A US federal court has ruled that Israel is plausibly committing genocide against the Palestinians of Gaza and has urged the US to stop its "unflagging support for the military siege" in Gaza. Judge Jeffrey White of the federal court in Oakland California concluded that he could not order the Biden administration to stop its support of Israel's military campaign in Gaza as that would interfere in the executive's right to conduct foreign policy. The court recognized that the prohibitions on genocide are fundamental and binding international law, but White said this was a "rare" instance where the preferred outcome is inaccessible to the Court.
The California case was brought by the NGO Defense for Children International — Palestine, which charged the Biden administration with failing in its duty to prevent, and otherwise aid and abetting, the unfolding genocide in Gaza. The US court based its assessment on the "uncontroverted" live testimony of seven Palestinian witnesses, including one from Gaza and one from Ramallah, who testified firsthand to Israel's killing of their nieces, cousins, aunts, uncles, elders, and members of their community, the mass displacement of their families reminiscent of the 1948 Nakba, and the devastating conditions of life in their homeland as the siege leads to mass starvation.
The Center for Constitutional Rights, which supported the application, said that the court had also relied on the expert opinion of genocide and Holocaust scholars who confirmed that Israel's military assault and totalizing humanitarian destruction bear the hallmarks of a genocide based on legal and historical precedent. The court recognized the substantial role of the United States in furthering the genocide and noted that "as the ICJ has found, it is plausible that Israel's conduct amounts to genocide" and implores the Biden administration to examine the results of their unflagging support of the military siege against the Palestinians in Gaza."
Katherine Gallagher, Senior Staff Attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, argued the genocide case before the court, stating that the Palestinian population in Gaza is enduring a campaign to eradicate a whole people — genocide — and that the United States' unflagging support for Israel is enabling the killing of tens of thousands of Palestinians and the famine facing millions.
