After Building Progressive Power Among House Democrats, Jayapal Passes the Torch

 to Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) 

The outgoing CPC leader is proud of empowering the caucus to fight for "an economic agenda that worked for working people and poor people."

Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) speaks during a press conference at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. on December 5, 2024.
(Photo: Celal Gunes/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Jessica Corbett
Dec 20, 2024
COMMON DREAMS

After six years at the helm of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, dedicated to "building the infrastructure" necessary to effectively fight for key policies on Capitol Hill, term-limited Rep. Pramila Jayapal is determined to ensure that the CPC's incoming leaders "are as successful as possible."

Jayapal (D-Wash.) spoke with Common Dreams on Wednesday about her time leading the caucus of nearly 100 lawmakers whose legislative priorities include "comprehensive immigration reform, good-paying jobs, fair trade, universal healthcare, debt-free college, climate action, and a just foreign policy."

She was elected first vice chair of the CPC in June 2017, just months into her freshman term in Congress. Explaining her foray into leadership, Jayapal affectionately said, "I blamed it all on Keith Ellison," a Minnesota Democrat who was then a congressman and caucus leader and is now his state's attorney general.

"He was very encouraging," she said of Ellison. "He knew that the whole reason I was running, because he had heard me talk about it on the campaign trail... was because I wanted to strengthen the power of the progressive movement inside Congress and figure out how we could be more effective working on the inside and the outside, which I was coming from."

Jayapal, who was born in India and came to the United States as a teenager for college, founded the immigrant advocacy group Hate Free Zone—which later became OneAmerica—after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Residents of the Seattle area elected her to Congress in 2016, during her first term in the Washington State Senate.

In politics, Jayapal has shared stories from her own life with the world, publicly writing and speaking about her experiences as an immigrant woman of color, a woman who had an abortion, and a mother to her trans daughter. She has welcomed the mentorship of Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), the first woman of color to co-chair the CPC and, as Jayapal put it on Instagram earlier this week, "one of the most courageous and effective progressive leaders I have had the privilege to know."



U.S. Reps. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), and Cori Bush (D-Mo.) talk with reporters in Washingotn, D.C. on May 31, 2023. (Photo: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc. via Getty Images)

Backed by leaders like Ellison and Lee—who is leaving Congress after this session—Jayapal jumped into the CPC hoping to transform it into "a caucus that could really have the power to stand up for working people and deliver." In 2018, she was elected co-chair with Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), and following 2020 caucus rule changes, she became a solo chair.

"What I realized when I came in is that we didn't really have the infrastructure we needed to support us to be powerful as a bloc of votes," said Jayapal, who utilized the skills and connections she developed as an organizer in the role she is now preparing to leave.

"I was able to come in and not only think about how you build power on the inside, but also how you coordinate with the outside," she said. "And that inside-outside strategy, and the trust I had, and the relationships I had, were really critical to my success in building the infrastructure here in Congress and sort of coalescing the movement around a set of priorities that we were then able to fight for and stand up for."

Jayapal recognized the need to hire staff and reform CPC rules to boost meeting attendance and caucus cohesion. She explained that "I felt very strongly about leadership transition to build the bench, and so I put in term limits for the CPC chair as well."

Thanks to that policy, she will pass the torch to Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) early next month. Jayapal, who will be chair emerita, told Common Dreams, "I'm just really proud to have built an infrastructure that I can pass on to the next chair that just wasn't there before and will continue to get better, of course, with new leadership."

The 35-year-old incoming chair will be joined by Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) as deputy chair and Jesús "Chuy" García (D-Ill.) as whip. They will face a Republican-controlled Congress and the second administration of President-elect Donald Trump.

"I'm honored to build on the legacy of Chair Jayapal," Casar said after the caucus election earlier this month. "I've fought back against extremist, egocentric autocrats in Texas for my entire adult life. The Democratic Party must directly take on Trump, and it'll be CPC members boldly leading the way and putting working people first."

Related: New Progressive Caucus Chair Ready to 'Fight Billionaires, Grifters, and Republican Frauds'


Trump won his first presidential contest the same day Jayapal was initially elected to Congress. On that night in November 2016, before the White House race was called, Jayapal described her victory as "a light in the darkness" and told supporters that "if our worst fears are realized, we will be on the defense as of tomorrow," according toThe Seattle Times.

After four years of fighting the first Trump administration, CPC members kicked off 2021 with a fresh opportunity to advance progressive policies: Although the Senate was divided, Democrats controlled the House of Representatives and President Joe Biden was sworn in—despite Trump contesting his 2020 loss and inciting an insurrection.

During Biden's term, which ends next month, the Jayapal-led caucus has successfully encouraged the Democratic president to pursue various executive actions promoting access to contraception, climate action, corporate accountability, higher wages, lower costs for essentials, and relief for immigrants from countries in crisis, among other priorities.

The caucus also played a significant role in enacting major pieces of Democrats' Build Back Better agenda. In the summer of 2021, Jayapal made clear to Congress and the president that House progressives would withhold votes from what became the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law—also known as the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act—unless they also passed legislation on the climate emergency and social issues.

Biden signed the infrastructure bill in November 2021—followed by the Inflation Reduction Act in August 2022. The delay was largely due to obstructionist then-Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin (I-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.), who ditched the party in the aftermath and are both leaving Congress at the end of this session.

Although Jayapal wishes the second bill would have passed sooner, and tackled the country's childcare and housing crises, she said that she is still "particularly proud" of what the caucus was able to accomplish with that battle. As she told Common Dreams, "There would be no Inflation Reduction Act without Build Back Better, and there would've been no Build Back Better without the CPC."


Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) speaks at a "Go Bigger on Climate, Care, and Justice" rally on July 20, 2021 in Washington, D.C.

 (Photo: Shannon Finney/Getty Images for Green New Deal Network)


Those two legislative packages were "about changing the way that we thought of government's ability to fight for working people," she continued. They "were about delivering results to people that would matter, whether it was in terms of great jobs, whether it was in terms of taking on climate change, whether it was in terms of driving down the cost of prescription drugs, [or] unrigging the tax system so that the wealthier began to pay their fair share."

"All of those things were kind of fundamental and core to an economic agenda that worked for working people and poor people," said Jayapal, who has personally championed legislation including the College for All Act, Dignity for Detained Immigrants Act, Housing Is a Human Right Act, Medicare for All Act, Transgender Bill of Rights, and Ultra-Millionaire Tax Act—partnering with Senate progressives such as Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the founding chair of the CPC.

While the Congressional Progressive Caucus will have new leadership next year, Jayapal plans to remain engaged by providing advice and support as chair emeritus and by co-chairing the CPC Political Action Committee with Casar and Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.). Under the PAC's current heads—Jayapal, Pocan, and Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.)—it "has grown from a $300,000 budget in the 2016 election cycle to raising $12 million over the past three election cycles," the group said Wednesday.

Jayapal told Common Dreams that she is "really proud of the fact that we've had an incredible record" for CPC PAC endorsements. Over the past decade, a majority of pre-primary backed candidates have won their general election races—often "pushing back on big money that came in, dark money that came in, sometimes in the millions," she said, pointing to Reps. Summer Lee (D-Pa.) and Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.) as examples.

Lee, Ramirez, and Jayapal were all reelected last month, but overall it was a devastating cycle for Democrats, who failed to win control of the White House and both chambers of Congress. The outgoing CPC chair is among those who have responded to the results by urging the Democratic Party to reject super PACs and uplift working-class voters going forward.

In a memo earlier this month, Jayapal, Casar, Frost and fellow CPC member Rep. Chris Deluzio (D-Pa.) called on the next Democratic National Committee chair, whoever it is, to "create an authentic... brand that offers a clear alternative and inclusive vision for how we will make life better for the 90% who are struggling in this economy, take on the biggest corporations and wealthiest individuals who have rigged the system, expose Trump's corporate favoritism, and create a clear contrast with Republicans."

Noting Republicans' aim to use their forthcoming federal trifecta to pass another round of tax cuts for the rich, Jayapal said that "when we fight against the tax cuts, the Trump tax scam 2.0, we should tie it to this: The Democratic Party is not beholden to corporate PACs and dark money. We are fighting for the people."

"There's a clear contrast between Trump and his billionaires... and Democrats who are fighting for the vast majority of Americans, the 99% of Americans who are out there struggling every day," she added. "That's the contrast we need to be able to draw."



In her final days as CPC chair, Jayapal is highlighting that contrast by slamming Trump and the billionaires who have his ear, like Elon Musk, for risking a government shutdown—which could begin Saturday—by derailing a bipartisan spending bill this week.

"The past 24 hours is the clearest demonstration yet of what Trump 2.0 will entail: The president of the United States allowing his unelected billionaire friends to control the government and enrich themselves at the expense of working people," she said in a Thursday statement. "We cannot succumb to a government by billionaires, for billionaires."

DR. QUACK AND FOR PROFIT HEALTHCARE

Watchdog Says Dr. Oz Push for 'Medicare Advantage for All' Is Disqualifying

"Oz's deep ties to the private healthcare industry make his nomination to lead our nation's current healthcare system totally egregious," said Public Citizen healthcare advocate Eagan Kemp.


Dr. Mehmet Oz was pictured at an event in New York City on November 21, 2024.
(Photo: Fatih Aktas/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Jake Johnson
Dec 20, 2024
COMMON DREAMS

The watchdog group Public Citizen said Thursday that lawmakers should reject President-elect Donald Trump's nomination of Medicare privatization advocate Mehmet Oz to lead a key health agency and instead move toward a publicly run single-payer system that would cover all Americans at a lower cost than the status quo.

In a new brief, Public Citizen warned that Medicare privatization efforts—particularly via an expansion of Medicare Advantage plans run by for-profit insurance companies—would likely "move into overdrive" if the Senate confirms Oz as administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).

Ahead of his 2022 Senate bid, Oz backed a plan he described as "Medicare Advantage for All," under which privately run plans would cover non-seniors and "all Americans who are not on Medicaid"—effectively eliminating traditional Medicare.

Public Citizen warned such a plan "would mean huge corporate profits while patients continue to struggle to get the healthcare they need," noting that Medicare Advantage plans are notorious for denying necessary care and overbilling the federal government to the tune of tens of billions of dollars per year.

"Policymakers should pass Medicare for All to guarantee care for everyone in the U.S., bring down costs for working families, and generate savings for the country as a whole."

"Further privatizing Medicare would increase healthcare costs systemwide by adding further administrative bloat to our healthcare system," the new brief argues. "Our healthcare system is already made up of thousands of health insurance plans offered by numerous insurers as well as state and federal programs that all play some role in paying for healthcare."

"By spending healthcare resources on corporate profit or administrative waste, privatized Medicare would mean Americans pay even more for healthcare than they already do," the brief adds. "We already spend far more than comparably wealthy countries, over $12,500 per capita, compared with peer nations that are spending around half, per capita."

Oz's plan would also benefit companies in which he has invested tens of millions of dollars, according to financial disclosures.

"Dr. Oz owned between $280,000 and $600,000 in shares in UnitedHealth Group, a major Medicare Advantage insurer, and between $50,000 and $100,000 in shares of CVS Health," Public Citizen noted Thursday, citing the filings.

Eagan Kemp, a healthcare advocate at Public Citizen, said in a statement that Oz's "Medicare Advantage for All" proposal "is dangerous to all patients, especially seniors and people with disabilities, many of whom have not received the care they need under Medicare Advantage."

"Healthcare is a right, not a commodity," said Kemp. "Oz's deep ties to the private healthcare industry make his nomination to lead our nation's current healthcare system totally egregious. Congress should reject Oz's nomination and any proposal to further privatize Medicare."

"Instead," he added, "policymakers should pass Medicare for All to guarantee care for everyone in the U.S., bring down costs for working families, and generate savings for the country as a whole."

Public Citizen's brief came as Oz's nomination faced increasingly close scrutiny from congressional Democrats, who have raised similar concerns about the former television personality's promotion of Medicare Advantage and ties to the private insurance industry.

"As CMS administrator, you would be tasked with overseeing Medicare and ensuring that the tens of millions of seniors that rely on the program receive the care they deserve, including cracking down on abuses by private insurers in Medicare Advantage," a group of Democratic lawmakers led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) wrote in a letter to Oz last week. "The consequences of failure on your part would be grave. Billions of federal healthcare dollars—and millions of lives—are at stake."

"Given your financial ties to private insurers, combined with your view that the traditional Medicare program is 'highly dysfunctional' and your advocacy for eliminating it entirely," the lawmakers added, "it is not clear that you are qualified for this critical job."

'No Contract, No Coffee': US Starbucks Workers Launch Five Days of Strikes

Starbucks Workers United accused the company of "backtracking on our promised path forward" and failing to present a "serious economic proposal" to unionized baristas.


Starbucks workers were pictured at a picket line in New York on November 16, 2023.
(Photo: Victor M. Matos/Thenews2/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Jake Johnson
Dec 20, 2024
COMMON DREAMS

Starbucks workers launched five days of escalating strikes across the United States on Friday, accusing the coffee giant of reneging on its commitment to engage in productive bargaining talks with the union that now represents more than 11,000 baristas at over 500 stores nationwide.

The walkouts will start in Los Angeles, Chicago, and Seattle on Friday before expanding "coast to coast" amid the holiday rush, Starbucks Workers United (SBWU) said in a statement announcing the strikes.

SBWU said the strikes are a response to Starbucks "backtracking on our promised path forward." In February, the two sides agreed to "begin discussions on a foundational framework designed to achieve both collective bargaining agreements for represented stores and partners."

But SBWU said late Thursday that the company—which repeatedly violated labor law in its bid to crush a union movement that has spread widely since 2021—has "yet to present workers with a serious economic proposal."

"This week, less than two weeks before their end-of-year deadline," SBWU said, "Starbucks proposed no immediate wage increase for union baristas, and a guarantee of only 1.5% wage increases in future years."

The strikes are expected to ramp up daily through Christmas Eve unless Starbucks "honors our commitment to work towards a foundational framework," SBWU said.

Striking baristas are also asking allies to help bolster organizing efforts at Starbucks by "hosting small flyering events at not-yet- union stores" during the five days of walkouts.



Friday's walkouts come as Amazon workers are also striking at multiple delivery hubs across the country over the e-commerce giant's refusal to engage in contract negotiations.

Earlier this week, unionized Starbucks workers voted overwhelmingly in support of authorizing a strike to protest the company's alleged unfair labor practices and to set the stage for a strong contract.

"It's time to finalize a foundational framework that includes meaningful investments in baristas and to resolve unfair labor practice charges," Silvia Baldwin, a Philadelphia barista and bargaining delegate, said in a statement. "Starbucks can't get back on track as a company until it finalizes a fair contract that invests in its workforce."

"Right now, I'm making $16.50 an hour," she added. "Meanwhile, [new Starbucks CEO] Brian Niccol's compensation package is worth $57,000 an hour. The company just announced I'm only getting a 2.5% raise next year, $0.40 an hour, which is hardly anything. It's one Starbucks drink per week. Starbucks needs to invest in the baristas who make Starbucks run."

Israel army says troops shot Syrian protester in leg

ILLEGAL OCCUPATION OF THE GOLAN HEIGHTS 

By AFP
December 20, 2024

A child looks on as Israeli soldiers patrol in Jubata al-Khashab, in the UN-patrolled Golan Heights buffer zone, which Israeli troops entered after the fall of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad - Copyright AFP Aris MESSINIS

The Israeli military said its forces shot a protester during a demonstration against the army’s activities in a village in southern Syria on Friday, injuring him in the leg.

Since Islamist-led rebels toppled Syrian president Bashar al-Assad on December 8 Israel has carried out hundreds of air strikes on Syrian military facilities in what it says is a bid to prevent them from falling into hostile hands.

In a move widely condemned internationally, Israel also sent troops into a United Nations-patrolled buffer zone in the Golan Heights, and beyond, calling it a defensive and temporary measure.

“During a protest against IDF’s activities in the area of Maariya in southern Syria, IDF (Israeli military) called on protesters to distance themselves from the troops,” the military told AFP.

The village is just outside the southern point of the UN-patrolled zone.

“After the troops identified a threat, they operated in accordance with standard operating procedures against the threat… The protester was shot in the leg,” the military said.

The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said the Israeli troops were stationed at a barracks in the village.

“During a protest condemning the Israeli incursion, a young man was injured by Israeli forces’ gunfire in the village of Maariya, in the Daraa region,” the Observatory said.

Israeli forced from Al-Jazeera barracks “opened fire directly at the demonstrators,” wounding the man in the leg, it said.

– Israelis ‘sowed fear’ –

A villager from Maariya told AFP that Israeli soldiers had been entering his village and other nearby villages in recent days.

“When the Israelis entered … they sowed fear and horror among the people, the children, the women,” Ali al-Khalaf, 52, told AFP.

“So much so that some people fled to other nearby villages. They (Israeli troops) entered the villages of Maariya, Aabdyn and Jamlah,” he added.

On Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a security briefing atop a strategic Syrian mountain inside the UN-patrolled zone.

During the visit Netanyahu reviewed the army’s deployment in the area, his office said.

Hours after Assad was overthrown, Netanyahu had ordered Israeli troops to seize the buffer zone.

Israel has framed the move as temporary and defensive, with Netanyahu saying it was in response to a “vacuum on Israel’s border and in the buffer zone”.

Israeli forces have also been operating in areas beyond the buffer zone in Syrian-controlled territory, the military has confirmed.

Netanyahu said his country has “no interest in confronting Syria. Israel’s policy toward Syria will be determined by the evolving reality on the ground”.

Syria’s new leader Ahmed al-Sharaa accused Israel of “a new unjustified escalation in the region” by entering the buffer zone but said “the general exhaustion in Syria after years of war” prevents it from entering new conflicts.

Israel conquered around two-thirds of the Golan during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and later annexed it. The United States, during Donald Trump’s first term as president, is the only country that has recognised Israel’s sovereignty over the occupied Golan.

Pentagon Admits Number of US Troops in Syria Much Higher Than Previously Disclosed

"How does the Pentagon 'recently learn' that it has more than double the number of U.S. troops in Syria than it claimed to have a day earlier?" asked veteran journalist Jeremy Scahill.

Pentagon Press Secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder holds a press briefing at the Pentagon on October 1, 2024 in Arlington, Virginia.
(Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Jake Johnson
Dec 20, 2024

COMMON DREAMS

The Pentagon acknowledged Thursday that it had been providing journalists and the public with an inaccurate count of the number of U.S. troops deployed to Syria, with a spokesperson for the department telling members of the press that the actual figure is two times higher than what was previously disclosed.

"We have been briefing you regularly that there are approximately 900 U.S. troops deployed to Syria," Pentagon Press Secretary Pat Ryder told reporters during a briefing on Thursday. "In light of the situation in Syria and the significant interest, we recently learned that those numbers were higher, and so asked to look into it. I learned today that in fact there are approximately 2,000 U.S. troops in Syria."

Ryder said the roughly 1,100 additional U.S. forces are considered "temporary rotational forces that deploy to meet shifting mission requirements," while the other 900 troops are "on longer-term deployments."

There is also an undisclosed number of private U.S. contractors operating in Syria, as The Intercept's Nick Turse has reported.

Progressive lawmakers, and some Republicans, have argued that U.S. troops should be withdrawn from Syria given the lack of clear legal authorization for their continued presence.



The Pentagon spokesperson could not provide an exact date on which the extra 1,100 troops were deployed to Syria, but he said they were there "clearly before the fall" of former President Bashar al-Assad's government earlier this month.

The U.S. maintains it was not involved in the rebel offensive that toppled the Assad government, and on Friday a delegation of senior American officials arrived in Damascus for the first U.S. diplomatic mission to Syria's capital since Assad's fall.


Drop Site's Jeremy Scahill, who has long reported on covert U.S. military activities overseas, expressed incredulity at Ryder's comments during Thursday's briefing.

"How does the Pentagon 'recently learn' that it has more than double the number of U.S. troops in Syria than it claimed to have a day earlier?" Scahill asked.

'Unprecedented' Lawsuit Targets 2 US Lawmakers for Backing Israeli Military Aid

"This class action is only the beginning of the people's exercise of power against the violence of the American government," said one plaintiff.

Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) speaks during the news conference in Washington, D.C. 
(Photo: Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc. via Getty Images)

Julia Conley
Dec 20, 2024
COMMON DREAMS

More than 500 California residents on Thursday took the latest legal action against U.S. leaders in an effort to stop the government's support for Israel's assault on Gaza, with taxpayers represented by two Democratic U.S. House members filing a class action lawsuit against the lawmakers for voting in favor of Israeli military aid.

The plaintiffs, who are represented by the law firm Szeto-Wong Law, live in 10 counties in Northern California and are represented by Democratic Reps. Jared Huffman and Mike Thompson.

The specific legal tactic being used by the plaintiffs is "unprecedented," according to the group Taxpayers Against Genocide, and hinges on Huffman and Thompson's votes in favor of the Israel Security Supplemental Appropriations Act in April.



The funding package allocated $26.28 billion in military aid to Israel, which at the time was six months into its bombardment of Gaza and a near-total blockade on humanitarian aid that was pushing the enclave's population of 2.3 million people toward starvation.

Now, Israel has been attacking Gaza for 440 days, and more than 45,000 Palestinians have been killed since the onslaught began. At least 77 Palestinians were killed in Israeli attacks on Thursday, the same day the class action lawsuit was filed and Doctors Without Borders published a report that detailed how the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have imposed "apocalyptic conditions" on the enclave and how humanitarian workers have seen "clear signs of ethnic cleansing as Palestinians are forcibly displaced, trapped, and bombed."

The plaintiffs in the class action lawsuit argued that Huffman and Thompson's votes in favor of billions of dollars for the IDF abused the lawmakers' "tax and spend" authority and "illegally forced their constituents into being complicit in genocide."

Huffman and Thompson voted for the funding package, the plaintiffs noted, months after the International Court of Justice issued a preliminary ruling in South Africa's genocide case against Israel, finding that Israel's actions had threatened Palestinians' right to be protected from genocide. The case has proceeded for ongoing litigation since the preliminary ruling was announced.

The votes were also taken weeks after Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, issued an extensive report that found Israel was committing acts of genocide in Gaza.

"I trusted Congressman Huffman to call for a cease-fire and to demand that the U.S. follow our own laws in addition to international law," said Robie Tenorio, one of the plaintiffs. "But despite overwhelming documented and corroborated evidence, Congressman Huffman voted in April 2024 to send Israel more offensive weapons, all paid for by U.S. taxpayers."

In March, a month before the vote, Democratic lawmakers urged President Joe Biden to enforce the Humanitarian Aid Corridor Act—Section 620I of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, which prohibits the U.S. from providing military aid to any country that is blocking U.S. humanitarian assistance.

The administration threatened in October to cut off military aid within one month if Israel did not prove that it was allowing in sufficient food, water, medicine, and other relief, but the U.S. State Department did not follow through on the threat despite the U.N.'s finding that conditions had not improved.

In January, the Center for Constitutional Rights sued Biden and members of his Cabinet on behalf of several Palestinian groups and individuals, accusing them of failing to prevent genocide in Gaza. The case was dismissed in July.


The lawsuit filed on Thursday argues that Huffman and Thompson violated the U.S. Constitution, the U.N. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, and U.S. federal laws.

Norman Solomon, co-founder of the grassroots advocacy group RootsAction, said at a press conference on Thursday that Huffman has consistently said he supports U.S. military aid to Israel because he "opposes antisemitism."

"As a Jewish-American I find that kind of rationale disgusting, outrageous, and sickening," said Solomon.




Leslie Angeline, a plaintiff from Marin County, California and an organizer with the peace group CodePink, wrote at Common Dreams on Thursday about her hunger strike in protest of U.S. support for Israel, which she ended as the lawsuit was announced.

"I want to tell you what 30 days with no food does to a person, and my experience is made easier by the fact that I have a roof over my head, access to clean water, and a certainty that I won't have to flee my home at any moment," Angeline wrote. "The women my age in Gaza are not given the same luxuries."

"I wake up each morning worrying about the genocide that is happening in Gaza, knowing that if it wasn't for my government's partnership with the Israeli government this couldn't continue. Our government is sending billions upon billions of our tax dollars to slaughter innocent children, mothers and fathers, entire families with bombs and artillery funded by our country," she continued. "I understand that 'my trauma' is nothing compared to what the people of Gaza must be suffering. I can't even imagine the horrors they're being forced to live through or die from."


Maria Barakat, a Palestinian-Lebanese American and plaintiff from Sonoma County, said it was significant that hundreds of Californians "feel empowered by the ability to take meaningful action."


"This class action is only the beginning of the people's exercise of power against the violence of the American government," said Barakat, "and our refusal to be complicit."

It’s Becoming Harder to Protest Gaza War on US Campus — and Also to Teach About It


Organizing for labor protections and academic freedom is crucial to combat higher education’s creeping authoritarianism.

By Michelle Chen ,

Truthout

December 20, 2024

Pro-Palestinian demonstrators rally after marching from University Yard at George Washington University on May 9, 2024, in Washington, D.C.Kent Nishimura / Getty Images

On a crisp November morning in Ithaca, New York, scores of young people gathered on the sidewalk to cheer their classmate, Sriram Parasurama, a second-year doctoral student in horticulture at Cornell University. He should have been working on his research on the connection between trees and fungi, but instead, he was wrapping up a court hearing downtown. He had been banished from campus since his arrest by the campus police department, following his participation in a Palestine solidarity protest on school grounds in September.

Parasurama’s supporters met him and two other students facing similar charges outside the courthouse. A legal advocate for the students announced that after pleading not guilty to charges of “obstructing government administration and unlawful assembly,” Parasurama and another student, Yihun Stith, were offered a deal: a community service stint in exchange for reducing the charges to disorderly conduct. A third student’s case was dismissed on a technicality. The court’s response seemed relatively light compared to Cornell’s initial crackdown on the protest, which triggered disciplinary proceedings and suspension for several participants, whom the administration had condemned for supposedly creating “an environment of intimidation and fear.”

Campus activists remain locked in a protracted battle with the administration about the freedom of expression in higher education, amid some of the largest campus political mobilizations in a generation. Having been stuck in a plodding disciplinary review process since September, Parasurama told Truthout that university administrators are “definitely trying to drag this out, make this as miserable as possible, both … to diminish some of the attention and interest from students and other[s], as well as, I think, just make the process more miserable for me, so that I then agree to [a settlement] that I wouldn’t have [agreed to] a month and a half ago.… Their goal is to get me to shut up and commit to not protesting anymore and just focus on research, or the alternative of kicking me out of the school.”

Expressive Activity

Cornell (where the author is a postdoctoral associate) is one of dozens of universities that have introduced new regulations on when and how protests can take place on campus, erecting bureaucratic barriers for planning and registering protests. Cornell’s enforcement of such rules has created a Kafkaesque review process, leading to extraordinary penalties for student activists, including indefinite suspensions and three-year bans from campus.

But Cornell’s treatment of activism among employees — including teachers, researchers, clerical and custodial staff — is more complex. Graduate student-workers, faculty and staff report that they have faced surveillance, retaliation or job loss for protesting against the genocide in Gaza. The university’s punishment of Parasurama, for example, has not only led to his disenrollment but has also upended his federal grant funding and preempted his employment as a researcher and teaching assistant. Another graduate student worker in Africana studies, Momodou Taal, was also temporarily suspended due to his participation in campus protests and was barred from teaching earlier this semester. However, facing protests from faculty and students, the university eventually backed down from its initial threat to disenroll him, which would potentially have triggered his deportation to the United Kingdom.


Academic Labor Unions Are Key to Fighting Trump’s Repressive Higher Ed Agenda
AAUP President Todd Wolfson says unions like his are key to fighting Trump’s attacks on the bedrock of democracy.  By Eleanor J. Bader , Truthout  December 5, 2024

Cornell’s “Interim Expressive Activity Policy” has been widely condemned by progressive faculty as a dangerous overreach. While couched in bromides about encouraging “the free exchange of ideas,” the rules explicitly restrict protests that may “disrupt the regular conduct of university teaching, research, business, or other activities”; impede access to university spaces; or engage in “Heckling, interruptions, and other acts that intentionally attempt to disrupt speakers or events.” The policy appears to be a direct response to pressure from pro-Israel politicians and major donors, who have advocated for the suppression and criminalization of Palestine solidarity protests. The targeted application of these rules to student and worker activists on campus has crystallized the fundamental power imbalance in higher education.

The protesters’ goal on September 18, admittedly, was to “disrupt.” Banging pots and pans as they marched into the career fair at the university’s Statler Hotel, activists with Cornell’s Coalition for Mutual Liberation delivered letters “indicting” two employers featured at the fair for “war crimes and genocide.” The companies, Boeing and L3Harris, are major weapons manufacturers that have supplied military technology to Israel with the support of U.S. military aid, and have been linked directly to attacks on civilians in Israel’s war on Gaza. That the protesters were disruptive is not in question — what is in question is the rationale driving the administration’s crackdown. (In an emailed response, Cornell stated that its policy is undergoing a review process, that it has solicited community input, and that it could not comment on individual disciplinary cases.)

“It’s about the university trying to create an image for itself that it can take to donors, take to alumni. And staff, faculty and students are expendable in the process,” David Bateman, an associate professor of government at Cornell’s Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy, told Truthout. And in light of the vitriol Donald Trump and other conservative political figures have heaped onto the Palestine solidarity encampments in recent months, Bateman said, “there’s a real worry that the university will become an arm of the MAGA state in coming years.”

The protest aimed to challenge the business model of the neoliberal university: a corporation that is ostensibly devoted to education but is financed and directed through lucrative industrial partnerships and influential donors. The Department of Defense is one of the top federal agencies funding research at Cornell, contributing about $50 million in the 2022-2023 fiscal year, according to the latest research data report. One branch of the university, Cornell Tech, has collaborated with the Israeli military through its partnership with the Israeli research institute Technion, known for developing technologies that have been used in Israel’s military assaults on Palestinian civilians.


“Their goal is to get me to shut up and commit to not protesting anymore and just focus on research, or the alternative of kicking me out of the school.”

The protesters not only embarrassed Cornell by exposing its collusion with Israel’s military industries but also called attention to the university’s role in supplying graduates to the workforces of firms like Boeing and Technion.

“I think Palestine generally as an issue kind of targets the core of imperial structure that … underlies a lot of university institutions, not just Cornell,” Parasurama said. “This Statler [Hotel] rally … was targeting weapons manufacturers, and our own trustees at Cornell have investments in weapons companies. And so this is really striking at the heart, I think, of what’s valued by institutions like these.”
The End of Teaching

This crackdown cannot be separated from the business agenda of U.S. higher education, which has over the past generation eclipsed the intellectual agendas of its scholars and students. It’s becoming harder not just to protest the war on Palestine, but also teach about it. Under the new expressive activity rules, mobilizing to stop a genocide may likely be interpreted as an offensive act that could lead to dismissals or suspensions. There is also the looming threat of students filing federal Title VI civil rights complaints against academic workers who have publicly criticized Israel, based on allegations of antisemitism.

According to Paul Kohlbry, a postdoctoral associate in anthropology specializing in Palestine’s political ecology, “Rather than ever saying, ‘You can teach X and not Y,’ … they allow the popular outside pressure, through Title VI and other kinds of things, to really chill speech. And then, behind the scenes, they just don’t give funds for [teaching about Palestine].” In practice, he noted, the systematic marginalization of progressive scholarship and pedagogy on Palestinian history and politics sends a warning to faculty that “if you try to teach about Palestine like that, you won’t have the backing of the higher ups at Cornell.”

Currently, Kohlbry argues, official programs and events on Cornell’s campus that focus on Israel and Palestine feature a sanitized, “both sides” framing, presenting Palestinian suffering not as a roiling human rights crisis but rather as a question of rival viewpoints between pro- and anti-Israel camps. Kohlbry himself became the target of a police investigation into his involvement with the Palestine solidarity encampment, which was later dropped.

One of the latest targets of the administration’s intensifying scrutiny is “Gaza, Indigeneity, Resistance,” a course scheduled for the spring semester with Eric Cheyfitz, a professor in the American Indian and Indigenous Studies Program. Cornell’s Interim President Michael Kotlikoff recently remarked that while he would not try to block the course from being taught, he “personally [found] the course description to represent a radical, factually inaccurate and biased view of the formation of the State of Israel and the ongoing conflict.” The Cornell chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and the Middle East Studies Association assailed the comments as a breach of academic freedom and political interference with a course that had already been approved by Cheyfitz’s department.

Cheyfitz still looks forward to teaching the course, as he has seen many students express interest in learning about Palestine. “I know people get intimidated because their jobs are on the line,” he said. “But the only way to resist is to teach those courses,” instead of letting outside political pressure circumscribe their curriculum. “Once that is closed down, there’s no point in teaching anymore. What are you doing? You’re just silencing yourself. And that’s the end of teaching.”

The idea that higher education should be insulated from commercial or governmental interference is a relatively modern phenomenon, growing out of a 1915 declaration by the AAUP outlining professors’ freedom to research, teach and engage in “extra-mural utterance and action” without restraint or censorship. These principles went hand in hand with the institution of tenure, which shields professors from retaliation or dismissal without cause.

That kind of intellectual autonomy is “a freedom that sort of sustains and underpins the very enterprise of research, teaching and learning,” said Bateman. However, he noted that the scope of academic freedom has receded steadily as the majority of instructors in higher education become contingent, short-term, or part-time — and excluded from tenure. He advocates for making academic freedom more inclusive and interconnected with other issues of democracy and justice in the education system, so that “anyone who is engaged in research, teaching or learning has to be able to have this freedom.” Academic freedom, in other words, should be embedded “within these other principles [that] apply more generally, such as economic security, workplace economic protections … free-speech principles generally.”

At the same time, most workers at institutions like Cornell have neither workplace protections nor academic freedom. Typically working as at-will employees, they can essentially be fired for any reason at any time, as long as it’s not directly outlawed (for example, not based explicitly on gender or racial bias). So for adjunct instructors, office staff, and others who do not have access to tenure, speaking out on Palestine is riskier. Could they be denied a promotion or harassed by coworkers for hanging a Palestinian flag in their cubicle, or attending a campus protest?

Many academic workers, especially staff earning hourly wages, “feel like they can’t attend rallies on campus at all; even if they might get a lunch break in the middle of the day, they feel like they have to be accountable for all of their time on campus,” one staffer (who requested anonymity due to the sensitivity of their position) told Truthout in an interview. They added that, although workers have been told that what they do outside of work time is their prerogative, they are wary of political exposure. In reality, workers at Cornell and other institutions have faced surveillance, public smears and retaliation from management over their activism around Palestine. As hourly staff, they said, “in some ways, I have a pretty strong divide between my working life and my private life, but if the university is saying that anything I post on social media could be subject to scrutiny from HR, then it’s like, okay, well, do I really have a private life?”


“I know people get intimidated because their jobs are on the line, but the only way to resist is to teach those courses.”

The ongoing suppression of teaching and dialogue on Palestine hinges on the exploitative economic structure of the corporate university. A four-year liberal arts education has become less about learning than about maintaining a financial and commercial vehicle for corporate and philanthropic investment; an academic machine for generating and laundering profits and political influence. Meanwhile, undergraduate study increasingly centers around preparing students for lucrative corporate careers, while saddling them with wildly inflated tuition rates and crushing student debt.

Yet the drive to corporatize and commercialize higher education hasn’t stopped the right from demonizing colleges as bastions of rabid ultraliberalism. Paradoxically, the conservative caricature of academics as an elite “woke” mob has fueled attacks on affirmative action, diversity initiatives, and other efforts to make academic and campus culture more inclusive, even though in reality universities are becoming more reactionary, authoritarian and — as the crackdowns on Palestine-related dissent have shown — aligned with a right-wing foreign policy agenda.

“There’s something important about not silencing ourselves ahead of possible censure,” said Mike Bishop, a doctoral student in developmental sociology and former staffer who worked on Cornell’s community engagement programs. A crucial challenge to the administration’s “dehumanizing” treatment of Palestine solidarity activists will come from students and workers organizing to “advance this conversation even just a little bit, toward a direction where humanity of all people, especially the people who are most oppressed, is centered,” Bishop added.
Academic Labor

The suppression of activism and teaching about the plight of Palestinians represents how the academic labor force has been subordinated to the business of the university. And it reveals the need for a much more expansive definition of academic freedom and academic labor rights. As long as the freedom to think, speak and organize is seen as the earned privilege of a tiny sliver of the academic workforce, academic freedom will ultimately be treated as disposable whenever the administration deems it inconvenient. Academic freedom cannot be protected or practiced in an academic environment rife with economic inequity. The challenges of organizing a campus community around a cause like Palestine — economic instability, a lack of democracy and autonomy in the workplace, the transience of precarious faculty jobs — are exactly what a strong academic labor movement can help overcome, especially as more and more of the academic workforce is relegated to adjunct or contingent positions.


“If the university is saying that anything I post on social media could be subject to scrutiny from HR, then it’s like, okay, well, do I really have a private life?”

Calling out the commercial interests and corporate exploitation at the heart of the university — as the career fair protesters did — is a crucial part of challenging the neoliberalization of higher education. But so is strengthening the leverage that faculty, graduate workers, and others can wield within the ranks of the academic workforce — through unionization, collective bargaining, and when necessary, withholding the labor upon which higher education’s political economy depends.

Cornell Graduate Students United (CGSU), a recently formed union representing more than 3,000 graduate employees, has pursued academic freedom within the framework of labor rights. Last July, CGSU negotiated a memorandum of agreement that commits the administration to bargain with the union over any changes to working conditions that have been imposed through the Interim Expressive Activity Policy. That has provided a layer of legal protection for members like Taal and Parasurama as the union tries to negotiate their reinstatement. (So far, CGSU reports Taal has resumed his studies but remains barred from teaching, while Parasurama’s academic future remains in limbo post-disenrollment.) More broadly, in ongoing bargaining negotiations, the union is advocating for just cause protections, to protect members’ ability to “express themselves as members of society or as representatives of their fields of instruction, study, or research, free from [Cornell’s] censorship or retaliation.”

It is no coincidence that the mobilization of students and workers against the Gaza genocide parallels a surge in labor organizing in higher education, with more than 100 academic worker unions emerging over the past decade and about 20 strikes in the 2022-2023 academic year alone. The National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions has identified 35 academic collective bargaining agreements, out of a random sample of 135, that explicitly protect union members against discrimination for political activity. Alongside CGSU, academic worker unions at Rutgers University, Brown, Harvard, the University of Southern California and the University of California system have mobilized, filed federal unfair labor practice charges, and in some cases, launched strikes, in response to their administrations’ restrictions on Palestine-related campus activism.

The protests over Gaza have catalyzed resistance to the corporatization of the university. Yet in the long term, the most effective challenge to the creeping authoritarianism in higher education may be organizing for labor protections in tandem with academic freedom. Because, while university administrations treat higher education like a business, academic workers can reclaim academic freedom and educational democracy in a world of conflict and repression, and redefine what a college campus should provide for everyone who comes there to work, learn and live together with dignity.

This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), and you are free to share and republish under the terms of the license.

Michelle Chen is a contributing editor at Dissent Magazine, and a contributing writer at The Nation, In These Times and Truthout. She is also a co-producer of the “Asia Pacific Forum” podcast and Dissent Magazine’s “Belabored” podcast, and teaches history at the City University of New York. Follow her on Twitter: @meeshellchen.

Israeli Troops Recount Indiscriminate Murder of Civilians in Gaza 'Kill Zone'

"We're killing civilians there who are then counted as terrorists," said one Israeli veteran, who added that random slayings have become "a competition between units" to see who can kill more people.


Israeli invaders patrol in Khan Younis, Gaza, Palestine on January 27, 2024.
(Photo: Nicolas Garcia/AFP via Getty Images)

Brett Wilkins
Dec 20, 2024
COMMON DREAMS

Israel Defense Forces commanders, soldiers, and veterans described a "kill zone" in the heart of the Gaza Strip where troops are ordered to shoot "anyone who enters," adding to the copious body of evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by IDF troops during their 441-day obliteration of the Palestinian enclave.

Haaretz, Israel's oldest newspaper, this week published the accounts of anonymous IDF troops who received orders to kill unarmed men, women, children, and elders in the Netzarim Corridor, a strip of land several miles wide that bisects Gaza from the Israeli border to the Mediterranean Sea just south of Gaza City.

"The forces in the field call it 'the line of dead bodies,'" a commander in Division 252 told Haaretz. "After shootings, bodies are not collected, attracting packs of dogs who come to eat them. In Gaza, people know that wherever you see these dogs, that's where you must not go."

Another senior officer in that unit told the paper that "the division commander designated this area as a 'kill zone.' Anyone who enters is shot."




One Division 252 veteran said: "For the division, the kill zone extends as far as a sniper can see. We're killing civilians there who are then counted as terrorists. The IDF spokesperson's announcements about casualty numbers have turned this into a competition between units. If Division 99 kills 150, the next unit aims for 200."

A commander in Division 252 said that out of 200 "militants" the IDF said one unit had killed, "only 10 were confirmed as known Hamas operatives. Yet no one questioned the public announcement about killing hundreds of militants."


A senior reserve commander asserted, "Calling ourselves the world's most moral army absolves soldiers who know exactly what we're doing."

"It means ignoring that for over a year, we've operated in a lawless space where human life holds no value," he added. "Yes, we commanders and combatants are participating in the atrocity unfolding in Gaza. Now everyone must face this reality."

"Calling ourselves the world's most moral army absolves soldiers who know exactly what we're doing."

Another Division 252 veteran recounted the time when "guards spotted someone approaching" and "we responded as if it was a large militant raid."

"We took positions and just opened fire. I'm talking about dozens of bullets, maybe more," he continued. "For about a minute or two, we just kept shooting at the body. People around me were shooting and laughing."

The soldier continued:

We approached the blood-covered body, photographed it, and took the phone. He was just a boy, maybe 16. That evening, our battalion commander congratulated us for killing a terrorist, saying he hoped we'd kill 10 more tomorrow. When someone pointed out he was unarmed and looked like a civilian, everyone shouted him down. The commander said: 'Anyone crossing the line is a terrorist, no exceptions, no civilians. Everyone's a terrorist.' This deeply troubled me—did I leave my home to sleep in a mouse-infested building for this? To shoot unarmed people?

One Division 99 reservist recalled watching a video feed from a drone showing "an adult with two children crossing the forbidden line."

"We had them under complete surveillance with the drone and weapons aimed at them—they couldn't do anything," he said. "Suddenly we heard a massive explosion. A combat helicopter had fired a missile at them. Who thinks it's legitimate to fire a missile at children? And with a helicopter? This is pure evil."

Soldiers who served in Division 252 described the first speech delivered by Brig. Gen. Yehuda Vach, who took command of the unit last summer and, according to one veteran in attendance, told its troops that "there are no innocents in Gaza."

"In the Middle East, victory comes through conquering territory," Vach said, according to the witness. "We must keep conquering until we win."

"Who thinks it's legitimate to fire a missile at children? And with a helicopter? This is pure evil."

One officer said Vach obsessed over carrying out the so-called Generals' Plan—a blueprint for the starvation and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from northern Gaza—and sought to forcibly expel 250,000 people from the area.

The IDF responded to the Haaretz story in a statement claiming "strikes are targeted solely at military objectives, and before the strikes are carried out, many steps are taken to minimize harm to noncombatants."

However, the testimonies published by Haaretz are consistent with numerous other accounts provided by IDF soldiers and veterans, as well as Palestinian survivors and witnesses, and international medical personnel who worked in Gaza.

Earlier this year, South Africa—which is leading a genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice—filed an emergency request with the tribunal citing "testimony from Israeli soldiers who have served in Gaza that Israeli soldiers treat evacuation zones as 'zones of extermination' in which all remaining Palestinians are considered to be legitimate targets."

American trauma surgeons who volunteered at the European Hosptial in Khan Younis described "horrifying violence deliberately directed at civilians," including "a 3-year-old boy shot in the head, a 12-year-old girl shot through the chest, an ICU nurse shot through the abdomen, all by some of the best-trained marksmen in the world."

Palestinian survivors have recounted IDF troops or drones killing young children and people holding white flags. Rescue workers and journalists attempting to document the incidents have also been killed.


These are some of the more than 45,000 Palestinians who, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, have been killed, and over 107,000 others who've been wounded, since Israel launched the war on Gaza in retaliation for the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack.

On Thursday, the international medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières and Human Rights Watch joined United Nations experts, rights groups including Amnesty International, more than a dozen national governments, and thousands of academics, jurists, and others who accuse Israel of genocidal acts or outright genocide in Gaza.

Report: Israel “Systematically” Uses Palestinian Children as Human Shields


Israel has killed over 17,500 children in Gaza since October 2023, officials say, with the true toll likely far higher.

By Sharon Zhang , 

Truthout

December 19, 2024

A photograph, taken during an embed with the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and reviewed by the IDF censorship office prior to publication, shows Israeli soldiers guarding the entrance of a tunnel.Ilia Yefimovich / picture alliance via Getty Images

Israeli forces carried out an “unprecedented assault” on Palestinian children in Gaza and the occupied West Bank in 2024, a children’s rights group has said, including repeatedly using children as human shields amid Israel’s genocide.

Israeli forces have killed over 17,500 children in Gaza since October 2023, according to Gaza health officials, with the true death toll likely far higher as children dying due to disease, starvation, or being trapped under the rubble are going uncounted by officials who have lost access. An estimated 35,000 children have lost one or both parents.

Meanwhile, thousands of Palestinian children have sustained critical injuries or have been left with permanent disabilities as a result of Israeli massacres, as Defense for Children International-Palestine (DCIP) wrote in its end-of-year report.

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Gaza’s health system was already weakened before the genocide due to decades of Israeli occupation, and is now almost completely inaccessible for children needing emergency or long term care — much less services like preventative care.

This year, the risk of polio spreading among children in Gaza emerged due to Israel’s disease campaign, with one 10-month-old paralyzed from the disease and Israel preventing humanitarian groups from finishing their vaccination campaign in north Gaza. Other diseases, like chickenpox and scabies, raged through displacement camps that were overcrowded due to Israel’s mass expulsion campaign.

Many children are undergoing amputation procedures without anesthesia, UNRWA said.

“In 2024, Israel’s genocidal campaign against Palestinians in Gaza reached catastrophic proportions. Relentless aerial bombardments, ground invasions, and siege tactics deliberately targeted Palestinian civilians, leaving children to suffer the most,” DCIP’s report says.

The number of Palestinian children detained in Israeli prisons also reached a record high in 2024, the group said.

In the occupied West Bank, Israeli soldiers and settlers killed one Palestinian child every four days this year, “an escalation made possible by decades of impunity,” the group said.

Israel’s violence included using children as human shields “systematically” this year, as DCIP has documented throughout the genocide.

This includes an incident in March in which Israeli tanks surrounded a group of Palestinian children waiting in line for aid in Gaza City. Soldiers stripped the children and tied them up, depriving them of food and water and forcing them for an entire day to walk in front of tanks and in front of buildings that the military wanted to enter, as DCIP found.

Israeli forces’ weaponization of starvation, meanwhile, has put children, especially newborns and children with disabilities, at heightened risk, with babies as young as two months old starving to death, the group said; in August, Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor found that Israel killed 210 newborn babies a month on average in Gaza since the beginning of the genocide.

Palestinian Americans File Lawsuit Against US for “Abandoning” Them in Gaza


The US arranges evacuations for others, but is leaving Palestinian Americans to die in Gaza, the lawsuit says.

By Sharon Zhang , 

Truthout

December 20, 2024

Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaks during a Council on Foreign Relations event on December 18, 2024, in New York City.Michael M. Santiago / Getty Images

Agroup of Palestinian Americans is suing the U.S. government for failing to evacuate American citizens and legal residents stranded in Gaza amid Israel’s genocide, saying that the U.S. is violating constitutional protections afforded to all Americans by discriminating against Palestinians and leaving them stranded.

The group of nine Palestinian Americans, either themselves stuck in Gaza or whose family are stranded there, accuse the government of violating the Fifth Amendment, promising equal protection, “by depriving Plaintiffs of the normal and typical evacuation efforts the federal government extends to Americans who are not Palestinians,” the lawsuit says.

The plaintiffs were in Gaza before the U.S. issued a travel advisory against going to Gaza on October 11, 2023, the lawsuit says, and were thus trapped as the White House said that the government had no plans for Palestinian Americans trapped in Gaza — despite having arranged charter flights for Israeli Americans to flee Israel shortly after the October 7, 2023, attack.

The U.S.’s evacuation of people from other countries or of other nationalities from war zones but not of Palestinians is evidence of a “discriminatory two-tier system” employed by the government against people of Palestinian origin, the lawsuit says.

All of the plaintiffs are people who are eligible for evacuation but whose requests to leave have been swept under the rug by the Biden administration, according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which is supporting the lawsuit. Each of them have “tried for months to exhaust non-legal means to escape Gaza,” including with other previous legal actions.


The groups are the latest to join the large number of prominent voices accusing Israel of genocide or genocidal acts.

CAIR says that the State Department has blamed Israel’s closure of the Rafah crossing — which happened in May after Israeli forces violated President Joe Biden’s supposed “red line” — but say that the lawsuit requests evacuation through Kerem Shalom, which has been the site of other evacuations, and which remains open.

“The law requires the U.S. government to protect Americans wherever they may be. With every passing day, the danger of our clients dying from Israeli bombardment or the starvation and disease now rampant in Gaza only goes up,” Maria Kari, the case’s lead attorney, said in a statement. “The State Department must do the right thing and save these people from certain death.”

The plaintiffs’ stories are horrific. They include that of the Khalid Mourtaga, from Mississippi, who is trapped in Gaza with untreated Hepatitis A; Sahar Harara, of Texas, whose father was killed by Israel and whose mother, a green card holder, is critically injured; Marowa Abusharia, who lives in New Jersey, whose spouse, stuck in north Gaza, hasn’t met their twin daughters who were born shortly after the genocide began; and Heba Enayeh, whose 17-year-old son, Abdallah, is trapped in Gaza and in need of urgent medical care.

One of the plaintiffs, Salsabeel ElHelou, is hoping for evacuation for her and her three sons, who are 7, 12 and 15 years old. In March, three of their names appeared on the evacuation list — but not that of Almotasem, the eldest. Months later, Almotasem was hit and wounded in an Israeli airstrike, and all of the children now have skin conditions and suffer from malnutrition.

“Defendants have full knowledge of the desperate condition of the Plaintiffs and yet have failed to fulfill their mandatory, non-discretionary duty to evacuate Palestinians from Gaza just like the federal government has evacuated other United States persons of other nationalities,” the lawsuit says.

The lawsuit is the second filed against the U.S. government this week by Palestinian Americans after a group of five Palestinians sued aiming to stop the U.S.’s weapons transfers to Israel, saying that the U.S. is violating the Leahy Law by continuing to aid Israel’s assault.

The U.S. has consistently shown total indifference toward the lives of Americans if their existence is a supposed affront to Israelis. This week, the State Department implied to members of Congress that they are not independently investigating Israel’s killing of Turkish American activist Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, and are instead relying solely on Israel’s word — despite Israel having a long history of lying to exonerate itself.

This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), and you are free to share and republish under the terms of the license.

Sharon Zhang is a news writer at Truthout covering politics, climate and labor. Before coming to Truthout, Sharon had written stories for Pacific Standard, The New Republic, and more. She has a master’s degree in environmental studies. She can be found on Twitter and Bluesky.