Palestinian Americans' lawsuit in Oakland seeks to end U.S. support for Israel
Palestinian-American prosecutors on Friday asked a federal judge in California to force the White House to withdraw US support for Israel pending a ceasefire in Gaza, accusing President Biden and other administration officials of being complicit in a genocide of the Palestinian people.
In more than two hours of testimony before Judge Jeffrey White in U.S. District Court in Oakland, plaintiffs in the unusual lawsuit expressed grief and outrage, choking back tears as they spoke about their loved ones killed in Gaza.
A Palestinian immigrant living in Fairfield, California, said seven members of his family had been killed in airstrikes in Gaza, including the children of a cousin “who is like a brother to me.” Another, living in San Ramon, California, said his family had lost more than 100 members, and that a single Israeli attack had killed his cousin, his cousin's son and 14 members of a neighbor's family.
The testimony came in the second legal proceedings on a day in which Israel's bombardment of the disputed Palestinian enclave was portrayed as a potentially serious violation of the 1948 Genocide Convention. Hours earlier, the United Nations' highest judicial body ordered Israel to stop genocidal acts by its forces as part of that court's handling of formal allegations that Israel's response to Hamas-led terrorist attacks on October 7 was intended to deny Palestinians the right to exist.
The Federal Case in Northern California this is unlikely to work, given legal precedents that limit judicial power over American presidents in matters of foreign policy. But the lawsuit has energized pro-Palestinian activists, who have convinced a dozen local governments in the Bay Area, Atlanta and other regions of the country to call for a ceasefire in Gaza.
The judge told prosecutors he wanted them to know they had “been seen” and called the testimony “heartbreaking” and the case “probably the most difficult” he had ever dealt with.
A ruling in the federal lawsuit is expected next week.
In their defense in the International Court of Justice case, Israeli officials categorically denied the charges of genocide, arguing that their military has tried to save the lives of civilians and that they have allowed daily deliveries of supplies to Gaza. Israel also said that inflammatory comments about Palestinians were taken out of context or made by individuals without decision-making power. It is expected that the International Court of Justice will not rule on the genocide charges in the coming years.
In the months since the October 7 attack, which Israeli authorities say killed some 1,200 people and left some 240 others as hostages, Israel has nearly razed parts of Gaza in an effort to crush Hamas , an armed Palestinian group that is also the government. power over the territory. Local health officials in Gaza say the attack killed more than 25,000 people, including thousands of children, and forced the vast majority of the territory's 2.2 million residents from their homes.
The legal action in California, argued Friday by lawyers for a progressive nonprofit, was filed Nov. 13 by two Palestinian humanitarian organizations and eight individual supporters in the United States and Gaza. It accuses President Biden, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III, through their “unconditional support” for Israel, of violating customary federal law by defying customary international law that the United States adheres to the Genocide Convention.
Prosecutors have asked Judge White, an appointee of former President George W. Bush, to order these officials to “take all measures within their power” to stop “Israel's genocide against the Palestinian people of Gaza.” They also requested orders to halt further aid to Israel and prevent the White House from “obstructing efforts by the international community, including the United Nations, to implement a ceasefire.”
“My family is being murdered on my dime,” says Laila el-Haddad, a Palestinian activist and author from Clarksville, Maryland, told the judge on Friday. One of her relatives lives under a nylon tarp in Gaza with her four children and husband, a cancer patient, she said. Another family member held his brother as he bled to death and then buried him in a mass grave. Israeli attacks killed 88 relatives on her mother's side, she said.
Like the proceedings in The Hague on Friday at the International Court of Justice, which has no enforcement resources, the California case appears to be largely symbolic. The executive branch of the U.S. government generally has wide legal latitude in foreign policy decisions.
“Decisions about whether and how to attempt to influence foreign nations, and whether and how to provide them with military aid, financial assistance, or other assistance, are constitutionally tied to the political branches of government,” the lawyers wrote. government in a file on December 8.
On Friday, Jean Lin, a special litigation adviser for the Justice Department, told the judge: “Your honor simply has no jurisdiction.”
However, an attorney for the plaintiffs, Katherine Gallagher of the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York, argued that the court had both legal discretion and a duty to “serve as a check” against a potential genocide under the terms of the Genocide Convention. .
According to legal experts, the law is on the government's side.
“The case law is clear that foreign policy challenges are unwarranted political issues,” Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the law school at the University of California, Berkeley, said in an interview earlier this week.
The administration's lawyers have also pointed out that since the October 7 attack, President Biden has said that the United States “unequivocally stands for the protection of civilian life” and that “the vast majority of Palestinians are not Hamas.”
Basim Elkarra, a prosecutor and executive director of the Sacramento Valley chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said in an interview earlier this week that prosecutors did what they felt was within their power to prevent the Israeli military from killing people. kill. in Gaza.
Mr. Elkarra, a Palestinian American who spent his childhood summers in Gaza and is now a Sacramento school board member and Democrat, said his family alone had lost more than 65 relatives in Israeli bombings.
“We are notifying the administration,” Mr. Elkarra said.