Jessica Corbett
Common Dreams / September 23, 2024
One advocate said an embargo “is urgently needed to stop American weapons, paid for by our nation’s taxpayers, from being used in the latest slaughter in Lebanon or in the ongoing genocide in Gaza.”
The ongoing “bloodbath” in Lebanon fuelled Monday calls for the United States to cut off weapons to Israel, a demand that people around the world have made for nearly a year, as the country has massacred tens of thousands of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
“An immediate arms embargo on the far-right Israeli government is urgently needed to stop American weapons, paid for by our nation’s taxpayers, from being used in the latest slaughter in Lebanon or in the ongoing genocide in Gaza, which apparently now includes an ‘extermination zone’ in which all living beings will be subject to killing,” said Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) national deputy director Edward Ahmed Mitchell in a statement.
Mitchell cited CNN, which reported Sunday that “Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is considering a plan to force all Palestinian civilians out of northern Gaza, including Gaza City, in order to lay siege to Hamas and force the release of hostages.”
Israel—which faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice—has killed at least 41,455 Palestinians in Gaza and injured another 95,878 in a nearly yearlong retaliation for the Hamas-led October 7 attack. Most of the enclave’s 2.3 million residents have been displaced and are struggling to access food, water, shelter, and medical care.
“Restoring the credibility of President Biden… rests on his willingness to act decisively to forge peace, especially in light of the latest escalations in Lebanon threatening to plunge millions more civilians across the region into crisis.”
Throughout the assault on Gaza, Israel has exchanged strikes with the Lebanese political party and paramilitary group Hezbollah. In recent days, Israel has escalated fears of a regional war by detonating thousands of electronic devices across Lebanon and with a bombing campaign that has killed at least 492 people and wounded 1,645.
As Jeremy Scahill and Murtaza Hussain reported Monday for Drop Site News, people in southern Lebanon have received warnings to leave their homes via text messages, calls with audio recordings, and social media.
“People have seen what’s happened in Gaza and they know that the Israelis are fully capable and they understand that basically the West has given up even pretending to do anything about it,” Karim Makdisi, a professor of international politics at the American University in Beirut, told the pair. “There’s no reason to believe that the Israelis will not go ahead and basically try to empty out a large section of the south and try to make the whole place totally uninhabitable for the foreseeable future.”
Makdisi also said that Israel wouldn’t have attacked Lebanon at this scale without a “green light” from the Biden administration, saying, “I think they’ve been given a kind of clear understanding that they have until the elections to do what they want.”
Democratic U.S. President Joe Biden dropped out of this year’s content and passed the torch to Vice President Kamala Harris in July, after his disastrous debate performance against the Republican nominee, former President Donald Trump. Harris continues to frustrate critics of the Israeli assault on Gaza with what the Uncommitted National Movement described as her “unwillingness to shift on unconditional weapons policy or to even make a clear campaign statement in support of upholding existing U.S. and international human rights law.”
However, regardless of who wins the November election, Biden is set to remain in the Oval Office until early next year, meaning anti-war voices continue to target him with calls to stop sending Israel weapons and do more to secure a lasting cease-fire in the region. The president is set to address United Nations members on Tuesday.
“In his speech to the U.N. General Assembly tomorrow, foremost we need to hear one thing from President Biden: how he will use his power to end Israel’s atrocities in Gaza and ensure its compliance with international law in both Gaza and the West Bank,” Oxfam America president and CEO Abby Maxman said in a statement Monday. “To do so, he must commit to finally stopping lethal arms sales to Israel and applying the leverage necessary to stop a spiralling conflict with dire humanitarian consequences.”
“Restoring the credibility of President Biden—and the United States—on the world stage rests on his willingness to act decisively to forge peace, especially in light of the latest escalations in Lebanon threatening to plunge millions more civilians across the region into crisis,” Maxman argued, highlighting that the U.S. is in “a unique position” to sway Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The American leader “must use his influence to achieve a full and permanent cease-fire, the safe return of all Israeli hostages and illegally detained Palestinians, full access for humanitarian aid, and accountability for war crimes committed,” she argued. “As long as President Biden continues to obscure Israel’s flagrant violations of international law and provide the means for Israel’s unrestrained bombardment in Gaza, his legacy and the U.S. credibility will be utterly squandered.”
Jessica Corbett is a senior editor and staff writer for Common Dreams
