“The systematic violence could not have occurred without the ongoing support from the U.S.”
While the delegation from the Trump administration and leaders from various parts of the world gathered in Jerusalem to witness the illegal and immoral move of the United States embassy to that beleaguered and contested city, Israeli soldiers were slaughtering unarmed Palestinians in Gaza. The latest report numbers the dead at more than 50 with hundreds wounded.
The Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) demands that the United States condemn Israeli state violence and the use of U.S.-supplied weapons to murder unarmed Palestinians, a violation of U.S. law. Guidelines for the sale and transfer of military equipment stipulate that U.S-supplied arms cannot be used in the execution of human rights violations.
BAP further calls on member states of the United Nations Security Council to convene immediately to address the Israeli government’s blatant violation of humanitarian and human rights law and its threat to the peace.
“Guidelines for the sale and transfer of military equipment stipulate that U.S-supplied arms cannot be used in the execution of human rights violations.”
However, BAP is clear that responsibility for the barbarity that the world is witnessing does not just rest with the Israeli colonial state. The systematic violence of ethnic cleansing, house demolitions, exile, assassinations, land thefts, bombings, and the denial of water and other vital services that provide basic dignity could not have occurred without the ongoing support from the U.S. and both major parties as well as the corporate press and every major institution of U.S. society including many churches.
Support for Israeli settler-colonialism has been the stated policy of both dominant U.S. parties along with a firm commitment to ensure that the Israeli government has the military means to not only sustain the occupation but to impose its military will on its neighbors in the region. The two-state solution was always a subterfuge for delaying actions on Israeli settlements and military containment policies represented most dramatically in the apartheid walls that crisscross Palestinian territories on the so-called West Bank in order to create new realities on the ground that would make a two-state solution impossible.
“Both the U.S. and Israel have opted to operate outside the rule of law as rogue criminal states.”
In accordance with the principles and values reflected in the platform of the Poor People’s Campaign and the stated support for that campaign by members of the Congressional Black Caucus, BAP is calling on both to condemn the attacks and join BAP in calling for intervention by the international community.
We believe this public stance is important because the recent decisions to sabotage the Iran agreement and give Israel a green light to escalate military aggressions in the sovereign state of Syria, coupled with the brutal violence unleashed against unarmed protestors in Gaza, provides unassailable evidence that both the U.S. and Israel have opted to operate outside the rule of law as rogue criminal states.
Therefore, BAP calls on the international community to use all means at its disposal to force the U.S. and Israel to comport themselves in line with acceptable international norms. It is quite obvious to us that absent pressure from the international community in the form of arms embargos, economic sanctions and universal moral condemnation, both states will continue to be global threats to peace and international outlaws in relation to human rights.
Contact: Ajamu Baraka Info@blackallianceforpeace.com. Go to the Black Alliance for Peace web site at https://blackallianceforpeace.com/.
Dr. Jemima Pierre is a professor in the African American Studies and Anthropology Departments at UCLA.
Johanna Miller is Director of Education Policy at the New York Civil Liberties Union.
Quinn Cozzens is a staff attorney with Abolitionist Law Center who joins us to discuss the issue of sentencing for felony murder in Pennsylvania.
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Black Agenda Report continues its commitment to reporting on events in Haiti.
