On Tuesday, over two hundred of Senator Murray’s Jewish constituents and other people of conscience held a Passover seder in the streets in front of the Federal Building where Senator Patty Murray has offices.
Why? Because on Tuesday, Senator Murray voted yes on a supplemental appropriations bill that includes $17 billion in additional military funding and weapons to the Israeli government. We, the organizers of Jewish Voice for Peace Seattle, are calling on Senator Murray to listen to her constituents and take action towards a permanent ceasefire in Gaza.
That’s why on Tuesday, instead of celebrating the Jewish holiday of Passover around our tables at home, we mobilized hundreds of Senator Murray’s constituents, ages two months to 79 years old, for a “Seder in the Streets.” We collectively painted a 30-foot diameter mural in front of Senator Murray’s office, which reads “No Funds For Genocide: Let Gaza Live.”
Two months ago, we felt a small glimpse of hope, as Senator Murray boldly proclaimed on the Senate floor that “the collective punishment in Gaza has got to stop” and called for a ceasefire in Gaza. This statement came on the heels of the “Flour Massacre,” in which Israeli troops fired on crowds of Palestinians gathered to collect flour in the southwest of Gaza City, killing at least 112 people and injuring at least 760. This statement also came after months of sustained pressure by the Palestinian-led anti-war movement, with thousands of constituents in the streets and so many of us risking arrest, and tens of thousands calling and writing to Senator Murray daily, begging her to take action toward a ceasefire. When we heard her words, we felt a breath of hope. We felt that she had finally heard us.
At the time, Senator Murray insisted that any US aid to Israel was subject to the Leahy Law, which prevents aid to foreign military units suspected of committing gross human rights violations. Now she has the chance to show us she means what she says. If Senator Murray is not all talk, she’ll vote ‘no’ on this Israel aid package and refuse US complicity in genocide. If she’s smoke and mirrors, she’ll continue to push the package through, betraying the overwhelming majority of her constituents and Democrats as a whole who support a permanent ceasefire.
As Senator Murray recognized in her February 29 ceasefire speech, the death toll in Gaza has reached over 34,000 Palestinians, with many more bodies under the rubble. The Israeli government is starving Palestinians, and medical care is nonexistent due to Israeli targeting of hospitals and destruction of infrastructure across Gaza.
“There are more than 150,000 pregnant and lactating women in harm’s way. Doctors who had worked on the ground in Gaza spoke to me about performing emergency C-sections, on rubble, or in tents—without anesthesia—and women bleeding out because they couldn’t get medical care,” Senator Murray said.
It seemed Senator Murray recognized the multiple human rights atrocities committed by the Israeli military. But now, we don’t have a lot of evidence that Murray will stand by what she’s said. Why would she vote yes to send $17 billion to the Israeli military when she admitted they were enacting collective punishment against Palestinians? We know that pro-Israel PACs are amongst Senator Murray’s top donors. Between 2019 and 2024 Murray received $119,450 from her third-highest donor, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) alone, and she has received over $680,000 from Pro-Israel PACs throughout her career. Just before her February 29 speech calling for a ceasefire, she ushered the very bill to the Senate that is now back for a vote, and on Tuesday she voted yes on the procedural vote to move the bill forward.
One thing we do know is that voters won’t forget how Senator Murray handled the decision to send $17 billion to Israel even as it commits genocide in Gaza. As polling has shown, the majority of Americans support a permanent ceasefire, an overwhelming majority of Democrats support a permanent ceasefire, including a majority of Jewish Democrats. Nearly 10% of Washington Democrats statewide and 16% in the 7th District voted uncommitted statewide in the presidential primary, signaling their support for a change in US policy towards Israel. If Senator Murray continues to push funding for the ongoing genocide in Gaza forward, voters won’t forget in the the presidential race in 2024, and they won’t forget when Murray is up for reelection, either.
Ross Kirshenbaum is an organizer with Jewish Voice for Peace, a musician and transit operator.
Hila Keller is an organizer with Jewish Voice for Peace.
@51: “Take your own advice.”
I haven’t ever been banned from here. (If ever I am, I won’t create another account.)
“You will never silence me.”
I had no part in getting you banned. I merely asked you to consider the implications of why you were banned.
@52: “I have never hidden who I am or what I stand for.”
You didn’t admit you’d created a new account here until after I’d called you on it.
@CD
I/we
Welcome
you back! whilst
wormmy’s Anguish
at seeing you here is
Understandable, thanks to
your spot-On enlightenments
of his Condition.
thank you!
@54. What was there to admit? Lol, hey guys, it’s Garb? If you could tell who I am by how I write, how was that hiding anything? Besides, my first account got banned here because I posted an essay by Ursula K. Le Guin in its entirety which I typed up, not claiming it as my own work, and that got my account banned for spamming.
Garb got banned because I admittedly was hurling verbal abuse at clouds while going through a hellride, but nothing that I haven’t said before in even more vulgar or humerous tones. Whether that was some power play by God Emperor Rich Smith or whoever for irreverently calling Comitatus a sniveling little bitch or posting eat shit and die for like the 5th time over the years (not literally) and someone found that a clear and present danger…OH MY GOD! We’re having a FIRE…sale, and decided to report me because sticks and stones, it is what it is.
Maybe you should watch my links. It might give you something to think about.
That’s a negative, ghostwriter.
@55: So, do you agree with Garb @44?
“Hamas obviously committed genocide on 10/7 in what they believed and justified as a military guerilla campaign because reasons. They were targeting Jews.”
While it’s great that somebody here can actually decide in more than one case whether it’s genocide or not, my real concern is whether Garb’s commenting here does him more harm than good. Nothing he’s written since his return sounds very reassuring on that point.
But yes, I agree it’s good to have his take on whether or not “genocide” applies to Hamas’ actions in Israel on 10/7. Perhaps someday Slog can aspire to a world where every commenter here can answer that question.
Tensor, I am holding them both to the same standards of genocide. You are not. They are two sides of the same coin.
https://www.patriciarobertsmiller.com/characteristics-of-demagoguery/
@60: “I am holding them both to the same standards of genocide.”
Which standard? I use the definition in the Genocide Convention: https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocity-crimes/Doc.1_Convention%20on%20the%20Prevention%20and%20Punishment%20of%20the%20Crime%20of%20Genocide.pdf
I know it when I see it.
In this case, the spirit of the law takes precedence over statute. But whenever the innocents of any ethnic group are collectively punished, slaughtered, and their human rights annihilated, that is genocide. As you said, a single act can be genocide. But an ongoing and unjust war that de facto slaughters one ethnic group, Palestinian Arabs of Gazan nationality, over six months with aid convoys from international organizations assured of their safety and then intentionally targeted to perpetuate famine, qualifies as genocide from anyone with a conscience. Perhaps you can pull the wool over your eyes with this Schroedinger’s human shield and pretend that every innocent civilian and child is killed with kindness, but that doesn’t take agency from those that pull the trigger. The de facto situation on the ground is a genocide that is wiping out an imprisoned populace because of who they are.
Just as everyone is lobbing in protestors together to justify their revocation of civil rights in the name of protecting Jewish students, they are doing the same with how they view their targets and justifying it after the fact with demagoguery and threats against the press and all our liberties, which make no one, Israeli, Palestinian, or American any safer.
As Maritza as Gul Darheel says, “What you call genocide, I call a day’s work.”
“As you said,
a single act can
be genocide. But
an ongoing and un-
just war that de facto
slaughters one ethnic
group, Palestinian Arabs
of Gazan nationality, over
six months with aid convoys
from international organizations
assured of their safety and then in-
tentionally targeted to perpetuate famine,
qualifies as genocide from anyone with a conscience.”
so it’d
Seem.
well put.
@63: “I know it when I see it.”
Ah, so THAT’s the standard you accused me of applying inconsistently @60. Of course!
And, just in case anybody gets any ideas about, you know, maybe we should have courts and judges apply laws against crimes, you made it clear you were giving yourself license to ignore all of that, too: “In this case, the spirit of the law takes precedence over statute.”
Finally, as you’ve now utterly failed to understand through at least two accounts here, I didn’t cite Hamas’ well-documented use of civilians in Gaza for human shields to “pretend that every innocent civilian and child is killed with kindness,” but rather to show that Hamas bears some responsibility for their deaths as well. So if the IDF does indeed now commit genocide in Gaza, Hamas is (at the very least) complicit in it.
‘So
if the IDF
does indeed now
commit genocide in Gaza’
oh my
lookit You
wormmy almost
catching up with the 98%.
a Big day
for you!
@66: Oh look, you almost quoted someone correctly! Here’s the part from after your attention span failed:
“Hamas is (at the very least) complicit in it.”
@67:
oh.
Tensor, laws as written – words – cannot fully encompass the essence of justice and are not monolithic in themselves. Every year we amend our laws and throw out bills ad infinitum. All in the pursuit of justice. The Holocaust, slavery, and Jim Crow were all codified in the high courts and tomes. But none can truly serve the cause of justice without constant revision and reinterpretation to best approximate all truths. If the official – letter of the law – definition of genocide does fully apply in this instance, it is because it is incomplete. And the spirit of our laws makes clear from what we see that it needs further revision to protect those being slaughtered en masse, 100,000 casualties, mostly women and children. There are not enough Hamas fighters to hide out in every home made foxhole that is blown to smithereens with a 1,000 lb. 2 mile kill zone radius bomb dropped in the one of the most densely populated places on earth.
Genocide is as genocide does.
Of course Hamas is willing to martyr their own people and has a long track record of doing do, I believe pioneering the suicide bombing terrorist strike. That is largely due to weaponized Islam and the false empowerment of arming desperate young men who are unable to compete economically and live thier whole lives in a cage of injustice and oppression from within and without, as well as the generational trauma and hate that few human beings born in such an environment could ever overcome without years of peace, security, and freedom. Like a caged and abused dog who is rescued and lashes out at those who mean to help them, having never known a better life, and trusting no one to protect them.
To defeat Hamas, innocent civilians must not be slain en masse. You can imagine the heartbreak, powerlessness, and indescribable rage and trauma and resentment that losing family in such a way has on other people because they are human beings who share in our physiology and emotions and need for love and all of Maslow’s needs. Peaceful and kind people who are subject to this violence and survive will have nothing to lose and will be more easily seduced and manipulated by vengeance and rage to take up arms and punish those who hurt them. This is human nature and neither Gazans or Palestinians nor anyone is different. They will join the “reisistance” which is Hamas and will be manipulated into committing atrocities in kind. And every murder committed by any of them, every life taken by the IDF or Hamas, will haunt those that take them. Perhaps not now, but if they survive, in the horrors of their dreams and the violence they pass down through their scarred DNA and abuse of themselves and their families to silence horrors that will never be quieted.
It must end here. There are better ways.
Garb@27: “ Surely there are extremists in league with the protestors who hate Jews and who have very well made university campuses unsafe for them, but these are not those folks.”
As we discussed in the Slog AM thread, one of the student leaders of the pro-Palestine protests at Columbia University was banned from that campus, for repeatedly making statements about how he wanted to kill anyone who disagreed with him, specifically “Zionists.” So it appears your sweeping generalization has immediately failed, at the very campus where the current round of protests erupted.
Garb@63: “I know it when I see it.”
That’s nice. No one else is required to agree with your definition, let alone argue on the basis it is valid.
Garb@69: If you do not agree with the definition of “genocide” given in the United Nations’ Genocide Convention, then you are well within your rights, as a citizen of a member state, to appeal to the United Nations to update the definition. (Somehow, I doubt, “Garb knows it when he sees it,” will win approval as a replacement.)
Garb@70: Hamas exists because Qatar and Iran have lavishly funded it for decades. There’s been no evidence presented to show the majority of Hamas’ members were born in Gaza. So your claim Gaza has been a breeding-ground for terrorists remains unfounded.
Any time you want to have a reality-based dialog, please let me know. Until then, I leave you and kristo’ to agree with each other about the “truth” of the fictional / unsupported points you have made here.
My dude, you never digest the full premise, but respond to singled out quotes that miss the point while ignoring everything else in context.
And as is clear by the context of this post, “these folks” are the Jewish Voice for Peace that made the post. I guess your claim is that they have internalized antisemitism or something? That crazy “student leader” who wants to kill all Jews and Zionists is a bad apple, not the whole bunch! You are the one making a sweeping generalization because you found an outlier far removed from the bell curve of the millions of other folks standing up for human rights and against what they perceive as genocide. You don’t have to agree with that, but you are projecting what you are doing in every instance of debate.
Then you merely restate your premises with circular reasoning without ever giving weight to other variables other than the ones you repeat again and again and again like a broken record. You are unable to perspective shift or entertain other perspectives in good faith.
You can’t learn anything if you already know everything!
@72: ‘And as is clear by the context of this post, “these folks” are the Jewish Voice for Peace that made the post.’
Your long and rambling comment @27 does not actually make that clear, but rather the reverse. I agree this insignificant little group probably does not have “internalized antisemitism.” (Then again, had it not both “Jewish” in the title and support of the Stranger’s position on Gaza, I doubt anyone here would ever have heard of them at all.)
‘That crazy “student leader” who wants to kill all Jews and Zionists is a bad apple, not the whole bunch!’
Ah yes, the “bad apple” argument. As if criticism of Israel doesn’t always immediately attract the very worst elements in our society. That does not mean the particular criticism in question isn’t valid, but (as xina apparently exists here to prove) eventually you find Israel’s right to exist implicitly questioned — or even outright denied — by those folks. It’s an inherent hazard, which protesters against Israel never seem to take into account. (As I also called out in the Slog AM thread, the other student leaders of the protests at Columbia University maintained a very careful silence about their banned fellow. That’s not a very good way to show their extremely vocal pro-Palestine protests are not actually anti-Israel or anti-jewish.)
Speaking of “miss[ing] the point,” you (and the Stranger, and the protesters) seem utterly ignorant (or merely blithely uncaring) toward the idea of Jews and Israel constantly getting held to higher standards than anyone else, and then getting punished more harshly for allegedly missing them. I assure you Jews and supporters of Israel both know of this and expect it. Then you (and the Stranger, and the protesters) declare that if “genocide” — itself one of the most fraught words in the entire vocabulary of Jews, Israelis, and their American gentile supporters! — does not apply to the IDF in Gaza, well then, you will just unilaterally change it and change it and change it until it does, so there. George Orwell had a lot to say, all of it very eloquent and even more negative, about changing the well-established meanings of common words for short-term political expediency, and I suggest you acquaint yourself with (at least) some of what he wrote on that topic.
Also, if you do not want to admit just how long and hard Hamas has worked, and continues to work, to create the current humanitarian disaster in Gaza, then you simply won’t, and nothing I nor anyone else can write will compel your admission. I’ll just note Hamas’ efforts are completely obvious to everyone who cares, and it’s those persons you (and the Stranger, and the protesters) are alienating by primarily blaming the IDF for what’s happening there now.
“You are the one making a sweeping generalization…”
Nice try.
“You can’t learn anything if you already know everything!”
How about you try learning something from WW3 not having happened when you said it would, all of two weeks ago?
How about you learn something from getting banned here?
How about how about what about what about what about whataboutaboutabouta**bzz, ZAP, tssszz
Tensornabot offline, critical error!
@Cd –THNX
for making the
Effort and showing
to us the gargantuan Holes
in wormmy’s circular (bingo!) arguments
if he’s not part of
Pooty’s army I’ll
eat my gf’s
Edible un-
dies. As
soon
as I
get
one.
speaking of Outliers, out-
and-out Liars, Outside
Agitators, ‘enfant
terribles’ and A-
gents Provoca-
teur :
What We Know
About the Protests
at Columbia University
Demonstrations outside the school gates
added to the upheaval, with protesters
who appear unconnected to
the university targeting
Jewish students.
[now There’s a
Bloody Surprise]
more
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/22/us/columbia-university-protests.html
Reich wing Oppression
Rears its ugly head
Elsewhere as well
nyt:
As Anger
Grows Over Gaza,
Arab Leaders Crack Down on Protests
The war has led to demonstrations across the Arab world. The numerous arrests suggest that governments are fearful of the outrage turning on them.
more:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/29/world/middleeast/gaza-arab-protests-crackdown.html
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/29/zionism-jews-palestinians
Of course I hold the IDF to higher standards than war crimes and famine and collective punishment! And why is that? Because I expect the arms we sell them and their methods to follow the oh so stringent requirements they are currently under investigation in the Hague for breaking! Since you are so obsessed with the literal definition and due process for every violation but attribute every mass casualty as a Hamas human shield without evidence and merely apocraphal self-assured hearsay. That’s about all the time I have for your wizzeaksauce hypocrisy.
Great article I linked.
@75, @78: Thanks for validating what I wrote @71: ‘I leave you and kristo’ to agree with each other about the “truth” of the fictional / unsupported points you have made here.’
@79 wot?
As Anger
Grows Over Gaza,
Arab Leaders Crack Down on Protests
The war has led to demonstrations across the Arab world. The numerous arrests suggest that governments are fearful of the outrage turning on them.
more:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/29/world/middleeast/gaza-arab-protests-crackdown.html