Palestinian Families Sue US State Dept For Funding Israeli War Crimes

A critical update on the injustices our tax dollars are funding, and the need to activate, organize, and keep the pressure on those in power

As the genocide of Palestinians rages on, Palestinian families are now suing the US State Department and Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Simultaneously, Israeli human rights organizations are sounding the alarm full blast that their government is committing war crimes. And meanwhile, the Biden administration continues to arm Netanyahu despite full awareness that he is committing war crimes. Here are the key updates on Israel’s siege on Gaza that corporate media is ignoring, and what we must do going forward to demand justice. Let’s Address This.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken (left) and ICC accused war criminal Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (right) [Credit: Debbie HIll/Pool/AFP]

Does the Lawsuit Have Merit?

In a word, yes. Palestinian families have taken an unprecedented step in filing a lawsuit against Antony Blinken and the US State Department for arming Netanyahu despite knowing he is violating the US Leahy Laws and international human rights law. Specifically:

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia alleged that the State Department under Secretary of State Antony Blinken has deliberately circumvented a U.S. human rights law to continue funding and supporting Israeli military units accused of atrocities in Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

In my opinion as a human rights lawyer who studies this closely, the Palestinian families behind this lawsuit have an extremely strong case. The facts are that Blinken’s and the State Department’s disregard for US and international law is well documented. For example, see the evidence uncovered by ProPublica—a well respected non-profit media organization dedicated to authentic, verifiable, and reliable investigative journalism. Founded in 2007, it has already won six Pulitzer prizes, among numerous other awards. Non-partisan media watch dog organizations consistently rate ProPublica as reliable. I offer this context lest critics attack ProPublica’s reputation and credibility. Earlier this year ProPublica published a detailed report documenting the following:

The U.S. government’s two foremost authorities on humanitarian assistance concluded this spring that Israel had deliberately blocked deliveries of food and medicine into Gaza. The U.S. Agency for International Development delivered its assessment to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the State Department’s refugees bureau made its stance known to top diplomats in late April. USAID sent Blinken a detailed 17-page memo on Israel’s conduct. The memo described instances of Israeli interference with aid efforts, including killing aid workers, razing agricultural structures, bombing ambulances and hospitals, sitting on supply depots and routinely turning away trucks full of food and medicine. Days later, Blinken delivered a carefully worded statement to Congress that said, “We do not currently assess that the Israeli government is prohibiting or otherwise restricting the transport or delivery of U.S. humanitarian assistance.”

Human Rights Watch, OxFam, Amnesty International, and the UN have all issued similar reports. Antony Blinken, meanwhile, saw the official reports from his own two U.S. State Department agencies—all in full agreement that the Israeli government is committing the war crime of illegally blocking aid to Gaza as Palestinians starved to death—and decided to testify to the opposite effect to U.S. Congress.

The only possible logical conclusion is that Blinken knowingly lied. This is why Palestinian families are suing, arguing that Secretary Blinken should be prosecuted for lying to U.S. Congress in contravention to the factual USAID report, and then also prosecuted for illegally approving arms to Netanyahu in violation of the Leahy Laws.

Israeli Media & Human Rights Orgs Document Israeli War Crimes

Haaretz has led so assertively in calling out Israeli war crimes, that the Netanyahu administration has attacked them with the full force of government censorship and sanctions. But that has not stopped Israel’s oldest paper from documenting the Israeli Government’s war crimes against Palestinians. This week Haaretz documented dozens more horrifying war crimes by the Israeli military, reporting:

[Israeli soldiers state] that “Everyone's a Terrorist.” IDF Soldiers expose arbitrary killings and rampant lawlessness in Gaza's Netzarim corridor. [For example], of 200 bodies, only 10 were confirmed as Hamas members. IDF soldiers who served in Gaza tell Haaretz that anyone who crosses an imaginary line in the contested Neztarim corridor is shot to death, with every Palestinian casualty counting as a terrorist – even if they were just a child.

Likewise, premier Israeli Human Rights org B’Tselem reports about Israel’s war crimes:

Israel is committing the war crime of starvation in the Gaza Strip. For months, Israel has been committing the crime of starvation under international law in the Gaza Strip. The severe hunger that has developed over recent months in the Gaza Strip is not a result of fate, but the product of a deliberate and conscious Israeli policy. It has been openly declared by decision makers, including a member of the Israeli war cabinet, from the very beginning of the war.

Finally, Breaking The Silence, an Israeli organization comprised of former Israeli Defense Force soldiers quotes a prominent former soldier to state,

"We are now being dragged to occupy, annex, ethnically cleanse - look at the north of the Gaza Strip - transfer, call it whatever you want, and to settle in Jewish settlements. That is the matter." The former soldier who made the statement above is not one of our testifiers. Far from it. These are the words of Moshe Ya’alon, the former IDF chief of staff and Israel’s former defense minister. And he didn’t misspeak, either. When pressed, he only reiterated and reaffirmed his statements. "I stand behind the phrase 'ethnic cleansing.' I must warn you about what is happening here and is being hidden from us. War crimes are being committed here," he said, adding that he was speaking "on behalf of commanders who operate in the northern Gaza Strip and have been approaching me with dread."

Breaking the Silence goes on to give ample testimony that the Israeli military is using Palestinian civilians as human shields in their siege on Gaza—which again is a war crime. Please note, none of these are the words of Palestinians, or even of any non-Israelis. This is documented facts from Israeli civilians, Israeli journalists, and Israeli military officers—all attesting to war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and genocide. And the fact is that the US Government is well aware of these atrocities, and refuses to hold Netanyahu or the Israeli military accountable.

Corporate Media Continues To Fail the American People

Meanwhile, new studies show just how dangerously corporate media remains complicit. The Nation issued a damning report on cable news and legacy media continuing to whitewash Israel’s siege on Gaza:

A survey of a year’s worth of Palestine-Israel coverage by four Sunday morning news shows—NBC’s Meet the Press, ABC’s This Week With George Stephanopoulos, CBS’s Face the Nation, and CNN’s State of the Union with Jake Tapper and Dana Bash—reveals a startling statistic: With the exception of one interview, the Sunday shows covered and debated the so-called “Israel-Hamas war” for 12 months without speaking to a single Palestinian or Palestinian American. In addition, the survey shows, these programs display a consistent anti-Palestinian bias. They selectively use emotive words only to describe Israeli victims, ignore Palestinian human shield and rape victims, and routinely platform Israeli officials who have been credibly accused of war crimes—most notably Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

This is, in short, journalistic malpractice. To speak about the Palestinian people for a full year while refusing to invite Palestinian speakers is the definition of ‘yellow journalism,’ and this failure is coming from the wealthiest media outlets in the country. It is no wonder that Americans are sick and tired of this disinformation, and why CNN’s ratings have more than halved since the Presidential election. It’s also no wonder why ABC capitulated so quickly to Trump in his defamation suit against them. (More on this in tomorrow’s post).

But in short, what we see is corporate media choosing to fail the American people. Americans should remember these betrayal of our trust, and demand actual journalists committed to facts and truth, not propaganda and disinformation. Because not only is it enabling genocide overseas, it is undermining democracy here at home. For example, months before the Presidential election I wrote:

Finally, remember that stopping arms to Netanyahu is not just the moral and legally smart decision, it is the politically smart decision. A recent national CBS/YouGov poll, reports the following critical facts about how united Americans are to end the siege on Gaza by withholding arms from Netanyahu: 61% of Americans oppose weapons to Israel’s assault in Gaza and 77% of Democrats reject US weapons to Israel. My fear is that the Biden administrations continued refusal to listen to the will of the American people hurts VP Harris’s chances to win in November. In an election as tight as this election is shaping up to be, it is entirely meritless to enforce a position that more than 3 in 5 Americans and nearly 4 in 5 Democrats oppose.

While the Biden administration is absolutely responsible for its own grotesque failure on this issue, corporate media’s refusal to hold accountable the Biden administration, or Trump’s stated policy to let Netanyahu “finish the job” is similarly deplorable. Sadly, I was proven right in my above warning, as evidenced by not only the loss, but by the fact that young people who fueled Biden to victory in 2020 stayed home in 2024. But more importantly, what we do now matters, because we have a clear blueprint — painful as it is to acquire via a lost election — that demonstrates Americans do not want war, do not want to fund this war, and loudly condemn this genocide.

What Can We Do?

Earlier I said I believe the lawsuit has merit. This is true and the facts back it up. Whether the lawsuit is heard, however, is a different conversation. The US Government has something called Sovereign Immunity, which means in short, that you can only sue the government if it gives you permission to sue them. I doubt the State Department will allow them to be sued for enabling these war crimes, nor would the Supreme Court allow the lawsuit to proceed. Still, this critical step from these courageous Palestinian families is not in vain, and exemplifies the need to speak up and raise our voices for the sake of justice and human rights, no matter how dire the circumstances or how small the chance of success. Accordingly I encourage each of you to do the following:

1. Look up your member of Congress and continue to raise your voice to stop spending our tax dollars fueling Netanyahu’s war crimes and siege on Gaza and the Palestinian people. Call them, email them, visit their offices—make sure they hear your voice that you reject these violations of US and international laws.

2. Continue to support human rights organizations domestically and in Israel committed to ending this genocide. Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund, MedGlobal, Humanity First, Breaking The Silence, B’Tselem, and ANERA are all well established organizations doing the hard work of saving lives in the most difficult of circumstances. These are all organizations I have personally supported and continue to support because they are leading by example to uphold justice.

3. Demand media accountability. Shut off the CNNs of the world and invest your dollars and time into voices not owned by billionaires or built around disinformation clickbait. Stay tuned for tomorrow’s post for more details on this.

Conclusion

Our responsibility remains clear—continue to raise our voices for justice, and continue to support those demanding accountability. Contact your member of Congress regardless of party affiliation, and demand our elected officials uphold US and international law. Silence is not an option, as that enables further war crimes, and in this case, genocide. You have my commitment to continue to speak up relentlessly at every opportunity, even when it isn’t popular to do so, because human rights are not a popularity contest, they are a fundamental obligation upon all of us to protect.