A Palestinian man carries a dead child that was found under the rubble of a destroyed building, following Israeli airstrikes in Jabaliya refugee camp, northern Gaza Strip, November 1, 2023
ACTIVISTS in the United States called on Thursday for a Global Shutdown for Palestine on November 9.
Since Israel began its brutal bombardment of Gaza, activists have been mobilising to demand an immediate ceasefire, an end to all aid to Israel and a lifting of the siege on Gaza which many experts have described as a war crime.
Activists from organisations such as the Palestinian Youth Movement, National Students for Justice in Palestine, ANSWER Coalition, The People’s Forum, and International Peoples’ Assembly have called for direct action such as “marches, walk-outs, sit-ins and strikes directed at the politicians, businesses, and workplaces that fund, invest in and collaborate with Israeli genocide and occupation.”
Palestinian poet and writer Mohammed el-Kurd said: “We must not wait for history to pass us by. Everyone, regardless identity or sector, must heed the calls coming from the Palestinian streets and take action against genocide.
Yara Shoufani, a member of the Palestinian Youth Movement, said: “We are calling for a total anti-normalisation of zionism.
“We will continue to fight until any and all material support for zionism is made unsustainable and ends.”
We cannot vote for the re-election of a U.S. president who enables Israel’s campaign of mass starvation, bombardment, and murder of Palestinian civilians.
As an anti-Zionist Jew and a lifelong Democrat, I have signed a public statement that bluntly declares, “We will not vote for Joe Biden in the 2024 presidential elections if he continues to support Israel’s ethnic cleansing and genocide of the more than 2 million Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip.”
In signing this statement, I join with over 1,000 Arab, Muslim, Jewish, Christian and allied U.S. voters who have signed the statement to express our disgust with the horrifying policies being embraced by President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. As the statement goes on to say, “We cannot vote for the re-election of a U.S. president who enables Israel’s campaign of mass starvation, bombardment, and murder of Palestinian civilians in Gaza.” Please check it out and join me in signing.
Biden’s actions in blindly supporting Israel’s campaign of ethnic cleansing and genocide, along with the plan to give Israel another $14 BILLION in military aid, are the last straw.
In addition to always having voted for Democrats, I have also volunteered for and donated money to many Democratic campaigns. In primary campaigns, I have focused my support on brave candidates like Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, and Cori Bush. I have done so, not only because of their support for Palestinian rights, but for their overall progressive positions on many issues that I am concerned about. But all too often, I have had to bite my tongue and vote for a Democrat as the least worst candidate in a general election. However, enough is enough. The administration has gone too far by failing to protect Palestinian civilians from a continuing genocide. It is now time to step up and tell the Democratic Party that nominating Biden and Harris for 2024 is both a losing strategy and an act of great immorality.
I too mourn for the many civilians who have been killed in Israel and Gaza, and I demand that all war crimes be vigorously prosecuted. As my late mother often said, “Two wrongs don’t make a right,” yet too many elected leaders ignore Israel’s brutality while condemning the Palestinian victims. Indeed history is clear that for the last 75 years, Israel has been exempted from responsibility for its frequent violations of Palestinian rights, as it uses lethal violence to confiscate Palestinian land and hand it over to Israeli Jews.
We know that Hillary Clinton lost because many Democrats didn’t come out and vote. Biden and Harris won because many of us progressives held our noses and voted for them as the only alternative to former President Donald Trump. However, Biden’s actions in blindly supporting Israel’s campaign of ethnic cleansing and genocide, along with the plan to give Israel another $14 BILLION in military aid, are the last straw.
While elected officials like Biden, Harris, Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, and Nancy Pelosi spout Zionist talking points, many Americans are demanding an end to Israel’s genocide in Gaza and an end to U.S. military aid to Israel. In a recent Data for Progress poll, 80% of Democrats and 66% of likely voters want the president to call for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza. A CBS News poll showed that 53% of Democrats oppose sending more weapons to Israel, and 70% support U.S. aid to Gaza.
America’s elected leaders supported apartheid South Africa’s crimes for far too long, and the same can now be said about today’s Democrats as they continue to ignore Israel’s crimes. It is time for all Democratic voters to make it clear that only a significant change in Biden’s approach to Palestine can enable him to earn our votes in 2024. Please join me and over 500 other voters who have declared that we cannot vote for Biden in 2024 if he continues to support Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Climate Justice Alliance campaigners protest outside the Department of Energy in Washington, D.C. on October 31, 2023. (Photo: Climate Justice Alliance/Twitter)
“Now more than ever, we need real leadership from the Department of Energy to end fossil fuels,” said one organizer.
Climate advocates on Tuesday donned Halloween costumes to greet attendees of the U.S. Department of Energy’s “Justice Week,” but the organizers assembled outside the agency will be urging guests to demand far more from Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm and the Biden administration, who they say are “greenwashing” efforts to further equity and environmental justice.
The department’s Office of Economic Impact and Diversity is holding the five-day event, where officials plan to highlight efforts to move “toward a more equitable, clean, and just energy future.”
The week will include discussions of the Low-Income Communities Bonus Credit Program, which pushes for more access to renewable energy facilities in underserved communities, and executive actions President Joe Biden has taken to promote environmental justice.
All those actions, however, have happened alongside the administration’s push in favor of so-called climate “solutions” that scientists say are unproven and serve only to perpetuate fossil fuel extraction under the false assumption that it can do so while still addressing greenhouse gas emissions and planetary heating.
The DOE, noted Basav Sen, a climate justice project director at the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) who took part in the action, is “the biggest funder of false solutions such as carbon capture and storage, hydrogen, and direct air capture.”
“These are scams. We know that the real solution to the climate crisis is to keep fossil fuels in the ground and make a rapid, just transition to real renewable energy controlled by communities,” said Sen, wearing zombie face paint at the direct action. “Instead what were seeing from the Department of Energy is a continuation of the fossil fuel economy.”
Grassroots movement leader are staging an action in front of the U.S. Department of Energy @ENERGY (DOE) demanding Secretary Jennifer Granholm @SecGranholm walk her talk at the onset of DoE’s so-called #JusticeWeek2023. pic.twitter.com/vw5s8C31r6
— Climate Justice Alliance (CJA) 🌻 (@CJAOurPower) October 31, 2023
As Common Dreams reported in May, analysts say that just running the machinery to operate a carbon capture and storage project—like the ones the Biden DOE announced a $1.2 billion investment in earlier this year—would increase energy consumption by 20%, adding to carbon dioxide emissions.
Smog, benzene, and formaldehyde emissions also increase with carbon capture technology, biologist Sandra Steingraber said—three types of pollution that disproportionately affect people in low-income neighborhoods, the very communities the DOE says it’s targeting with environmental justice programs and events like “Justice Week.”
Additionally, noted Sen, the DOE is continuing to license exports of fossil gas.
“We are here today to tell attendees of the Department of Energy’s Justice Week that the version of environmental and energy justice that they’re going to hear from the Department of Energy in the event is greenwashing, pure and simple,” said Sen. “The Department of Energy cannot pretend to be on the side of environmental justice while they are actively licensing more fossil gas exports, which means more fracking, more air and water pollution, more pipelines, more export terminals, more sacrifice zones in frontline communities.”
Some of the campaigners displayed the organizers’ message succinctly on a banner reading, “Real Solutions. No Bullshit.”
“Now more than ever, we need real leadership from the Department of Energy to end fossil fuels, quit peddling climate scams and advance energy justice,” said Climate Justice Alliance (CJA), one of the groups behind the action.
— Climate Justice Alliance (CJA) 🌻 (@CJAOurPower) October 31, 2023
Addressing Granholm, the group added that the secretary “can’t cover up [her] record with greenwashing events like Justice Week 2023 while undermining real climate and environmental justice with [her] actions.”
“We demand an end to fracked gas exports, carbon capture, and hydrogen energy,” CJA said.
“Gaslighting Americans into facilitating long-held Israeli plans to depopulate Gaza under the cover of ‘humanitarian aid’ is a cruel and grotesque hoax.”
Human rights advocates are warning that U.S. President Joe Biden’s new supplemental funding request could—under the guise of humanitarian aid—bolster, or even help finance, the far-right Israeli government’s plans for ethnic cleansing in the Gaza Strip.
Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) raised alarm on Monday over language in Biden’s request that says resources from the supplemental package “would support displaced and conflict-affected civilians, including Palestinian refugees in Gaza and the West Bank, and to address potential needs of Gazans fleeing to neighboring countries.”
The White House request adds that “this crisis could well result in displacement across [the] border and higher regional humanitarian needs, and funding may be used to meet evolving programming requirements outside of Gaza.”
DAWN said that “any authorization for funding activities, infrastructure, or aid outside of Israel and Palestine” should be opposed “because they effectively facilitate, fund, and reward the forced transfer of Palestinians.”
Days after the Biden White House sent its request to Congress, an Israeli newspaper reported on a leaked document from Israel’s Intelligence Ministry that proposes the forcible and permanent transfer of all of Gaza’s 2.2 million Palestinian residents to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. A full English translation of the document was published Monday by +972 Magazine.
The internal document states that the “evacuation of the civilian population from Gaza to Sinai” would “yield positive, long-term strategic outcomes for Israel” and “is an executable option” that is preferable to alternatives, such as “the population remaining in Gaza along with the emergence of a local Arab authority” following Israel’s devastating assault on the territory.
The policy paper adds that the Israeli government’s efforts to “bring about a significant change in the civilian reality in the Gaza Strip” would require “intensive action to harness the United States and other countries to support this goal.”
“Both by word and by deed, Israeli officials are pursuing a broader strategy to permanently remove Palestinians from their native lands, and counting on the U.S. to pay for it.”
DAWN expressed grave concern Monday that, if approved by Congress, Biden’s supplemental funding proposal would provide critical support for the Israeli government’s plans for forcible transfer, which is a violation of international law.
“The Biden administration isn’t just giving a green light for ethnic cleansing—it’s bankrolling it,” said DAWN executive director Sarah Leah Whitson. “Gaslighting Americans into facilitating long-held Israeli plans to depopulate Gaza under the cover of ‘humanitarian aid’ is a cruel and grotesque hoax.”
DAWN urged Congress to vote against any supplemental funding legislation that includes humanitarian aid language mirroring the White House’s request, which also includes $14 billion in military aid for Israel on top of weaponry that the U.S. has already sent to Israel in recent weeks.
“Supporting Israeli efforts to forcibly transfer Palestinians to Egypt would make U.S. officials liable for complicity in war crimes,” the group said.
Former Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth echoed DAWN:
The US government should not fund another Nakba. No US funds should be used to forcibly displace Palestinian civilians from Gaza to neighboring countries, given the history (from 1948) of such "temporary" departures becoming permanent. https://t.co/HIz6XxFGxS
House Republicans introduced legislation on Monday that includes mostly military assistance for Israel—omitting Ukraine funding, disaster relief, and humanitarian aid that the Biden administration requested. The GOP bill is likely a non-starter in the U.S. Senate, where Democratic lawmakers objected to the inclusion of Internal Revenue Service cuts.
“Both by word and by deed, Israeli officials are pursuing a broader strategy to permanently remove Palestinians from their native lands, and counting on the U.S. to pay for it,” said Whitson. “Congress should vote against any aid package that could support these acts, which amount to violations of human rights and grave breaches of the laws of war.”
+972 Magazine reported Monday that the Israeli Intelligence Ministry document “proposes promoting a campaign targeting Palestinian civilians in Gaza that will ‘motivate them to accept this plan’ and lead them to give up their land.”
“The messages should revolve around the loss of land, making it clear that there is no hope of returning to the territories Israel will soon occupy, whether or not that is true,” the document states. “The image needs to be, ‘Allah made sure you lose this land because of Hamas’ leadership—there is no choice but to move to another place with the assistance of your Muslim brothers.”
A similar plan has been outlined by an Israeli think tank with ties to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
As his government continues its bombardment of Gaza and ramps up its ground attack, Netanyahu has reportedly lobbied European leaders to pressure Egypt to accept refugees from Gaza. More than a million Gazans have been internally displaced since October 7, when Israel launched its latest assault on the Palestinian territory in the wake of a deadly Hamas attack.
An unnamed Western diplomat told the Financial Times that Netanyahu “pushed quite hard that the solution was for Egyptians to take Gazans at least during the conflict.”
“But we didn’t take it very seriously,” the diplomat added, “because the Egyptian position is and has always been very clear and they just won’t do it.”
The Israeli government’s actions and rhetoric since October 7 have sparked international warnings that Palestinians are “in grave danger of mass ethnic cleansing,” as United Nations expert Francesca Albanese put it earlier this month.
“What we are witnessing may be a repeat of the 1948 Nakba, and the 1967 Naksa, yet on a larger scale,” Albanese said. “The international community must do everything to stop this from happening again.”
Israel’s attack on Gaza has killed more than 8,000 people—including more than 3,400 children—in just over three weeks. The Israeli military’s bombing campaign has destroyed or damaged at least 45% of Gaza’s housing units.
Around 40% of Gaza’s schools have also been damaged by Israeli bombs, according to the United Nations.
“The best way to protect Palestinian civilians from the wrath of war is to announce and enforce a cease-fire,” Raed Jarrar, DAWN’s advocacy director, said Monday. “Rather than pushing Palestinians to Egypt, Israel should allow Palestinian civilians to cross the apartheid fence into Israel. Maybe Palestinians can set up tent cities in the same towns and villages they were displaced from during the first Nakba 75 years ago.”
On October 31, Israel dropped six US-made bombs (each weighing one ton) on the most populated neighborhood of Jabayla refugee camp in Gaza, killing and injuring 400, reports the Palestinian Ministry of Health. The death toll is likely to increase as more information becomes known.
According to the Quds News Network, Jabalya is one of the most populated areas of Gaza, with 60,000 residents in only 1.4 square kilometers.
"My three children. I lost them all!"#Israel has bombarded an entire neighborhood in the heart of Jabalya refugee camp in #Gaza using American bombs. All residents were either killed or injured. pic.twitter.com/Z1nryNwVjy
The United States funds Israel to the tune of USD 4 billion each year. As Israel carries out its genocide in Gaza, the US Congress is set to approve USD 14.3 billion in emergency funds for Israel.
US activists have argued that Israel’s heavy funding and military support from the US is due to the state’s unique position as a Western military outpost in West Asia. As current US President Joe Biden himself said in 1986, “It’s the best three billion dollar investment we made. Were there not an Israel, the United States of America would have to invent an Israel to protect her interest in the region.”
