Sharon Zhang
Truthout / December 5, 2024
Advocates are reigniting calls for an arms embargo on Israel after landmark findings that Israel is committing genocide.
Advocates for Palestinian rights have reignited their calls for the U.S. to stop sending arms to Israel following a landmark Amnesty International investigation concluding that Israel is committing genocide, as many Palestinians and experts have been saying for months.
“My colleagues can no longer deny that this is genocide,” said Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan). “We must follow our own U.S. laws. We need an Arms Embargo now.”
On Thursday, Amnesty released a sprawling report determining that Israel’s assault of Gaza amounts to genocide, citing Israel’s relentless attacks, blocking of humanitarian aid, targeting of health and other basic infrastructure, forced displacement of 90 percent of Gaza’s population, and more.
Amnesty is the first major international humanitarian organization to outright label Israel’s actions as a genocide. The group was also one of the first major human rights organizations to label Israel’s violent occupation and oppression of Palestine as apartheid, back in 2022.
The human rights group, one of the largest in the world, specifically called out the U.S. as a major collaborator in the genocide due to the Biden administration’s policy of sending Israel weapons with zero red lines. Just last week, despite Israel’s clear, ongoing campaign of ethnic cleansing in northern Gaza, reports emerged of the Biden administration advancing yet another sale of weapons to Israel worth $680 million.
Amnesty warned that states continuing to send weapons are risking legal complicity in genocide.
Amnesty also called on UN bodies like the Security Council and the General Assembly to take immediate action to implement a permanent ceasefire and a “comprehensive arms embargo” on Israel.
“We welcome the fact that an internationally-respected organization like Amnesty International would clearly state what has become obvious to the entire world — with the exception of Biden administration officials,” said Nihad Awad, the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), in a statement.
“Based on the conclusion of this report and on countless similar reports documenting Israel’s genocide, we demand that President Biden order an immediate ban on weapons deliveries to the genocidal Israeli government,” Awad went on.
In the past 14 months, Israeli forces have killed at least 44,500 Palestinians in Gaza, including 17,500 children, and injured at least 105,000, according to official counts by Gaza health officials. As Amnesty and international experts have acknowledged, the death toll is likely far higher, with some estimates ranging as high as 330,000, out of a pre-genocide population of 2.3 million.
UN Special Rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territory Francesca Albanese warned in September that Israel “could end up exterminating almost the entire population in Gaza” within the next two years if international powers do not intervene to stop it.
The leadership committee for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement lauded the report. “We now call on Amnesty International members and sections to step up their pressure on complicit states, corporations and institutions to end their complicity with Israel’s regime of settler-colonialism, military occupation, apartheid and genocide,” the BDS National Committee said in a statement.
“Stopping Israel’s genocide demands mounting enormous pressure on governments to impose meaningful sanctions on Israel, starting with a comprehensive military-security embargo, as was done against apartheid South Africa,” the group continued.
Sharon Zhang is a news writer at Truthout covering politics, climate and labour
