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Rashida Tlaib introduces US Congress resolution to recognise Gaza genocide
A Palestinian child walks through the rain in the Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood of Gaza City, November 14
Democratic lawmaker Rashida Tlaib has introduced a resolution in the United States Congress to recognise Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza as a genocide.
While the proposal released on Friday has little chance of passing in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, it underscores the growing criticism of Israel in US politics.
If the resolution did pass, it would officially recognise that “Israel has committed the crime of genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza” and call for an end to the transfer of weapons suspected of being used to commit atrocities to the US ally.
The bill also backs “facilitating investigations and domestic proceedings and taking action, including imposing targeted, lawful sanctions, with respect to the State of Israel”.
The resolution has been co-sponsored by 20 other Democratic members of Congress, including some prominent legislators.
Key progressive Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, potential presidential candidate Ro Khanna, and Gen Z Congressman Maxwell Alejandro Frost, who is seen as a rising star in the party, are backing the measure.
The resolution comes as the 10-year Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that granted Israel $3.8bn in US military aid annually is set to expire next year – likely renewing the debate over the assistance as Israeli officials seek a new package.
Over the past two years, the US government provided additional assistance to Israel to help fund the war on Gaza – totalling more than $21bn.
Despite the growing consensus among rights experts that the war in Gaza is a genocide, only a fraction of Congress members have adopted the label when describing the Israeli offensive.
In addition to the 21 House Democrats backing the resolution, Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene and progressive Senator Bernie Sanders have also accused Israel of genocide.
Experts say the description is important because the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide invokes a global responsibility to stop the atrocities and hold the perpetrators responsible.
More than 100 rights groups have endorsed Tlaib’s congressional proposal.
Normalising hate: Israel leans in to anti-Palestinian violence, rhetoric
The US-imposed ceasefire of October 10 has not stopped Israel’s regular attacks on the Gaza Strip. Nor has it threatened to hold a parliament and society that largely cheered on the war, which has been deemed genocidal by multiple international bodies, accountable for their actions.
Instead, fuelled by what analysts from within Israel have described as an absolute sense of impunity, anti-Palestinian violence has intensified across the country and the occupied West Bank while much of the world continues to look away, convinced that the work of the ceasefire is done.
In the parliament, or Knesset, a senior lawmaker and member of the governing party openly defended convicted ultranationalist Meir Kahane, long considered beyond the pale even by members of Israel’s right wing and whose Kach movement has been banned as a “terrorist organisation”. At the same time, the parliament is debating reintroducing the death penalty, as well as expanding the terms of the offences for which it might apply – both unambiguously targeting Palestinians.
Under the legislation, proposed by ultranationalist National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir – who himself has past “terrorism”-related convictions for his outspoken support of Kahane – anyone found guilty of killing Israelis because of “racist” motives and “with the aim of harming the State of Israel and the revival of the Jewish people in its land” would face execution.
That bill passed its first reading this week.
“The absence of any attempt to assert accountability from the outside, from Israel’s allies, echoes into Israel’s own Knesset,” analyst and former Israeli peace negotiator Daniel Levy said. “There’s no sense that Israel has done anything wrong or that anyone should be held to account.”
“Israel has built up this energy through two years of genocide,” Orly Noy, editor of the Hebrew-language Local Call, told Al Jazeera. “That hasn’t gone anywhere.
“Just because there’s a ceasefire and the hostages are back, the racism, the supremacy and the unmasked violence didn’t just disappear. We’re seeing daily pogroms by soldiers and settlers in the West Bank. There are daily attacks on Palestinian bus drivers. It’s become dangerous to speak Arabic, not just within the ‘48, but anywhere,” she said, referring to Israel’s initial borders of 1948.
“Once you’ve manufactured consent for genocide, you need to be proactive in dialling the cruelty levels down, which is something we’re not seeing,” Levy said. “If anything, we’re just seeing it continue. They have dialled the cruelty levels up to 11 … and they’re leaving them there.”
