International Criminal Court (ICC) engaged in any effort to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute any protected person of the United States and its allies."
In November, the ICC issued warrants for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, his former defense minister, "for crimes against humanity and war crimes" in Gaza. According to Gaza officials, Israel's 15-month assault and "complete siege" of the embattled coastal enclave have left more than 165,000 Palestinians dead, wounded, or missing, and over 2 million others forcibly displaced, starved, or sickened.
The ICC also ordered the arrest of Hamas leader Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri for crimes against humanity and war crimes allegedly committed during the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel and subsequent kidnapping and imprisonment of more than 250 people.
Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.)—who according to AIPAC Tracker is the top congressional recipient of campaign contributions from pro-Israel lobbyists including the American Israel Public Affairs Committee—said on social media ahead of Thursday's vote that "the ICC's decision to issue arrest warrants against the leadership of Israel represents the weaponization of international law at its most egregious."
Mast, the new chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, accused the ICC of "legitimizing the false accusations of Israeli war crimes... in order to stop the overwhelming success of Israeli military operations."
However, Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), one of 140 Democrats who voted against the bill, said on social media that "human rights lawyers and others documenting the worst atrocities committed on this planet are heroes who should be celebrated—not punished when the war criminals they pursue are allies of the United States."
"The way this bill is written, Israeli survivors of the Hamas massacres on October 7th who gave testimony about the crimes they endured could be sanctioned for cooperating with the ICC," she continued. "This bill would also be a significant blow to efforts to secure justice for [Russian President Vladimir] Putin's victims in Ukraine, and for the victims of both genocides in Darfur,
including the one that is ongoing."
"However my colleagues feel about the ICC or how they feel about Netanyahu's atrocities in Gaza, the passage of this bill is a profound mistake," Omar added. "For those reasons, I opposed this bill."
Amnesty International USA called the vote "deeply disappointing."
"The ICC is part of a global system of international justice of which the U.S. was a chief architect at Nuremberg and beyond," added Amnesty—whose main international organization recently accused Israel of genocide and suspended its Israeli branch for alleged anti-Palestinian bigotry. "If the Senate follows suit, it will do grave harm to the interests of all victims globally and to the U.S. government's ability to champion human rights and the cause of justice."
The United States—which supports Israel with tens of billions of dollars in armed aid and diplomatic cover—reportedly worked with Israel to thwart the ICC's effort to arrest Israeli leaders. The U.S. also opposes the South African-led genocide case against Israel currently before the International Court of Justice.
Outgoing U.S. President Joe Biden has condemned the ICC's effort to arrest Netanyahu and Gallant—who despite being a fugitive from justice was warmly welcomed at the White House last month.
During his first term, Republican U.S. President-elect Donald Trump sanctioned top ICC officials and banned them from entering the United States.
Rep. Mike Waltz (R-Fla.), Trump's pick for national security adviser, has threatened a "strong response" to the ICC in retaliation for seeking to arrest the Israeli leaders.
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8 Reasons Why Marco Rubio Would Be a Disastrous Secretary of State
In most hot spots around the world, Rubio is likely to make conflicts even hotter, or start new ones.
Nov 18, 2024
Of all U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s choices for his foreign policy team, Marco Rubio is the least controversial to the neoconservative foreign policy establishment in Washington, and the most certain to provide continuity with all that is wrong with U.S. foreign policy, from Cuba to the Middle East to China.
The only area where there might be some hope for ending a war is Ukraine, where Rubio has come close to Trump’s position, praising Ukraine for standing up to Russia, but recognizing that the U.S. is funding a deadly “stalemate war” that needs to be “brought to a conclusion.”
But in all the other hot spots around the world, Rubio is likely to make conflicts even hotter, or start new ones.
1. His Obsession With Regime Change in Cuba Will Sink any Chance of Better Relations With the Island
Like other Cuban-American politicians, Marco Rubio has built his career on vilifying the Cuban Revolution and trying to economically strangle and starve into submission the people of his parents’ homeland.
It is ironic, therefore, that his parents left Cuba before the revolution, during the U.S.-backed dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, whose executioners, secret police, and death squads killed an estimated 20,000 people, according to the CIA, leading to a wildly popular revolution in 1959.
While Rubio’s virulent anti-leftist stands have served him well in climbing to senior positions in the U.S. government, and now into Trump’s inner circle, his disdain for Latin American sovereignty bodes ill for U.S. relations with the region.
When former President Barack Obama began to restore relations with Cuba in 2014, Rubio swore to do “everything possible” to obstruct and reverse that policy. In May 2024, Rubio reiterated his zero tolerance for any kind of social or economic contacts between the U.S. and Cuba, claiming that any easing of the U.S. blockade will only “strengthen the oppressive regime and undermine the opposition... Until there is freedom in Cuba, the United States must maintain a firm stance.”
In 2024 Rubio also introduced legislation to ensure that Cuba would remain on the U.S. “State Sponsor of Terrorism List,” imposing sanctions that cut Cuba off from the U.S.-dominated Western banking system.
These measures to destroy the Cuban economy have led to a massive wave of migration in the past two years. But when the U.S. Coast Guard tried to coordinate with their Cuban counterparts, Rubio introduced legislation to prohibit such interaction. While Trump has vowed to stem immigration, his secretary of state wants to crush Cuba’s economy, forcing people to abandon the island and set sail for the United States.
2. Applying His Anti-Cuba Template to the Rest of Latin America Will Make Enemies of More of Our Neighbors
Rubio’s disdain for his ancestral home in Cuba has served him so well as an American politician that he has extended it to the rest of Latin America. He has sided with extreme right-wing politicians like Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and Javier Milei in Argentina, and rails against progressive ones, from Brazil’s Ignacio Lula da Silva to Mexico’s popular former President Lopez Obrador, whom he called “an apologist for tyranny” for supporting other leftist governments.
In Venezuela, he has promoted brutal sanctions and regime change plots to topple the government of Nicolas Maduro. In 2019 he was one of the architects of Trump’s failed policy of recognizing opposition figure Juan Guaido as president. He has also advocated for sanctions and regime change in Nicaragua.
In March 2023, Rubio urged President Joe Biden to impose sanctions on Bolivia for prosecuting leaders of a 2019 U.S.-backed coup that led to massacres that killed at least 21 people.
Rubio also condemned the government of Honduras for withdrawing from an extradition treaty with the United States this past August, in response to decades of U.S. interference that had turned Honduras into a narco-state riven by poverty, gang violence, and mass emigration, until the election of democratic socialist President Xiomara Castro in 2022.
Rubio’s major concern about Latin America now seems to be the influence of China, which has become the leading trade partner of most Latin American countries. Unlike the U.S., China focuses on economic benefits and not internal politics, while American politicians like Marco Rubio still see Latin America as the U.S. “backyard.”
While Rubio’s virulent anti-leftist stands have served him well in climbing to senior positions in the U.S. government, and now into Trump’s inner circle, his disdain for Latin American sovereignty bodes ill for U.S. relations with the region.
3. He Believes the U.S. and Israel Can Do No Wrong, and That God Has Given Palestine to Israel
Despite the massive death toll in Gaza and global condemnation of Israel’s genocide, Rubio still perpetuates the myth that “Israel takes extraordinary steps to avoid civilian losses” and that innocent people die in Gaza because Hamas has deliberated placed them in the way and used them as human shields. The problem, he says, is “an enemy that doesn’t value human life.”
When asked by CODEPINK in November 2024 if he would support a cease-fire, Rubio replied, “On the contrary. I want them to destroy every element of Hamas they can get their hands on. These people are vicious animals.”
There are few times in this past year that the Biden administration has tried to restrain Israel, but when Biden begged Israel not to send troops into the southern city of Rafah, Rubio said that was like telling the Allied forces in World War II not to attack Berlin to get Hitler.
Marco Rubio expects Americans to believe that it is not genocide itself, but protests against genocide, that are a complete breakdown of law and order.
In a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken in August 2024, Rubio criticized the Biden administration’s decision to sanction Israeli settlers linked to anti-Palestinian violence in the occupied West Bank.
“Israel has consistently sought peace with the Palestinians. It is unfortunate that the Palestinians, whether it be the Palestinian Authority or FTOs [Foreign Terrorist Organisations] such as Hamas, have rejected such overtures,” Rubio wrote. “Israelis rightfully living in their historic homeland are not the impediment to peace; the Palestinians are,” he added.
No country besides Israel subscribes to the idea that its borders should be based on 2,000-year-old religious scriptures, and that it has a God-given right to displace or exterminate people who have lived there since then to reconquer its ancient homeland. The United States will find itself extraordinarily isolated from the rest of the world if Rubio tries to assert that as a matter of U.S. policy.
4. His Deep-Seated Enmity Toward Iran Will Fuel Israel’s War on Its Neighbors, and May Lead to a U.S. War With Iran
Rubio is obsessed with Iran. He claims that the central cause of violence and suffering in the Middle East is not Israeli policy but “Iran’s ambition to be a regional hegemonic power.” He says that Iran’s goal in the Middle East is to “seek to drive America out of the region and then destroy Israel.”
He has been a proponent of maximum pressure on Iran, including a call for more and more sanctions. He believes the U.S. should not reenter the Iran nuclear deal, saying: “We must not trade away U.S. and Israeli security for vague commitments from a terrorist-sponsoring regime that has killed Americans and threatens to annihilate Israel.”
Rubio calls Lebanon’s Hezbollah a “full-blown agent of Iran right on Israel’s border” and that wiping out Hezbollah’s leadership, along with entire neighborhoods full of civilians, is a “service to humanity.” He alleges that Iran has control over Iraq, Syria, the Houthis in Yemen, and is a threat to Jordan. He claims that “Iran has put a noose around Israel,” and says that the goal of U.S. policy should be regime change in Iran, which would set the stage for war.
While there will hopefully be leaders in the Pentagon who will caution Donald Trump about the perils of a war with Iran, Rubio will not be a voice of reason.
5. He Is Beholden to Big Money, From the Weapons Industry to the Israel Lobby
Open Secrets reports that Rubio has received over a million dollars in campaign contributions from pro-Israel groups during his career. The Pro-Israel America PAC was his single largest campaign contributor over the last five years. When he last ran for reelection in 2022, he was the third largest recipient of funding by pro-Israel groups in the Senate, taking in $367,000 from them for that campaign.
Rubio was also the fourth largest recipient of funding from the “defense” industry in the Senate for the 2022 cycle, receiving $196,000. Altogether, the weapons industry has invested $663,000 in his congressional career.
Rubio is clearly beholden to the U.S. arms industry, and even more so to the Israel lobby, which has been one of his largest sources of campaign funding. This has placed him in the vanguard of Congress’s blind, unconditional support for Israel and subservience to Israeli narratives and propaganda, making it unlikely that he will ever challenge the ongoing extermination of the Palestinian people or their expulsion from their homeland.
6. He’s so Antagonistic Toward China That China Has Sanctioned Him—Twice!
Speaking at the Heritage Foundation in 2022, Rubio said: “The gravest threat facing America today, the challenge that will define this century and every generation represented here, is not climate change, the pandemic, or the left's version of social justice. The threat that will define this century is China."
It will be hard for our nation’s “top diplomat” to ease tensions with a country he has so maligned. He antagonized China by co-sponsoring the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which allows the U.S. to bar Chinese imports over alleged Uyghur rights abuses, abuses that China denies and independent researchers question. In fact, Rubio has gone so far as to accuse China of a “grotesque campaign of genocide” against the Uyghurs.
His underlying attitude to foreign relations is, like Trump’s, that the United States must get its way or else, and that other countries who won’t submit must be coerced, threatened, couped, bombed, or invaded.
On Taiwan, he has not only introduced legislation to increase military aid to the island, but actually supports Taiwanese independence—a dangerous deviation from the U.S. government's long-standing One China approach.
The Chinese responded to Rubio by sanctioning him, not once but twice—once regarding the Uyghurs and once for his support of Hong Kong protests. Unless China lifts the sanctions, he would be the first U.S. secretary of state to be banned from even visiting China.
Analysts expect China to try to sidestep Rubio and engage directly with Trump and other senior officials. Steve Tsang, the director of the China Institute at the U.K.’s School of Oriental and African Studies, told Reuters, “If that doesn't work, then I think we're going to get into a much more regular escalation of a bad relationship.”
7. Rubio Knows Sanctions Are a Trap, But He Doesn’t Know How to Escape
Rubio is a leading advocate of unilateral economic sanctions, which are illegal under international law, and which the United Nations and other countries refer to as “unilateral economic coercive measures.”
The United States has used these measures so widely and wildly that they now impact a third of the world’s population. U.S. officials, from Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to Rubio himself, have warned that using the U.S. financial system and the dollar’s reserve currency status as weapons against other countries is driving the rest of the world to conduct trade in other currencies and develop alternative financial systems.
In March 2023, Rubio complained on Fox News, “We won’t have to talk sanctions in five years, because there will be so many countries transacting in currencies other than the dollar, that we won’t have the ability to sanction them.”
And yet Rubio has continued to be a leading sponsor of sanctions bills in the Senate, including new sanctions on Iran in January 2024 and a bill in July to sanction foreign banks that participate in alternative financial systems.
So, while other countries develop new financial and trading systems to escape abusive, illegal U.S. sanctions, the nominee for secretary of state remains caught in the same sanctions trap that he complained about on Fox.
8. He Wants to Crack Down on U.S. Free Speech
Rubio wants to curtail the right to free speech enshrined in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. In May, he described campus protests against Israel as a “complete breakdown of law and order.”
Rubio claimed to be speaking up for other students at American universities. “[They] paid a lot of money to go to these schools, [but are being disrupted by] a few thousand antisemitic zombies who have been brainwashed by two decades of indoctrination in the belief that the world is divided between victimizers and victims, and that the victimizers in this particular case, the ones that are oppressing people, are Jews in Israel,” said Rubio.
The Florida senator has said he supports Trump’s plan to deport foreign students who engage in pro-Palestinian campus protests. In April, he called for punishing supporters of the Israel boycott movement as part of efforts to counter antisemitism, falsely equating any attempt to respond to Israel’s international crimes with antisemitism.
And what about those crimes, which the students are protesting? After visiting Israel in May, Rubio wrote an article for National Review, in which he never mentioned the thousands of civilians Israel has killed, and instead blamed Iran, Biden, and “morally corrupt international institutions” for the crisis.
Marco Rubio expects Americans to believe that it is not genocide itself, but protests against genocide, that are a complete breakdown of law and order. He couldn’t be more wrong if he tried.
Students are not Rubio’s only target. In August 2023, he alleged that certain “far-left and antisemitic entities” may have violated the Foreign Assistance Registration Act by their ties to China. He called for a Justice Department investigation into 18 groups, starting with CODEPINK. These unfounded claims of China connections are only meant to intimidate legitimate groups that are exercising their free speech rights.
Conclusion
On each of these issues, Rubio has shown no sign of understanding the difference between domestic politics and diplomacy. Whether he’s talking about Cuba, Palestine, Iran, or China, or even about CODEPINK, all his supposedly tough positions are based on cynically mischaracterizing the actions and motivations of his enemies and then attacking the “straw man” he has falsely set up.
Unscrupulous politicians often get away with that, and Rubio has made it his signature tactic because it works so well for him in American politics. But that will not work if and when he sits down to negotiate with other world leaders as U.S. secretary of state.
His underlying attitude to foreign relations is, like Trump’s, that the United States must get its way or else, and that other countries who won’t submit must be coerced, threatened, couped, bombed, or invaded. This makes Rubio just as ill-equipped as Antony Blinken to conduct diplomacy, improve U.S. relations with other countries, or resolve disputes and conflicts peacefully, as the U.N. Charter requires.
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'Two Genocidaires v. the World': US, Israel Oppose Lifting Cuba Blockade
"The world has spoken—it's time for the U.S. to listen and lift the blockade."
Oct 30, 2024
The United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday once again overwhelmingly urged the U.S. government to end its decadeslong blockade on Cuba, with just the United States and Israel voting against the measure and Moldova abstaining.
The UNGA's other 187 members present voted to adopt the nonbinding resolution on "the necessity of ending the economic, commercial, and financial embargo imposed by the United States" against the Caribbean island.
This is the 32nd straight year that the U.N. body has approved a resolution against the embargo that began in 1962.
"The U.S. and Israel stand isolated as the only two votes against," Democratic Socialists of America's International Committee said after the Wednesday vote. "The world has spoken—it's time for the U.S. to listen and lift the blockade."
Though a few other nations have
opposed the resolution over the years, Michael Galant of Progressive International and the Center for Economic and Policy Research noted that this vote was "two genocidaires v. the world."
Israel faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its yearlong assault of the Gaza Strip, which has killed at least 43,163 Palestinians and injured another 101,510, according to local officials in the Hamas-governed enclave. The U.S. Congress and Biden administration have given Israel billions of dollars in weapons and opposed U.N. cease-fire resolutions.
CodePink's Medea Benjamin responded to the Wednesday vote with a video shared on social media, saying that Israel "loves blockades, because it's doing its own blockade of Gaza," and "is dependent on the United States to carry out its genocide."
"Now this is not just some idle vote," she said of the approved resolution. "This blockade that the U.S. maintains is a form of economic warfare. It's no exaggeration to say that now, when there is an economic crisis in Cuba, the U.S. blockade, which keeps Cuba from using the financial markets, from having normal trade with countries all over the world, is actually leading to deaths, leading to people going hungry, leading to people lacking food and medicine that are essential for their lives."
"And that's why the United States must be condemned for this ongoing horrific, inhumane, and illegal blockade," Benjamin added.
Cuba's representative delivered similar remarks to the UNGA on Wednesday. As
Reutersreported:
Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez said in a speech before the assembly that what is often referred to as the U.S. trade embargo is a "blockade" because the web of laws and regulations complicate financial transactions and the acquisition of goods and services not just from the United States but internationally.
"The blockade against Cuba is an economic, financial, and trade war which qualifies as genocide," said Rodriguez, charging the U.S. policies were deliberately aimed at promoting suffering among the Cuban people to force change in the government.
Some international observers praised the countries who did condemn the blockade. Middle East expert Assal Rad declared, "This is the real international community."
Manolo De Los Santos, a founder of the People's Forum and a researcher at Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, said that "this overwhelming consensus is in contrast with the indifference of the United States, which continues to deny any responsibility for sanctions while tightening its stranglehold on Cuba."
Earlier this month, the People's Forum published a letter in The New York Times to U.S. President Joe Biden, warning that he has "exactly 90 days to reverse" former Republican President Donald Trump's "brutal policy on Cuba."
Biden was vice president a decade ago when then-President Barack Obama "opened a hopeful new chapter in U.S.-Cuba relations by taking the first steps toward normalization," the letter details. "People in both countries were optimistic that Cuba and the United States could become neighbors rather than Cold War enemies. However, Trump dismantled that policy, imposing pain and suffering on the Cuban people."
"Removing the state sponsors of terrorism designation would allow Cuba to engage in financial transactions and restore its electrical grid, as well as address shortages of food and medicine to alleviate the immense hardship faced by the Cuban people, who have endured over 62 years of economic strife under the embargo," the letter adds. "It's time to act. Let Cuba live!"
Biden faced similar pressure in August, when hundreds of legal experts and groups called on him "to comply with existing international law by ending the use of broad unilateral coercive measures" particularly in "cases such as Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria, and Venezuela."
The U.N. vote comes as early voting is underway for the November 5 election in which Trump is facing Biden's vice president, Kamala Harris.
Neither campaign provided details on each candidate's position when contacted by Reuters earlier this week, though Morgan Finkelstein, national security spokesperson for Harris, said that the Democrat "stands with the people of Cuba as they fight for their rights after decades of repression and economic suffering at the hands of the communist regime" and "will stand up to all authoritarians—including the very leaders that Trump has praised and embraced."
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