Reproduced from the Jewish Voice for Peace with thanks.
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Thousands of people of conscience from across the country turned out to protest Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to Washington DC this week – including hundreds of American jews who were arrested while engaged in prayerful civil disobedience, demanding an immediate arms embargo on Israel.
If the last two weeks have shown us anything, it is that the political terrain can shift on a dime. President Joe Biden has dropped out of the presidential election, and it is clear that grassroots pressure against his support for Israel’s genocide played a role.
Now is the moment to escalate movement demands for an arms embargo. The US government needs to end its support for this genocide now.
‘Jews say stop arming Israel’
On 24 July 2024, a day before Netanyahu’s address to Congress, hundreds of American jews occupied the rotunda of the Cannon House office building on Capitol Hill in prayerful civil disobedience, demanding an immediate arms embargo on Israel.
The sit-in, held by the Jewish Voice for Peace, came nearly nine months after the JVP’s mass protest in the same location, when US jews gathered in the hundreds, ten days into the genocide, to demand a ceasefire.
The sit-in was led by over a dozen rabbis, who wore handmade prayer shawls emblazoned with the words “Never Again for Anyone”.
Hundreds of protesters – including students, Israeli Americans and the descendants of holocaust survivors – joined them in prayer and song, donning red shirts with the messages “Jews Say Stop Arming Israel” and “Not in Our Name”, and holding banners that called for an end to Israel’s genocide. Over 400 people were arrested by Capitol police.
‘Guilty of genocide’
On Wednesday, as Netanyahu prepared to address a joint session of Congress, thousands of people of conscience took to the streets in Washington DC.
The protest was organised by a Palestinian-led coalition. JVP members were there, too, alongside representatives from over 100 grassroots human rights organisations, demanding that the US government immediately cease weapons transfers and military funding to the Israeli military. The National Labour Network for Ceasefire, representing millions of American workers, joined the protest as well, and the president of the American Postal Workers Union addressed the crowd with leaders from United Auto Workers and other unions.
As protesters marched to the Capitol, carrying signs calling for an end to US military funding to Israel and demanding Netanyahu’s arrest for war crimes, police clad in riot gear attacked them with pepper spray and pushed them back by force.
Over 130 Representatives and Senators decided not to attend Netanyahu’s address to Congress, including former speaker of the house Nancy Pelosi and the then likely Democratic nominee for president, vice-president Kamala Harris – far exceeding the 58 members of Congress who skipped his speech in 2015. As Netanyahu attempted to justify the slaughter of tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza, asking Congress for bipartisan support to “finish the job”, the lone Palestinian-American representative in Congress, Rashida Tlaib, defiantly held up a sign that read “Guilty of genocide”.
Shifting terrain
Just a few days before thousands of us gathered in DC to demand the USA stop funding Israel’s genocide, President Biden announced he was dropping out of the 2024 presidential election. This is a massive shift in the political terrain of the USA.
For the last nine months, Americans have watched in horror as Biden funded, armed and provided political cover for Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. And every day since the genocide began, the movement for Palestinian liberation has made it clear that Biden has the power to end US support for this slaughter immediately.
In that time, the Israeli military has killed at least 39,000 Palestinians, over 15,000 of whom were children. Full-blown famine has set in as Palestinians across Gaza starve to death under Israel’s brutal siege. This is not war; it is genocide.
Biden’s full-throated support for Israel in the face of these atrocities isn’t only a reprehensible policy – it’s also been a deeply unpopular one. Polling, protest and organising have made it clear that Americans don’t want their tax dollars funding the mass slaughter of innocent men, women, and children. But Biden has refused to listen to his constituents.
There is no doubt that Biden’s unwavering support for Israel’s genocide played a major role in making him unpopular. Our movements have real power.
A critical opening
Biden’s decision reminds us that everything can change on a dime, including the political conditions we once regarded as immovable. Now, it’s up to our movement to exploit this moment of chaos to recentre Gaza in the national conversation.
We refuse to wait. If this genocide continues until the next president takes office, there may be no one left alive in Gaza. Biden is still the sitting president, and members of Congress are in office right now. They are responsible for every single human being in Gaza who has been shot, starved, tortured and bombed with US-made weapons. They must stop supplying Israel with the weapons it is using to commit genocide – and we’re not letting up the pressure until they do.
That’s why we’re capitalising on the momentum of this moment to push our electeds to enact a meaningful shift in policy by finally imposing an arms embargo on Israel.
