Press Release: Congress Must Address the Root Cause of Violence and Stop Arming Israel
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
WASHINGTON, DC, October 9, 2023—The Israeli government is bombing Palestinian families living trapped under siege in Gaza at this moment, massacring hundreds of native Palestinian people since Saturday. Justice cannot wait.
The root cause of recent violence is clear: It is Israel’s 75+ years of ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people and theft of native Palestinian land. In order to address it, Congress must end the $3.8 billion/year in U.S. military funding to Israel, which has been actively fueling the Israeli military’s massive violence for decades.
From Gaza to Jenin, we have witnessed Israel’s brutal massacres of Palestinian people again and again. We have watched U.S. politicians and media ignore, minimize, and sometimes even sanction Israel’s killings, dehumanizing Palestinians as they live under Israel’s racist apartheid system every day, only to issue condemnations the moment a Palestinian person resists.
The clock did not start on Saturday. Israel has been ethnically cleansing the Palestinian people for over 75 years, killing and forcing Palestinians from their homes to steal their native land. That’s colonialism.
Palestinian people in Gaza have been living under Israel’s brutal military occupation for over 50 years. Two thirds of Palestinian people in Gaza are refugees from the Nakba, when Israeli militias violently expelled them from their homes 75 years ago.
The Israeli government, with one of the most advanced militaries in the world, has been trapping more than 2 million Palestinian people in an open-air cage in Gaza for about 17 years. Israel’s suffocating, illegal siege and blockade has produced inhumane conditions:
- Massively destroyed infrastructure from repeated bombings
- 97% of water undrinkable
- Severely limited electricity
- 75% of the population food insecure
- Severe shortages of life-saving medicines and medical resources.
That level of violence is the root cause that needs to be addressed. The UN predicted that Gaza would become unlivable by 2020, and we are nearly four years and multiple bombing campaigns past that.
Now, as the Israeli government tightens its ongoing blockade on Gaza into a total blockade of all food, electricity, and fuel, it is necessary for members of Congress to oppose Israel’s state violence funded by our tax dollars. Lives are on the line. Rather than fueling violence, the U.S. government should end U.S. military funding to Israel, once and for all.
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About the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights
The US Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR) is a national network of activists and organizations who are committed to freedom, justice, and equality for the Palestinian people and who work to end U.S. complicity in their oppression. USCPR is a political home for all who believe that freedom for the Palestinian people is an integral part of achieving our collective liberation. USCPR provides resources and strategic support to the U.S.-based Palestine solidarity movement, channeling grassroots power into positive change in U.S. policy and public opinion. USCPR works with local organizers and activists, policymakers, movement leaders, media, and advocacy organizations to advance a rights-based, accountability and justice-oriented framework from the U.S. to Palestine.
