Appalled at Funding Genocide, Over 2,000 US Taxpayers Turn to the UN for Redress

Taxpayers In opposition to Genocide (TAG), a nongovernmental grassroots mass motion comprised of greater than 2,000 taxpayers who’ve been protesting their congressional representatives’ votes to fund Israel’s genocide in Gaza, filed an unprecedented report with the UN Human Rights Council on April 7.

“We’ve got gone by way of all of the channels open to us in our effort to cease U.S. officers from utilizing our tax {dollars} to fund genocide. We’ve got referred to as and met with these officers, we have now peacefully protested, and we have now taken them to federal court docket. Thus far, none of this has stopped them,” Seth Donnelly, lead taxpayer plaintiff within the federal lawsuit, informed Truthout. “The genocide in Gaza rages on, fueled by our tax {dollars}. We’ve got now elevated our wrestle to the worldwide enviornment, beginning with our report back to the UN Human Rights Council, as one obligatory step in direction of countering the impunity of the U.S. authorities.”

The introduction to TAG’s report says:

The main target of this report is on violations of U.S. obligations by the U.S. Congress and govt in committing residents’ tax {dollars} — together with these of Palestinian-People whose households have been decimated in Gaza — to help what the Worldwide Court docket of Justice (ICJ) and Worldwide Prison Court docket (ICC) in addition to Amnesty Worldwide, Human Rights Watch, Medecins Sans Frontieres, and lots of different human rights organizations have acknowledged as an unfolding genocide in Gaza.

Tarik Kanaana, TAG’s lead contact for the report and a Palestinian activist in Northern California, informed Truthout, “Since October 2023, our folks in Gaza have suffered unimaginable horrors by the hands of Israel. Our households, our moms and dads, our little kids, our siblings, our new child kids, our grandmothers and grandfathers, our mates and neighbors have been slaughtered, tortured to dying, burned alive, starved and executed and buried in shallow graves.” He added, “Those that survived dying are going through famine and illness and will probably be scarred, each bodily and mentally, for generations to come back. Israel has, on the similar time, destroyed cultural, instructional, medical and municipal establishments.”

TAG’s report outlines how Israel’s genocide in opposition to the Palestinians wouldn’t be doable with out the help of the U.S., which funds the overwhelming majority of weapons used to commit it. The report prices U.S. officers with immediately taking part within the genocide in Gaza. It offers proof of how each the Biden and Trump administrations, along with particular members of Congress, used U.S. tax {dollars} to fund struggle crimes and genocide, in violation of the U.S. Structure, federal legal guidelines and the Conference on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

“Israel’s genocidal struggle in opposition to the Palestinian folks has solely been doable with help and assist from its allies within the West, particularly the US. The U.S. authorities — all three branches — is a full accomplice and bears accountability for this genocide,” Kanaana informed Truthout. “The American folks haven’t any recourse inside the U.S. political or judicial methods relating to their authorities’s crimes in opposition to the folks of the world. We, People who can not settle for our authorities’s actions, are pressured to attraction to worldwide our bodies to affect our personal authorities to do what its residents overwhelmingly need.”

Pivot to the Worldwide Area After U.S. Court docket Dismissal

In December, after their congressmembers repeatedly refused to fulfill with them, the taxpayers filed a federal lawsuit, Seth Donnelly et. al. v. Mike Thompson, and Jared Huffman, in opposition to two Democratic congressmembers, alleging that they illegally abused their “tax and spend authority” on April 20, 2024, once they voted for the Israel Safety Supplemental Appropriations Act, which approved a further $26.38 billion in navy help to Israel. Article I, Part 8 of the U.S. Structure specifies that funds could be allotted just for debt reimbursement, “the final welfare” or “widespread protection.” Funding a recognized genocide doesn’t qualify because the “common welfare” of anybody or the “widespread protection” of the U.S., the swimsuit alleged. It additionally charged that the congressmembers violated the Genocide Conference and several other U.S. legal guidelines.

Donnelly v. Thompson was dismissed in February on the grounds that it posed a “non-justiciable political query” to the court docket. That signifies that solely the 2 political branches — the manager and the legislative, not the judiciary — can determine overseas coverage points.

“When TAG’s federal lawsuit was dismissed in February, they determined to pivot to the worldwide enviornment to amplify their grievance that no department of the U.S. authorities is keen to implement the Genocide Conference — or some other ratified human rights or humanitarian regulation treaty, making U.S. taxpayers and constituents complicit within the Gaza genocide,” Susan Scott, a member of the Nationwide Attorneys Guild Worldwide Committee and one of many report’s lead authors, informed Truthout.

TAG’s report will probably be included within the Common Periodic Overview (UPR) of the U.S. human rights report. The UPR is a singular mechanism of the Human Rights Council that calls on every of the 193 UN member states to undergo a peer overview of its human rights report each 4.5 years. Every state receives reviews and suggestions from different UN member states and civil society, together with nongovernmental organizations, for enchancment. “We stay up for the ‘interactive dialogue’ listening to in Geneva between the U.S. and different member states in November,” Scott informed Truthout.

Funding Israel’s Genocide Violates the U.S. Structure and Federal Regulation

Along with violating the Structure’s “tax and spend” authority, the U.S. Congress is violating federal statutes, TAG’s report states. They embody the Leahy Regulation, which requires the State Division to bar U.S. help to overseas safety forces accountable for gross violations of human rights. However relating to Israel, the State Division appears the opposite means. The TAG report quotes Stephen Rickard, a former State Division official and former senior employees for the Senate International Relations Committee, who helped cross the Leahy Regulation and monitored its implementation for greater than 25 years. He said, “There is just one nation the place the Division of State has a ‘see no evil, hear no evil’ coverage: Israel.”

“Trump has enthusiastically provided $12 billion in extra weapons, and the U.S. Congress is at the moment within the means of allocating one more $8 billion in weapons gross sales to Israel,” the report says.

Charging that the U.S. “is within the grip of a ‘trifecta’ of management” which incorporates all three branches of the federal government, the report notes that “voters who oppose U.S help for genocide and apartheid (the bulk) are left with no treatment however marching within the streets and shaming their management in worldwide fora.”

The report additionally paperwork the Trump administration’s repression (within the identify of combating “antisemitism”) of those that protest using their tax {dollars} to fund genocide and who help Palestinian rights. College students and school who’re lawfully within the nation are having their visas revoked. Even lawful everlasting residents have been focused. Universities are threatened with lack of federal funding in the event that they refuse to crack down on political protest. Criticism of Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians is conflated with hatred of Jews. That is the “Palestine exception” to free speech.

“The federal government repression and focusing on of those that converse out in regards to the ongoing genocide has created a chilling impact on this very UPR submission,” the report states. “In reality, six of the TAG plaintiffs, together with a number of naturalized residents, who made statements for Annex A have withdrawn them, and one of many endorsing organizations withdrew for concern of retaliation.”

Listed below are a few of the statements written by taxpayer plaintiffs which are included in Annex A:

Judith Inexperienced, a Jewish girl: “That descendants of those that did or didn’t survive the Holocaust are actually doing to Palestinians what was carried out to their ancestors is horrifying.”

Haleh Sheikholeslami: “As a doctor dedicated to preserving life, it has been excruciating to give attention to treating sufferers right here whereas witnessing the mass bombing and killing of harmless kids and civilians in Gaza and Lebanon — acts funded by my very own authorities. This genocide violates each fiber of my being as a human and a healer.”

Well being care employee Ariel Mihic: “Watching day by day as hospitals are bombed and dismantled, and healthcare employees are focused and killed has been a dystopian nightmare of a rustic set on destroying the infrastructure and therapeutic facilities of a whole folks.”

Nida Liftawiya, a Palestinian refugee: “American tax {dollars} ought to have been allotted for public companies and important authorities capabilities for the American folks and never misappropriated for illegal functions contributing to the ethnic cleaning of my homeland and folks.”

Elliot Helman: “Working for social justice is a core element of my id as a Jew. There’s a well-known instructing within the Jewish custom that’s stated to encapsulate all of our teachings and scriptures: That which is abhorrent to you, don’t do to others; now go and study. … That is what informs my rejection of Zionism and Israel because the unique homeland of the Jewish folks, and that is what motivates my dedication to the pursuit of justice. … This is the reason … I combat for justice for the Palestinian folks.”

TAG’s report recommends that the U.S. authorities:

* Cease funding genocide and struggle crimes in violation of U.S. and worldwide regulation;

* Cease prosecuting, persecuting, deporting and threatening advocates for Palestinian self-determination and protesters in opposition to genocide;

* Institute efficient judicial safeguards in opposition to U.S. funding and help of genocide and struggle crimes;

* Set up a Nationwide Human Rights Institute to coach legislators, judges and federal company administrators in worldwide humanitarian and human rights regulation and the supremacy of all U.S.-ratified human rights treaties underneath Article VI of the U.S. Structure;

* Honor the ideas of educational freedom: Cease pressuring universities to police the protected speech of college and college students; and don’t threaten to chop funding in pursuit of a political agenda that violates worldwide regulation;

* Take all obligatory measures to make sure impartial and efficient oversight of U.S. treaty obligations;

* Signal and ratify the Rome Statute for the Worldwide Prison Court docket, eradicate sanctions in opposition to court docket personnel and encourage cooperation with ICC investigations.

The Nationwide Attorneys Guild Worldwide Committee and the Worldwide Affiliation of Democratic Attorneys contributed to TAG’s report. It was endorsed by The Ladies’s Worldwide League for Peace and Freedom–U.S. Part, CODEPINK, Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace, and Roots Motion.

Within the subsequent few weeks, TAG may also file a petition with the Inter-American Fee on Human Rights, a judicial organ of the Group of American States which endeavors to advertise and defend human rights within the American hemisphere. “We’re turning to the Inter-American Fee on Human Rights as a result of U.S. courts have shut their doorways to victims of Israel’s crimes and to these in search of to carry the U.S. accountable for its help,” Huwaida Arraf, the lead legal professional making ready the petition, informed Truthout.