Taxpayers Against Genocide: Lawsuit Filed Against Congress Members For Approving $26.38B In Military Aid To Israel 

On December 19, 2024, a coalition of human rights activists and organizations filed a class action lawsuit against California Congress members Mike Thompson and Jared Huffman. The lawsuit alleges that the representatives misused their authority by approving $26.38 billion in military aid to Israel, despite evidence that these funds contribute to ongoing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. Supported by more than 500 plaintiffs across Northern California, the case highlights growing public demands for accountability in U.S. foreign policy. It was filed by the group Taxpayers Against Genocide.

At the core of the lawsuit is the argument that Thompson and Huffman ignored clear evidence of war crimes committed with U.S.-provided weapons, effectively forcing their constituents into moral complicity. Plaintiffs describe profound emotional and moral injuries resulting from their representatives' actions, emphasizing the ethical responsibility to prevent taxpayer dollars from funding human rights violations.

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The lawsuit seeks declaratory and injunctive relief, aiming to halt military aid to Israel and secure accountability for decisions made in Congress. With plaintiffs ranging from seasoned activists to ordinary constituents, the case represents a significant legal challenge to U.S. military support for Israel amid increasing scrutiny over its devastating consequences for Palestinian civilians.

Guest - Seth Donnelly, a Sonoma County resident, former Bay Aea high school teacher, human rights advocate, and one of the founders of Taxpayers Against Genocide.

Guest - Maria Barakat, a Lebanese Palestinian antiwar activist, sociologist of law and society, and public policy expert specializing in equity from UC Berkeley. Both Seth and Maria are plaintiffs in the lawsuit.

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Judges Who Issued ICC Arrest Warrants Against Netanyahu Accused Of Being Anti-Semitic

On November 1, when the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity, Netanyhu accused the judges of “anti-Semitic hatred toward Israel.”

When Donald Trump vowed to crack down on campus protests by invoking the Insurrection Act to enlist the US military, he warned American colleges and universities that if they do not “end antisemitic propaganda,” they would lose accreditation and federal financial support.

Today, one of the oldest and most virulent forms of hatred - antisemitism - is being weaponized as a cudgel to silence opposition to Israel’s war against the Palestinians. If you criticize Israel, you are an “antisemite.” If you condemn Zionism, you are an “antisemite.” If an international court, with 125 member countries, dedicated to what Kofi Annan called “the cause of all humanity,” accuses Israel (and it is important to note, also Hamas military commander Mohammed Deif) of war crimes, the judges (from France, Benin, and Slovenia) are guilty of “antisemitism.”

The founders of Israel willingly took on a known risk when they established a Jewish state, choosing sacred religious symbols, the Star of David (Magen David) as the official state insignia on the nation’s flag, the menorah as the official state emblem, and Hebrew as the state’s official language. In 2018, the Knesset doubled down by passing a law designating Israel the “Nation-State of the Jewish people.” The chairman of the special legislative committee that drafted the law, described it as simply confirming “the founding principle on which the state was established,” that “everyone has human rights, but national rights in Israel belong only to the Jewish people.” The Adalah Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel said the law “contains key elements of apartheid.”

During the highly contested debate over Zionism in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, anti-Zionists and non-Zionists repeatedly warned that establishing a Jewish state would pose grave dangers not only to indigenous Arab inhabitants, but to Jews around the world. Today that complex history has been largely replaced by an official, sanitized version that doggedly erases the many Jewish voices that have sounded well-grounded alarms over the establishment of a militarized theocracy.

Guest - Professor Marjorie Feld is the author of a new, groundbreaking book, The Threshold of Dissent: A History of American Jewish Critics of Zionism. She is a professor of history at Babson College and the author of Nations Divided: American Jews and the Struggle Over Apartheid.