🧵Tomorrow @HASCRepublicans & @HASCDemocrats will mark-up the FY2027 NDAA. Sec. 224 of the bill would enmesh Israel in the US military in unprecedented ways. Here are six reasons why Members should support @RoKhanna's amendment to strike Sec. 224.
1. By moving the subsidization of Israeli weapons makers to this co-development and co-production model, human rights standards that apply to other weapons transfers won't apply in this case. In other words, no way to hold Israel accountable.
2. Yet again, Congress is proposing to single out Israel for special privileges that no other country has. Israel would be the only country in the world w/ a special Pentagon Executive Agent advocating for its weapons makers.
3. Should we really be emulating Israel's dystopian use of AI to surveil, track, and kill Palestinians? And do we really want to fuse our data with Israel when that raises all kinds of privacy and espionage concerns?
4. This paves the way to limitless contracts given to Israeli weapons makers, potentially without even any appropriations made by Congress. Tens of billions of our taxpayer money could be going to Israeli firms every year under this model.
5. The US is obliged by international law not to contribute to grave breaches of international law. Giving contracts to Israeli weapons makers--some of which are government-owned--that profit from Israel's oppression of Palestinians violates those obligations.
6. We should ending all forms of weapons transfers, weapons cooperation, etc. with this genocidal apartheid regime, not deepening those relations. Americans across the political spectrum are sick and tired of supporting this regime.
🧵I'm seeing a lot of ill-informed chatter about how unrealistic Trump's plan is to commit ethnic cleansing and forcibly displace more than 2 million Palestinians from Gaza.
This is a very real possibility that must be taken with the utmost seriousness. Here's why.
2. Let's remember a few things: early on in the genocide, the Israeli Intelligence Ministry prepared a plan to ethnically cleanse all Palestinians from Gaza to the Sinai desert.
3. Biden, in his request for supplemental appropriations, put in a hefty line item to provide aid to Palestinians who would be forcibly removed beyond the borders of Palestine.
🧵Today is #NakbaDay. 76 years since Israel's dispossession of the Palestinian people began. As part of my PhD research, I uncovered bombshell documents from the US Consulate in Jerusalem showing just how much the US knew about the Nakba as it unfolded. mei.edu/publications/f…
75 years ago today, the UN passed a resolution supporting Palestinian refugees' right to return home. The US voted for it but never forced Israel to implement the resolution. For 75 years, Palestinian refugees have been denied this elemental right. 🧵 thehill.com/opinion/intern…
Today, the Biden admin is a partner in crime with Israel as it has killed at least 18,000 Palestinians, destroyed more than half of the houses in Gaza, and forcibly displaced 85% of Palestinians, creating a humanitarian catastrophe in many respsects even worse than in 1948. 2/
Yes, President Truman supported partition and hastily recognized Israel but unlike President Biden, he supported ceasefire resolutions in the UN, embargoed weapons to Israel, and backed Palestinian refugees right to return home. Today, the US is much more deeply complicit. 3/
🧵Reading the archives of the US Embassy in Jordan today, I came across this heart-breaking account:
On Nov. 2, 1950, an Israeli soldier executed two Palestinian refugee children, Ali Elayan, aged 12, and Fakhriyeh Elayan, aged 10, from the village of Yalu. 1/
The children were out gathering wood when soldiers crossed the no-man's land separating Israel from Jordan and grabbed the children, took them into the no-man's land, and shot them in cold blood while their father witnessed the terrible deed from a nearby hilltop. 2/
All of this was verified by UN observers who found the casings for the bullets. I won't post the disturbing autopsy photos to preserve the dignity of the children. The children were refugees from the nearby village of Deir Ayyub, one of 100s Israel destroyed during the #Nakba. 3/
🧵 75 years ago today, the United Nations recommended partitioning #Palestine against the wishes of its majority indigenous Palestinian population for the benefit of a minority settler-colonial movement. This injustice violated Palestinians' right to self-determination. 1/
Even Dr. Ralph Bunche, who wrote the partition plan, was "not all satisfied with my scheme" but believed it was a "reasonable and workable compromise." But was it really reasonable, workable, or just?
Source: Brian Urquhart, Ralph Bunche: An American Odyssey, pp. 149-150. 2/
The UN recommended giving the Zionist movement 55% of #Palestine, including most of its most fertile land, even though the Jewish population of the country was only 33% of the total and the Zionist movement had only colonized less than 7% of the land. 3/
🧵I recently saw a list of the best books on the so-called "Israeli-Palestinian conflict" compiled by a prominent academic. It didn't contain A SINGLE BOOK written by a Palestinian academic. This made me 😠 so here's a list of 10 great books by Palestinian academics you should📖:
1. Nur Masalha's Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History is a beautifully researched and written account of the millennia-old reality of Palestine as a geo-political idea, and a rich cultural and religious history showcasing Palestine's diversity. bookshop.org/p/books/palest…
2. Rashid Khalidi's The Hundred Years' War on Palestine is a really excellent overview of the impact of Zionist settler-colonialism on the indigenous Palestinian people as told through the prism of his family's experiences. bookshop.org/p/books/the-hu…