Schumer visited Israel the place he pledged the U.S. Senate’s “fullest help” because the Netanyahu authorities faces backlash.
Lots of of Jewish New Yorkers rallied and marched on the house of Senate Majority Chief Chuck Schumer on Sunday to protest his embrace of far-right Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu amid rising violence in opposition to Palestinians — violence that demonstrators mentioned is enabled by the U.S. authorities’s unwavering army and diplomatic help.
“As Jews who help freedom and dignity for all individuals, no exceptions, we is not going to simply sit in horror because the state of Israel carries out ethnic cleaning in our names,” mentioned Jewish Voice for Peace member Jay Saper. “We’re calling for an finish to all U.S. army funding to Israel now.”
The protest got here lower than two weeks after Schumer visited Israel and pledged the U.S. Senate’s “fullest help” even because the Netanyahu authorities faces mass demonstrations over its authoritarian judicial reform proposal and international backlash for increasing illegal settlements on Palestinian territory.
“What we’re witnessing is just not a ‘cycle of violence,’ however somewhat a army superpower in opposition to an occupied individuals,” mentioned Eve Feldberg, a member of Jewish Voice for Peace’s New York chapter. “Make no mistake — the Israeli authorities’s oppression of Palestinians is the foundation trigger of each violent demise.”
Israeli forces have killed dozens of Palestinians for the reason that begin of the brand new 12 months. Along with official state violence, Palestinians are additionally dealing with more and more frequent assaults by Israeli settlers, together with a massive assault in town of Huwara final week.
Final 12 months, the United Nations recorded nearly 850 Israeli settler assaults on Palestinians within the occupied West Financial institution.
“Analysis by the Israeli group Yesh Din discovered that 93% of all investigations into settler assaults in opposition to Palestinians within the occupied West Financial institution had been closed with out an indictment within the interval between 2005 and 2022,” Amnesty Worldwide noted in a press release final week. “Yesh Din additionally discovered that greater than 80% of Palestinians’ complaints to Israeli police weren’t investigated in any respect.”
Becoming a member of demonstrators throughout Sunday’s rally and march was New York State Sen. Jabari Brisport, who mentioned that “till Palestinians are free, neither are we.”
Brisport additionally took intention on the U.S. authorities’s annual military aid to Israel, declaring that “each greenback of that $3.8 billion” is “killing Palestinians overseas and it’s killing People who can’t afford medical insurance.”
In an interview simply days earlier than Schumer’s journey to Israel final month, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont said he’s “very frightened about what Netanyahu is doing and… what might occur to the Palestinian individuals.”
“The US offers billions of {dollars} in assist to Israel,” mentioned Sanders, a member of the Senate Democratic leadership. “And I feel we’ve obtained to place some strings hooked up to that and say you can’t run a racist authorities. You can’t flip your again on a two-state resolution. You can’t demean the Palestinian individuals there. You simply can’t do it after which come to America and ask for cash.”
The senator went on to say that he “might properly” introduce laws to put circumstances on U.S. army assist to Israel, including, “If a authorities is performing in a racist approach, and so they need billions of {dollars} from the taxpayers of america, I feel you say, ‘Sorry, however it’s not acceptable. You need our cash? High quality. That is what you bought to do to get it.’”
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