The president of the United States and two of his cabinet members are being sued for failing to prevent and aiding and abetting “genocide” in Gaza.
A federal complaint filed on Monday against President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, accuses them of “failure to prevent and complicity in the Israeli government’s unfolding genocide.”
New York civil liberties group the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) filed the suit on behalf of Palestinian human rights organizations, Palestinians in Gaza, and US citizens with relatives in the besieged enclave that has faced more than a month of relentless bombardment by Israel, which receives funding and weapons from the US government.
More than 11,200 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since Israel launched attacks on October 7. This followed a Hamas attack in Israel, in which about 1,200 people were killed.
“Numerous Israeli government leaders have expressed clear genocidal intentions and deployed dehumanizing characterizations of Palestinians, including ‘human animals’,” the CCR wrote in the introduction to its complaint.
It said those “statements of intent,” when combined with the “mass killing” of Palestinians, reveal “evidence of an unfolding crime of genocide.” Numerous legal scholars, rights groups, and humanitarians have also called Israel’s actions in Gaza genocide.
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