APRIL 2024 LETTER TO PRESIDENT BIDEN AND VP HARRIS

*US taxpayers in ANY state, jurisdiction, or profession can sign this letter.*

NATIONAL TAX DAY MESSAGE TO THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION:

Withhold US Military Aid to Israel or US Words are Meaningless

CURRENTLY INVITING SIGNATURES US Taxpayers: To Sign, Click Here.

April 15, 2024

President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. Vice President Kamala Devi Harris The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20500

Mr. President and Madam Vice President:

We, the undersigned US taxpayers, are writing you today out of moral conviction and the most basic standards of responsibility to our respective professions. Together we are scholars, scientists, and educators; health care providers, first responders, and veterans; public servants, legal professionals, and social workers; engineers, builders, and technicians; clergy, artists, and authors; as well as entrepreneurs and employees of myriad US companies and organizations.¹

Together, we present this Tax Day 2024 letter to express our shared horror and outrage with Israel’s unending war on Gaza and the spiraling human catastrophe therein. As Vice President Harris described on March 3, “We have seen reports of families eating leaves or animal feed, women giving birth to malnourished babies with little or no medical care, and children dying from malnutrition and dehydration.” As numerous independent monitors and US officials have confirmed, Israel’s restrictions on humanitarian access and the Netanyahu government’s interference with humanitarian operations in Gaza continue to prevent direly needed food, water, medicine, and other lifesaving aid from reaching Palestinian civilians facing famine.

After the killing by Israel of at least 33,000 Palestinians — the majority civilians, including 13,000 children — over the past six months, we note that with the Israeli military’s targeted killing of seven World Central Kitchen staff earlier this month, six of them non-Palestinian, your administration finally struck an appropriate tone with Israeli government officials. Although the timing of this rhetorical shift has signaled that Palestinian lives matter less to the Biden administration, it appears your long overdue chiding of PM Netanyahu and Israeli military leaders is the first sign of a serious engagement with the appeals of now countless experts of US and international law, medicine and public health, humanitarian aid, and foreign policy over the past six months calling on you to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe, including famine, in the making.

The President’s words will mean nothing, however, if they are not backed up by immediate, concrete actions. At minimum, this must include conditioning US military assistance and arms transfers to Israel on the latter’s adherence to its international legal obligations. As a February 14, 2024 letter by over 4,000 US scholars advised, as numerous analysts and human rights agencies have urged, and as common sense demands, the Biden-Harris administration must leverage US military support to actually meet US goals, not just pronounce them. Specifically, withholding US military aid to Israel is the most obvious, direct, and appropriate method to ensure that:

·      Israel opens drastically more aid crossings so desperately needed food and supplies can begin to address famine in Gaza;

·      An immediate and permanent ceasefire is reached;

·      All hostages are freed through a negotiated exchange;

·      PM Netanyahu and his government are restrained, tensions are deescalated, and a wider regional war is averted rather than enabled; and,

·      Prior and ongoing war crimes by all parties to this conflict can be independently investigated and accountability established through a rules-based process, alongside a commitment by all parties to a just and peaceful political resolution in Israel-Palestine.

The very fulcrum upon which the above humanitarian, legal, and political objectives rest is US conditioning military aid to Israel. Here we acknowledge the recent letters by eight US Senators and forty US Representatives (copied on this letter) to President Biden and Secretary of State Blinken, stating plainly that “The United States should not provide military assistance to any country that interferes with U.S. humanitarian assistance” and that “any future military assistance to Israel, including already authorized transfers, is subject to conditions to ensure it is used in compliance with U.S. and international law.” This is a straightforward application of the US Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 and our federal Leahy Law. It is also the latest litmus test for whether US military aid and our domestic arms industry exist to save civilian lives, or to destroy them.

After all we have witnessed unfold in Gaza over the past six months, should the Biden-Harris administration and aligned Congressional foreign affairs leaders (also copied on this letter) squander US leverage over PM Netanyahu and continue to arm Israel unconditionally — even as the US deprives UNRWA of essential humanitarian aid that must be restored — there will be no words strong enough to convey our outrage and disgust as working professionals, citizens, and taxpayers. Every word our President and Vice President speak moving forward, whether about peace in the Middle East or curbing gun violence here in the US, will ring hollow as American made rifles, bombs, tanks, fighter jets, and other lethal munitions carry on massacring Palestinian civilians with impunity. And the Biden-Harris administration would be sending a clear message to Americans and the world of how empty the US government’s word is, and how hypocritical and meaningless “American values” are in practice.

Your administration is at a critical and historic crossroads. You can continue to disregard the sound and sincere counsel of US scholars, physicians, aid workers, religious leaders, and labor unions, followed by a growing number of US Congressmembers and allied countries, on this issue. Or you can heed our call, hear the majority of Americans, and bring this shameful war to an immediate end.

Sincerely,

(Signatories)²

¹ Tentative list of professions.

² Names and occupations of signatories to be made available in the coming days following verification. All signatories have signed as individual US taxpayers and not as representatives of the university, school, hospital, organization, or company for which they work nor any other institution.

CC:

U.S. Rep. Gregory W. Meeks (NY 5th District), Democratic Chair United States House Committee on Foreign Affairs Washington, DC 20515

U.S. Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin (MD), Democratic Chair United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations Washington, DC 20510

U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen (MD) U.S. Sen. Bernard Sanders (VT) U.S. Sen. Jeffrey A. Merkley (OR) U.S. Sen. Mazie K. Hirono (HI) U.S. Sen. Peter Welch (VT) U.S. Sen. Tina Smith (MN) U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (MA) U.S. Sen. Ben Ray Luján (NM) United States Senate Washington, DC 20510

U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan (WI 2nd District) U.S. Rep. James P. McGovern (MA 2nd District) U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky (IL 9th District) U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee (CA 12th District) U.S. Rep. Judy Chu (CA 28th District) U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro (TX 20th District) U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett (TX 37th District) U.S. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (DC) U.S. Rep. Mark DeSaulnier (CA 10th District) U.S. Rep. Nydia M. Velázquez (NY 7th District) U.S. Rep. Debbie Dingell (MI 6th District) U.S. Rep. Greg Casar (TX 35th District) U.S. Rep. Delia C. Ramirez (IL 3rd District) U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar (TX 16th District) U.S. Rep. Betty McCollum (MN 4th District) U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib (MI 12th District) U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal (WA 7th District) U.S. Rep. Jesús G. "Chuy" García (IL 4th District) U.S. Rep. Melanie Stansbury (NM 1st District) U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer (OR 3rd District) U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY 14th District) U.S. Rep. John Garamendi (CA 8th District) U.S. Rep. Summer Lee (PA 12th District) U.S. Rep. Madeleine Dean (PA 4th District) U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree (ME 1st District) U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi (CA 11th District) U.S. Rep. Al Green (TX 9th District) U.S. Rep. André Carson (IN 7th District) U.S. Rep. Daniel T. Kildee (MI 8th District) U.S. Rep. Jamaal Bowman, Ed.D. (NY 16th District) U.S. Rep. Sara Jacobs (CA 51st District) U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley (MA 7th District) U.S. Rep. Paul D. Tonko (NY 20th District) U.S. Rep. Jahana Hayes (CT 5th District) U.S. Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (NJ 12th District) U.S. Rep. Donald S. Beyer Jr. (VA 8th District) U.S. Rep. Cori Bush (MO 1st District) U.S. Rep. Sylvia R. Garcia (TX 29th District) U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar (MN 5th District) U.S. Rep. Jared Huffman (CA 2nd District) United States House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20515