Letter to President Biden (November 2024)

<via online form>

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November 21, 2024

America’s Unconditional Support for the Netanyahu Government

Dear President Biden:

It is with anger and disappointment that I read about your administration's determination to support Israel’s indiscriminate way of waging war against the Palestinians in Gaza in violation of U.S. law and international humanitarian law.

There could not have been a better time for your administration to take decisive action to demonstrate America’s commitment to protecting civilians in war zones. Voting against a cease-fire in the U.N. Security Council is one opportunity missed. Failure to suspend U.S. weapons transfers to Israel is a second missed opportunity. Instead, tens of thousands of Palestinian civilian casualties will be America’s legacy.

I had hoped that after the election, your administration would assert America’s foreign policy independence and stop supporting the Netanyahu government, and I expressed this view to Vice-President Harris for whom I voted.

By being Israel’s eternal and unconditional ‘friend,’ America has learned nothing from its past hypocrisies. We are arming a government that casually kills civilians as if they are subhuman life forms. Not only does this violate international law but it obliterates the reasons why the international rules of war were so badly in need of being rewritten after World War II. U.S. policy is undermining the fragile collection of post-WWII humanitarian law it helped establish with its precedent-setting actions (and inactions) regarding Israel’s conduct of its war.

Contrary to its lip service to a two-state solution, your administration is, in effect, ending its tenure with a full-throated voicing of support for the Netanyahu Government's one-state solution of a Greater Israel with Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem annexed once and for all.

Regards,

Peter McMillan