PRESS RELEASE:
On April 7, Taxpayers Against Genocide (TAG) submitted a report to the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) that charges U.S. officials with directly participating in genocide in Gaza. The report provides evidence of how both the Biden and Trump administrations, along with specific members of Congress, used U.S. tax dollars to fund war crimes and genocide, in violation of the U.S. Constitution, U.S. federal laws, and the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. In addition to military aid, the U.S. has provided Israel’s military with the vast majority of weapons used to commit the genocide. In the report’s introduction:
“The focus of this report is on violations of U.S. obligations by the U.S. Congress and executive in committing residents’ tax dollars – including those of Palestinian-Americans whose families have been decimated in Gaza – to support what the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and International Criminal Court (ICC) as well as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Medecins Sans Frontieres and many other human rights organizations have recognized as an unfolding genocide in Gaza.”
TAG is filing this historic report while the HRC is carrying out its Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of the U.S. government, something that it does for every UN member state only once every four and a half years.
Contributors to the report include the International Committee of the National Lawyers Guild and the International Association of Democratic Lawyers. Endorsing organizations signing onto the report include CODEPINK, Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom-US, and RootsAction.
TAG is a grassroots mass movement of thousands of taxpayers across the U.S. A group of Northern California taxpayers formed TAG last fall and filed a federal class action lawsuit on December 19 against their Congress members for illegally using their tax dollars to fund the genocide in Gaza. The case was dismissed on February 10 by Judge Vince Chhabria on the grounds that it posed a “non-justiciable political question” to the court. The judge’s ruling gave a green light to the ongoing unconstitutional allocation of tax dollars to fund genocide.
Undeterred by the ruling, TAG has continued to organize across the United States. On February 19, TAG launched a National Call to Action, preparing the way to file the report with the UN HRC.
Media Contact:
Seth Donnelly, Taxpayers Against Genocide
(650) 814-8495
seth007donnelly@gmail.com
Quotes:
Tarik Kanaana, lead TAG contact for the report and Palestinian activist in Northern California:
“Since October 2023, our people in Gaza have suffered unimaginable horrors at the hands of Israel. Our families, our mothers and fathers, our sons and daughters, our siblings, our newborn children, our grandmothers and grandfathers, our friends and neighbors have been slaughtered, tortured to death, burned alive, starved and executed, and buried in shallow graves. Those who survived death are facing famine and disease and will be scarred, both physically and mentally, for generations to come. Israel has, at the same time, destroyed cultural, educational, medical,l and municipal institutions.
Israel’s genocidal war against the Palestinian people has only been possible with support and aid from its allies in the West, especially the United States. The US government– all 3 branches– is a full partner and bears responsibility for this Genocide. The American people have no recourse within the US political or judicial systems when it comes to their government’s crimes against the people of the world. We, Americans who cannot accept our government’s actions, are forced to appeal to international bodies to influence our own government to do what its citizens overwhelmingly want.”
Susan Scott, NLG International Committee, one of the report’s lead authors:
“As found by the International Court of Justice, the ICC, UN special rapporteurs, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, what we’ve been seeing unfold in Gaza over the past 18 months constitutes genocide. This historic TAG report focuses on the obstacles encountered by US taxpayers and constituents who want to force their elected representatives and courts to implement international human rights and humanitarian law — and specifically the prohibition against GENOCIDE in Gaza.”
Margaret DeMatteo, Movement Attorney and one of the report’s lead authors:
“To charge our own government with complicity in genocide is not just an act of accountability, it is an act of mourning. In Gaza, sorrow has outpaced language, and yet we speak, because silence would be a second cruelty. I carry the weight of documenting what should never be ignored: the U.S. government’s complicity in genocide. While we seek justice through words and international mechanisms, the people of Gaza endure unimaginable suffering—suffering that demands urgent action, not silence.”
Norman Solomon, National Director, RootsAction:
“International law and minimal human decency prohibit genocide. But the United States government has continued to make possible, with massive arms shipments, Israel’s genocide in Gaza. The U.S. courts have failed to intervene. World bodies absolutely should.”
Stephen F. Rohde, Chair, Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace:
“Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace joins in this report because we firmly believe it is incontrovertible that officials of the United States government, under both the Biden and Trump Administrations, used and continue to use U.S. tax dollars to fund war crimes and genocide in Gaza, in violation of the U.S. Constitution, federal law and the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. This is intolerable and violates the fundamental rights of the Palestinian people.”
Cynthia Papermaster, CODEPINK Bay Area Chapter Coordinator:
“Organizing taxpayers to challenge the legality of voting billions of dollars in heavy weapons to Israel to commit genocide in Gaza is exactly what is needed. Recent polls show that over 80% of Democrats want an arms embargo to Israel. Our representatives are not listening to us. They are not listening to the world. They are doing the bidding of the pro-Israel lobby and the weapons industry. We are grieving and furious. We want an end to the genocide, and we need to hold U. S. officials to account.”
