News Releases

Common Dreams reports: “IDF Kills 18 Children in Rafah Hours After U.S. House Approves Billions in Military Aid.”

RAED JARRAR, rjarrar@dawnmena.org, @raedjarrar
Jarrar, advocacy director at Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), said: “Members of Congress should understand that approving more military aid could subject them to personal liability for aiding and abetting an ongoing genocide in Gaza.”

The Guardian reports in “Netanyahu vows to fight U.S. sanctions on IDF unit accused of violations in West Bank” that soldiers from the Netzah Yehuda battalion “were accused in the death of a 78-year-old US citizen, Omar Assad, who died of a heart attack in 2022 after being detained, bound, gagged and then abandoned by members of the unit.”

Mariam Barghouti commented on “Democracy Now“: “It’s really fruitless to give attention to the Biden administration’s symbolic gestures that are very hollow. … These sanctions mean nothing in light of the billions of dollars the U.S. Congress just approved for Israel for this military that is conducting crimes against humanity.” Barghouti just wrote the piece “Palestinians and the world must not lose hope.”

Haaretz reports: “Israeli Operation in West Bank Refugee Camp Leaves Massive Destruction in Its Wake.”

ISSA AMRO, [in Hebron in the West Bank] Issaamro@gmail.com, @issaamro
Amro is based in Hebron on the West Bank and is founder of Youth Against Settlements. He has been regularly threatened, harassed and detained by the Israeli military and settlers for his nonviolent activity such as making films and attempting to prevent home takeovers.

He recently tweeted: “Israeli settlers murdered two Palestinian farmers today, they have impunity. The settlers had Israeli army escort during the attack, Israel is led by the fanatic settlers militia.”

COLEEN ROWLEY, [now in Istanbul] rowleyclan@earthlink.net @ColeenRowley
BARRY RIESCH, bwrvfp27@gmail.com
Rowley is set to sail to Gaza with other human rights activists. She is a retired FBI agent and former Minneapolis Division Legal Counsel, who during a 24-year career, became a whistleblower about problems within the FBI that allowed the 9-11 attacks to occur. She was named one of TIME magazine’s Persons of the Year in 2002. Since 2004, she’s been speaking at academic and other professional venues with an emphasis on ethical decision-making. She studied and strongly supports the rule of law — constitutionally and internationally. A long-time member of Women Against Military Madness and Veterans For Peace, she has publicly opposed war and war crimes for over two decades.

Riesch is also now in Istanbul. He is a former national president of Veterans For Peace. A retired carpenter and building inspector, he has been active in the anti-war movement in the Twin Cities and beyond for over 30 years.

Rowley said today: “As some of us set sail in dangerous waters on a flotilla with food and humanitarian supplies for the starving Palestinians in Gaza because we sadly cannot help but see the faces of our own children and grandchildren in the faces of the babies and children that Israel (with U.S. backing) has already murdered.” Rowley also warns of a wider war.

The International Freedom Flotilla Coalition recently released a statement: “International Civilian Aid Flotilla to Break the Siege of Gaza” that it “will sail in mid April with multiple vessels, carrying 5,500 tons of humanitarian aid and hundreds of international human rights observers to challenge the ongoing illegal Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip. This is an emergency mission as the situation in Gaza is dire, with famine setting in in northern Gaza, and catastrophic hunger present throughout the Gaza Strip as the result of a deliberate policy by the Israeli government to starve the Palestinian people. Time is critical as experts predict that hunger and disease could claim more lives than have been killed in the bombing.

“Getting humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza is urgent, but it is not sufficient. We must end Israel’s unlawful, deadly blockade as well as Israel’s overall control of Gaza. Allowing Israel to control what and how much humanitarian aid can get to Palestinians in Gaza is like letting the fox manage the henhouse. And yet, this is what the international community of states is allowing by refusing to sanction Israel and defy its genocidal policies in order to ensure that enough aid reaches the trapped, beleaguered and bombarded civilian population.

“The Cyprus maritime corridor, the U.S. floating pier project, and symbolic air drops of food are all distractions from the fact that these methods of aid delivery are insufficient, and still leave Israel in control of what aid can get to the Palestinian people, all while Israel actively prevents thousands of aid trucks from entering Gaza through the land crossings.

“On January 26 the International Court of Justice ruled that, ‘the State of Israel remains bound to fully comply with its obligations under the Genocide Convention and with the said Order, including by ensuring the safety and security of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.’ On March 28, the ICJ ordered additional preliminary measures, which included requiring the Israeli forces to stop ‘preventing, through any action, the delivery of urgently needed humanitarian assistance’ to Palestinians in Gaza.

“Israel has long violated its responsibility as occupying power to ensure the health and wellbeing of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. Now, it is engaging in full scale genocidal conduct in Gaza and using starvation as a weapon of war. Israeli military and political leaders have repeatedly declared their intention to collectively punish the entire population of Gaza, including by denying them food, water and other life-sustaining aid. We therefore reject Israel’s control over the humanitarian aid that can enter Gaza and reject any Israeli inspection of our cargo. For everyone’s safety and to ensure aid is delivered to those who need it, the FFC is bringing hundreds of international humanitarian observers, from many countries and different backgrounds.”

Media contact for the Flotilla: media@usboatstogaza.org on X: @GazaFFlotilla — note that videos are available there.

Medical school activists are sounding the alarm over the EDUCATE Act, a bill that aims to remove Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion curricula and ban race-based admission mandates at medical schools.

NAOMI TWEYO NKINSI; naomi.nkinsi@gmail.com 
    Nkinsi is a family medicine resident physician at MultiCare Tacoma Family Medicine in Tacoma, Washington.

Backers of the EDUCATE Act are in favor of continuing the use of race-based testing for kidney function. Nkinsi spoke to the Institute for Public Accuracy about the problems with race-based kidney function algorithms. “In medicine, there are a variety of shortcuts that physicians use to get a better picture of someone’s health, called algorithms. These are pathways that help standardize [care] across clinics, hospitals, and specialties. We have known for a long time now that a large number of algorithms include race [as a factor]––specifically Black vs. non-Black. The algorithms don’t consider other groups, and just single out ‘Black.’ They give a different lab value or next [clinical] step if the patient is Black, which alters what the physician does down the line. 

“For kidney function, [physicians] use a test to calculate eGFR that used to include race; if a patient were Black, the eGFR [value] was increased. This value works as a cutoff for transplants, medications, referrals to specialists, insurance coverage––so for Black patients to be viewed as sick as their non-Black counterparts, they had to be sicker to get the same eFGR, because their [value] was artificially bumped.”

In 2020, Nkinsi and other medical school students led a successful campaign to remove the race-based value from eGFR, leading to changes in national guidelines. But there has been a backlash among conservatives “who argue there are biological differences” between racial groups; these groups are upset over the algorithms that have been changed to remove race.

These conservatives argue that the removal of race-based eGFR is part of a larger push by DEI to “bastardize medicine and make it less scientific.” But the “people who are pushing for the removal of DEI measures [in medical schools] are pushing for further inequity that will lead to even greater morbidity and mortality in the Black population,” Nkinsi said. “They’re actively pushing for more Black people to face harm in healthcare.”

“Race-based medicine,” Nkinsi said, assumes that “Black people are biologically different and specifically biologically inferior, because it makes the assumption that Black people’s organs don’t function as well as their counterparts.” 

The Intercept reports: “Ahead of Congressional Testimony, Columbia President Cracks Down on Student Advocacy for Palestine” regarding Congressional hearings happening Wednesday morning.

Common Dreams reports: “‘My Own University…Has Abandoned Me’: USC Cancels Muslim Valedictorian’s Speech.”

On Tuesday, the House by 377-44-1 passed a resolution that the “slogan, ‘from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’ is antisemitic and its use must be condemned.”

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reports: “Republicans and Democrats in U.S. Congress are uniting to pass a bill that would create a national coordinator of the fight against antisemitism — though it faces competition from another Republican-backed bill that seeks to define antisemitism.”

SAREE MAKDISI, sareemakdisi@proton.me, @sareemakdisi
Makdisi is professor of English at UCLA. His books include Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation, Tolerance Is a Wasteland: Palestine and the Culture of Denial and Reading William Blake.

See his recent interview in Jewish Currents: “Literary scholar Saree Makdisi discusses Zionism’s structures of denial, imperial racial logics, and the horizon of coexistence.”

In his interview with The Drift magazine, Makdisi said: “What we are seeing now is only the latest manifestation of a longstanding campaign to try to redefine the term ‘anti-Semitism’ — to take it away from the dictionary meaning that worked very well for a long time, and to turn it into something else. Under the new definition, anti-Semitism includes criticism of Zionism and of the policies and actions of Israel. …

“Congress should not be involved in overseeing private universities, or even public universities, because they’re state-managed, not managed by the federal government. And yet, suddenly, Congress was inserting itself into issues on campus with a clear disciplinary message, which was made evident in the resolution that the House passed soon after the [prior] hearings, condemning the supposed rise of anti-Semitism on campuses, as well as the university presidents themselves. The job of those presidents, when they were summoned before the halls of power, was to say, What is this about? Who are you to be interrogating us? What is the context for this? Can you think of any precedent for this? It’s never happened before. The closest I can think of is the House Un-American Activities Committee, decades ago. But those investigations were designed to make people pledge an oath of allegiance to America. These hearings were functionally about making Americans pledge allegiance to a foreign country, which is truly extraordinary.”

See his piece “A Context Dependent Decision: The implication is: You may speak, but only I get to determine the meaning of your words.” He co-hosts the Makdisi Street podcast with his brothers, Ussama Makdisi and Karim Makdisi.

Also see from “Democracy Now”: “Yanis Varoufakis Banned from Germany as Berlin Police Raid & Shut Down Palestinian Conference.”

See past IPA news releases including “Columbia University Scolds Students for ‘Unsanctioned’ Gaza Rally Where They Were Attacked With Chemicals.”

SEAN VITKA, via Maria Langholz, maria@demandprogress.org, @demandprogress
Vitka is policy director at Demand Progress. The New York Times reports today: “Privacy advocates are raising alarms about a mysterious provision the House added to a surveillance bill last week. The Senate is likely to vote on the bill later this week.”

Demand Progress charges that the “controversial Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) reauthorization that includes the ‘Make Everyone A Spy’ amendment. In the [Times] article, the Department of Justice suggests that the provision is narrow in scope and is intended to address data centers. This echoes House Intelligence Chairman Mike Turner and Ranking Member Jim Himes, who represented it as a ‘narrow‘ fix, when it in fact has no guardrails, no independent oversight, and nearly endless reach. A fact sheet on the amendment is available here.”

The Brennan Center for Justice is promoting Demand Progress’ resources and Sen. Ron Wyden has called the bill “terrifying.” Rep. Thomas Massie objected to the “expansion of the domestic warrantless surveillance program” just before he demanded Mike Johnson vacate the House Speakership today.

Vitka said today: “As we have said for months, the Make Everyone A Spy provision is recklessly broad and a threat to democracy itself. It is simply stunning that the administration and House Intelligence Committee do not have a single answer for how frighteningly broad this provision is. While the Department of Justice wants us to believe that this is simply about addressing data centers, that is no justification for exposing cleaning crews, security guards, and untold scores of other Americans to secret Section 702 directives, which are issued without any court review. Receiving one can be a life-changing event, and Jim Himes appears not to have any sense of that.”

JAMES BAMFORD, washwriter@gmail.com, @WashAuthor
Bamford is author of SpyFail, The Puzzle Palace and Body of Secrets. He just wrote the piece “How U.S. Intelligence and an American Company Feed Israel’s Killing Machine in Gaza” for The Nation magazine.

Bamford says the U.S. government “is not only providing the bombs and missiles used to slaughter innocent Palestinians and brave aid workers, it is also secretly providing the highly advanced intel and AI to target them.”

He describes the facilities and outlines the activities of a number of Israeli government agencies in Camp Dayan, writing: “But by far the most secret is the headquarters of Unit 8200, which specializes in eavesdropping, codebreaking, and cyber warfare — Israel’s equivalent of the American National Security Agency. One of Unit 8200’s newest and most important organizations is the Data Science and Artificial Intelligence Center, which, according to a spokesman, was responsible for developing the AI systems that ‘transformed the entire concept of targets in the IDF.’ Back in 2021, the Israeli military described its 11-day war on Gaza as the world’s first ‘AI war.’ Israel’s ongoing invasion of Gaza offers a more recent — and devastating — example.

“More than 70 years ago, that same patch of land was home to the Palestinian village of Ajleel, until the residents were killed or forced to abandon their homes and flee in fear during the Nakba in 1948. Now, soldiers and intelligence specialists are being trained at Camp Moshe Dayan to finish the job — to bomb, shoot, or starve to death the descendants of the Palestinians forced into the squalor of militarily occupied Gaza decades ago. …

“As one of the world’s most advanced data-mining companies, with ties to the CIA, Palantir’s ‘work’ was supplying Israel’s military and intelligence agencies with advanced and powerful targeting capabilities — the precise capabilities that allowed Israel to place three drone-fired missiles into three clearly marked aid vehicles. …

“Even Palantir CEO Alex Karp has argued that ‘the power of advanced algorithmic warfare systems is now so great that it equates to having tactical nuclear weapons against an adversary with only conventional ones.’… I have asked myself, ‘If I were younger at college, would I be protesting me?’ …

“Recently, a number of Karp’s employees decided to quit rather than be involved with a company supporting the ongoing genocide in Gaza. And in London’s Soho Square, dozens of pro-Palestine protesters and health workers gathered at Palantir’s UK headquarters to accuse the firm of being ‘complicit‘ in war crimes. …

“After fleeing to Hong Kong in 2013 with a pocket full of flash drives containing some of the agency’s highest secrets, [NSA whistleblower Edward] Snowden ended up in Moscow where, soon after he arrived, I met with him for Wired magazine. And in the interview, he told me that ‘one of the biggest abuses‘ he saw while at the agency was how the NSA secretly provided Israel with raw, unredacted phone and e-mail communications between Palestinian Americans in the U.S. and their relatives in the occupied territories. Snowden was concerned that as a result of sharing those private conversations with Israel, the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank would be at great risk of being targeted for arrest or worse. …

“In 2014 — more than a year after Snowden turned up in Moscow — Unit 8200’s targeting of innocent Palestinian in the occupied territories was so extreme that it even caused 43 veterans of the unit, including many serving in the reserves, to go public and accuse the organization of startling abuses. They declared that they had a ‘moral duty’ to no longer ‘take part in the state’s actions against Palestinians.’ …

“The most in-depth examination of the connection between AI and the massive numbers of innocent Palestinian men, women, and children slaughtered in Gaza by Israel comes from an investigation recently published by +972 Magazine and Local Call. …

“Now, with Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza, critical information from NSA continues to be used by Unit 8200, according to a number of sources, to target tens of thousands of Palestinians for death — often with U.S.-supplied 2,000-pound bombs and other weapons. And it is extremely powerful data-mining software, such as that from Palantir, that helps the IDF to select targets.”

On April 3, Reuters reported: “The United States, Britain and France on Wednesday opposed a Russian-drafted U.N. Security Council statement that would have condemned an attack on Iran’s embassy compound in Syria, which Tehran has blamed on Washington’s ally Israel.”

On April 11, the Iranian mission to the UN stated: “Had the UN Security Council condemned the Zionist regime’s reprehensible act of aggression on our diplomatic premises in Damascus and subsequently brought to justice its perpetrators, the imperative for Iran to punish this rogue regime might have been obviated.”

The Israeli journalist Gideon Levy, writing for Haaretz just before the Iranian attack in “If Iran Attacks Israel, the Blame Lies on Israel’s Irresponsible Decision-makers,” said: “For several years now, Israel has provoked Iran constantly, in Lebanon, Syria and also on Iranian soil, and has not paid any price. It would be foolish to believe that the rope Israel has stretched will not break. That moment may have come.” For example, see from Nov. 26, 2023 from Reuters: “Syria says Israel strike puts Damascus airport out of service.”

After the Iranian attack, the Israeli author and activist Miko Paled wrote: “The world is distracted by the Iranian attack on Israel … but Palestinians are still dying. The attack succeeded only in diverting attention from the ongoing genocide.”

Politico Europe quotes Yaakov Amidror, a former adviser to Netanyahu, stating that Netanyahu may be positioning himself to tell Biden that he will refrain from striking back at Iran but what “we want in return is that America will give Israel all the help needed” to escalate attacks on Palestinians, including in Rafah.

Asa Winstanley of the Electronic Intifada (which had a livestream on Sunday) highlights comments by a New York Times reporter: “Mossad stooge Ronen Bergman says that Israeli occupation authorities are privately in an absolute panic and that if the discussions were broadcast openly ‘4 million’ Israelis would rush to the airport to leave the country. … As is his habit, Bergman writes such things only in Hebrew.”

JOSHUA M. LANDIS, landis@ou.edu, @joshua_landis
Landis is director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma. In February, Reuters reported: “U.S. launches strikes in Iraq, Syria, nearly 40 reported killed” and Landis was featured on the IPA news release “Why Does the U.S. Have Troops in Syria and Iraq?” See his writing at Responsible Statecraft.

RICHARD SILVERSTEIN, richards1052@gmail.com, @richards1052
Silverstein writes at Tikun Olam. His most recent piece is the in-depth “Iran’s Attack and Prospects for Regional War,” which states: “Yesterday’s attack failed to inflict any serious damage on Israel. This was no accident. Iran expected this result. It warned the U.S. in advance of its plans. Unlike Israel, [the Iranian government] exercised calculated restraint.” The Iranian government told the U.S. government “through back-channels what it intended. It negotiated an understanding with the U.S. about what the latter would do in response. …

“Israel will counter-attack. The only question is whether it will be symbolic or full-force. The latter would demand an Iranian response. And not the restrained one of yesterday. Then, we would be right back where we started, when Israel initiated this tit-for-tat cycle with its Damascus bombing. …

“It didn’t have to be this way. U.S.-Iran relations could have been significantly different had U.S. presidents taken advantage of various Iranian overtures during the years. Most notably, the Grand Bargain, a comprehensive deal then-Pres. Khatami offered Pres. Bush for full normalization of relations. … Another was Pres. Biden himself refusing to renew the nuclear deal in the first months of his administration and last few months of Pres. Rouhani’s term in office.”

New York Focus has reported that New York Gov. Kathy Hochul proposed major Medicaid cuts to this year’s state budget that would impact the state’s Health Homes program. The suggested cuts would take $125 million out of Health Homes––a change that would “end the program as it’s currently functioning.” 

ELIZA FAWCETT; eliza@nysfocus.com 
     Fawcett is a freelance journalist who has done criminal justice reporting for New York Focus. 

Fawcett told the Institute for Public Accuracy that Health Homes is a care management program that serves around 170,000 New Yorkers with complex health conditions and mental health needs, including 30,000 children. Fawcett said: “Health Homes came up in budget hearing earlier this budget season, but hadn’t gotten a lot of attention. I started looking into this program, which is more than a decade old. 

“Medicaid is a huge point of contention this budget season. Gov. Hochul has talked about the spiraling costs of Medicaid, and has proposed $1 billion in cuts. That is a key source of tension between Hochul and the [State] Senate and Assembly, which had proposed significant increases to Medicaid and no cuts [in their respective] one-house budgets. Hammering out these issues around Medicaid remains a key obstacle right now. 

“Health Homes is a small slice of the pie. Its allocation has been historically in the hundreds of millions [of dollars]. It is one of the programs that would be hit by the cuts… This program has been cut down in the past. A couple of years ago, its appropriation was about 500 million. It has seen some cuts in previous years, and that’s been a real source of frustration for providers. This year, it felt like a different caliber. They weren’t expecting this.”

Health Homes helps connect families to services, including helping them maintain Medicaid eligibility and filling out complicated paperwork. Fawcett cited multiple studies that have linked the program to reductions in the number of emergency department visits and hospitalizations as well as increases in the use of outpatient treatment. “Providers are worried that if [Health Homes] is stripped down, [we] could see increases in hospitalizations and emergency room visits. For [providers] who work with children, [we could see] increases in foster care cases and kids ending up in psychiatric centers.

“The [State] Senate and Assembly have proposed multibillion-dollar increases to Medicaid, and are hoping to use an accounting trick––a loophole that California has also used––to tax and then repay health insurers, which would theoretically get them billions of extra dollars from the federal government to fund Medicaid. It remains to be seen whether that will all come together. There are conversations between the legislature and Hochul, [as well as] between New York and the federal government. It’s an open question whether that extra revenue will come through. Hochul seems open to the trick. For Democratic lawmakers who don’t want to see any Medicaid cuts, [this is] a key point with consequences for what the budget ends up looking like.”

ASSAF KFOURY, kfoury@bu.edu
Kfoury recently wrote the piece “Hamas: From Candidate Enforcer to Implacable Foe,” which states: “In September 1973, a pious Palestinian schoolteacher, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, presided over the founding of al-Mujamma al-Islami (the ‘Islamic Gathering’ or the ‘Islamic Gathering Center’) — or al-Mujamma for short — at a mosque in Gaza. Yassin was a refugee from al-Jura, a village destroyed in 1948 near the present-day city of Ashkelon in Israel.

“Yassin … categorically refused to join the resistance in any form, despite repeated urgings by the others. … While the nationalist resistance groups were systematically dismantled and decimated, Yassin was taking advantage of Israel’s deliberate benign neglect. He was patiently expanding his network of charitable and social activities throughout the Gaza Strip.

“In the words of Gaza’s military governor (general Yitzhak Segev) in 1986: ‘We extend some financial aid to Islamic groups via mosques and religious schools in order to help create a force that would stand against the leftist forces which support the PLO.’ …

“In an internal memorandum dated March 1984, an advisor (Avner Cohen) of Gaza’s Israeli commander described al-Mujamma and the rest of the Islamist network as a golem — a creature in Jewish folklore formed out of lifeless substance which, when brought to life by ritual incantations, ultimately escapes (and in this case, turns against) its creator.”

The first Intifada, which began in 1987, avoided the use of firearms but was ultimately crushed. Hamas was formed shortly thereafter with its initial charter, which had a “scrambled mixture of the Brotherhood’s socially puritanical version of Islam, several concessions to the nationalism espoused by the PLO, and a superficial rehash of Euro-centric antisemitism.” (Hamas revised its charter in 2017.)

Kfoury added: “A major beneficiary of the Oslo agreements and post-Oslo period was undoubtedly Hamas, as the main party that did not fall for an illusory peace agreement between Israelis and Palestinians. …

“In 2006 Hamas beat Fatah in Legislative Council elections, as the latter was increasingly perceived as a subcontractor for Israeli occupation. …

“All Israeli leaders have tried to play the divide-and-rule game, but perhaps none played it as deviously and myopically as Netanyahu. ‘Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas,’ he told an audience of Likud members in March 2019. ‘This is part of our strategy — to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank,’ he declared.”

Kfoury also quotes Sara Roy, author of Hamas and Civil Society in Gaza (Princeton University Press): “The current desecration of Gaza is the latest stage in a process that has taken increasingly violent forms over time. In the 56 years since it occupied the Strip in 1967, Israel has transformed Gaza from a territory politically and economically integrated with Israel and the West Bank into an isolated enclave, from a functional economy to a dysfunctional one, from a productive society to an impoverished one. It has likewise removed Gaza’s residents from the sphere of politics, transforming them from a people with a nationalist claim to a population whose majority requires some form of humanitarian aid to sustain themselves.”

Medea Benjamin, cofounder of the peace group CODEPINK, posted video on X late Tuesday: “Is active duty airman Larry Hebert, now on day 10 of his hunger strike for Gaza, facing retribution? Today, after bravely confronting the Air Force Chief of Staff regarding U.S. complicity in the Gaza genocide, he’s been ordered back to his post, abruptly canceling his leave.”

Hebert asked Gen. David W. Allvin on Capitol Hill about the U.S. government’s backing of Israel after Allvin testified before Congress: “I would just like to know why we’re committing a genocide and why we’re breaking U.S. and international law. Why are we allowed to do this?”

Hebert’s hunger strike has been covered by outlets ranging from Military.com: “Airman Starts Hunger Strike at White House over Gaza, Inspired by Another Airman’s Self-Immolation Death” to Democracy Now: “Active-Duty U.S. Airman, Inspired by Aaron Bushnell, on Hunger Strike Outside White House over Gaza.”

Hebert said: “When Aaron Bushnell, a fellow Airman, took his own life at the Israeli Embassy [on Feb. 25] for the people of Gaza, it touched me deeply. I knew I had to speak out in opposition to our government sending Israel the bombs and rockets to commit genocide.”

MIKE FERNER, mike@veteransforpeace.org, @VFPNational
Ferner is National Director Veterans For Peace and is in contact with Hebert as he is traveling back to his base in Spain over the next two days. Ferner said: “Veterans For Peace congratulates Senior Airman Larry Hebert for doing what every conscientious member of the military should do — question their leadership when they see them going off the rails. By standing up to General Allvin yesterday and for fasting the last ten days in front of the White House, Larry is inspiring many others to question and resist. That is exactly what VFP will do until this killing stops.” The group has various actions planned in Washington, D.C.

Ferner was featured on an IPA news release last month: “Vets Urging Criminal Investigations of Biden Weapons to Israel at State Dept. Offices” about violations of Conventional Arms Transfer Policy, the Foreign Assistance Act, the Arms Export Control Act, the U.S. War Crimes Act, the Leahy Law, and the Genocide Convention Implementation Act.