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WHY CONGRESS MEMBERS FACE A LAWSUIT FOR FUNDING ISRAEL’S WAR ON
GAZA  
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Norman Solomon
January 5, 2025
CounterPunch
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_ More than 600 constituents of Jared Huffman and Mike Thompson have
signed on as plaintiffs in a class action accusing them of helping to
arm the Israeli military in violation of “international and federal
law that prohibits complicity in genocide.” _

, Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

 

On the last day of 2024, the deputy general counsel for the House of
Representatives formally accepted delivery of a civil summons for two
congressmembers from Northern California. More than 600 constituents
of Jared Huffman and Mike Thompson have signed on as plaintiffs in
a class action
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them of helping to arm the Israeli military in violation of
“international and federal law that prohibits complicity in
genocide.”

Whatever the outcome of the lawsuit
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it conveys widespread anger and anguish about the ongoing civilian
carnage in Gaza that taxpayers have continued to bankroll.

By a wide margin, most Americans favor an arms embargo
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Israel while the Gaza war persists. But Huffman and Thompson voted to
approve $26.38 billion in military aid for Israel last April, long
after the nonstop horrors for civilians in Gaza were evident.

Back in February — two months before passage of the
enormous military aid package
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both Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International found that, in the
words of the lawsuit, “the Israeli government was systematically
starving the people of Gaza through cutting off aid, water, and
electricity, by bombing and military occupation, all underwritten by
the provision of U.S. military aid and weapons.”

When the known death toll passed 40,000 last summer, the UN’s high
commissioner for human rights said
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are women and children. This unimaginable situation is overwhelmingly
due to recurring failures by the Israeli Defense Forces to comply with
the rules of war.” He described as “deeply shocking” the
“scale of the Israeli military’s destruction of homes, hospitals,
schools and places of worship.”

On Dec. 4, Amnesty International released a 296-page report
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that Israel has been committing genocide “brazenly, continuously and
with total impunity” — with the “specific intent to destroy
Palestinians,” engaging in “prohibited acts under the Genocide
Convention.”

Two weeks later, on the same day the lawsuit was filed in federal
district court in San Francisco, Human Rights Watch released
new findings
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“Israeli authorities are responsible for the crime against humanity
of extermination and for acts of genocide.”

Responding to the lawsuit, a spokesperson for Thompson said
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“achieving peace and securing the safety of civilians won’t be
accomplished by filing a lawsuit.” But for well over a year, to no
avail, the plaintiffs and many other constituents have been urging him
and Huffman to help protect civilians by ending their support for the
U.S. pipeline of weapons and ammunition to Israel.

Enabled by that pipeline, the slaughter has continued in Gaza while
the appropriators on Capitol Hill work in a kind of bubble. Letters,
emails, phone calls, office visits, protests and more have not pierced
that bubble. The lawsuit is an effort to break through the routine of
indifference.

Like many other congressional Democrats, Huffman and Thompson have
prided themselves on standing up against the contempt for facts that
Donald Trump and his cohorts flaunt. Yet refusal to acknowledge the
facts of civilian decimation in Gaza, with a direct U.S. role, is an
extreme form of denial.

“Over the last 14 months I have watched elected officials remain
completely unresponsive despite the public’s demands to end the
genocide,” said Laurel Krause, a Mendocino County resident who is
one of the lawsuit plaintiffs.

Another plaintiff, Leslie Angeline, a Marin County resident who ended
a 31-day hunger strike when the lawsuit was filed, said: “I wake
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.”

Such passionate outlooks are a far cry from the words offered by
members of Congress who routinely appear to take pride in seeming calm
as they discuss government policies. But if their own children’s
lives were at stake rather than the lives of Palestinian children in
Gaza, they would hardly be so calm. A huge empathy gap is glaring.

In the words of plaintiff Judy Talaugon, a Native American activist in
Sonoma County, “Palestinian children are all our children, deserving
of our advocacy and support. And their liberation is the catalyst for
systemic change for the betterment of us all.”

As a plaintiff, I certainly don’t expect the courts to halt the U.S.
policies that have been enabling the horrors in Gaza to go on. But our
lawsuit makes a clear case for the moral revulsion that so many
Americans feel about the culpability of the U.S. government.

To hardboiled political pros, the heartfelt goal of putting a stop to
the arming of the Israeli military for genocide is apt to seem
quixotic and dreamy. But it’s easy for politicians to underestimate
feelings of moral outrage. As James Baldwin wrote
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“Though we do not wholly believe it yet, the interior life is a real
life, and the intangible dreams of people have a tangible effect on
the world.”

Organizing together under the name Taxpayers Against Genocide
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notice that no amount of rhetoric could make funding of genocide
anything other than repugnant. Jared Huffman and Mike Thompson are the
first members of Congress to face such a lawsuit. They won’t be the
last.

In recent days, people from many parts of the United States have
contacted Taxpayers Against Genocide
(via [email protected]) to see the full lawsuit
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learn about how they can file one against their own member of
Congress.

No one should put any trust in the court system to stop the U.S.
government from using tax dollars for war. But suing congressmembers
who are complicit in genocide is a good step for exposing — and
organizing against — the power of the warfare state.

_NORMAN SOLOMON is the national director of RootsAction.org
[[link removed]] and executive director of the Institute for
Public Accuracy. His latest book, War Made Invisible: How America
Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine, is published by The New
Press._

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* Gaza
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* Genocide
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* Congress
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* Israel
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* class action
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