Above photo: Protesters march against Netanyahu’s visit to Congress on July 24. Jason Bixon.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu set to deliver an address at the United Nations General Assembly.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is set to deliver an address at the United Nations General Assembly later this week. On Thursday, September 26, several anti-imperialist organizations, organized under the Shut it Down For Palestine Coalition, are holding a demonstration denouncing Netanyahu’s visit and demanding that he be arrested for genocide and crimes against humanity.
In August, International Criminal Court (ICC) Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan urged ICC judges to rule on his request for arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. Khan had applied for arrest warrants back in May for the two top Israeli leaders for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
But this has not stopped Netanyahu from making visits to the United States, a country which is not a state party to the Rome Statute of the ICC. Netanyahu made a separate visit to deliver a special address to a joint session of the United States Congress on July 24, where he received a standing ovation from US lawmakers from both major establishment parties. On his way to the US, Netanyahu avoided stopping in Europe, where all nations are members of the ICC, in order to avoid arrest.
On July 24, although US lawmakers greeted Netanyahu with open arms, he was also greeted by a crowd of tens of thousands of protesters. This mass mobilization was violently repressed by a team of several different police agencies utilizing pepper spray.
The Shut it Down Coalition, which includes organizations such as the Palestinian Youth Movement, the People’s Forum, the ANSWER Coalition, and Al-Awda: The Palestine Right to Return Coalition, promises to once again greet the Israeli leader with masses of people of conscience, standing collectively against genocide.
“We must continue to show that the genocidal Israeli regime and its desperate wars of extermination are deeply unpopular in the United States, even as our leaders continue to undemocratically bankroll Netanyahu’s government and furnish it with US-made weapons of death and destruction,” Munir Marwan of the Palestinian Youth Movement told Peoples Dispatch.
As organizers gear up to protest, Israel has been rapidly escalating attacks against Lebanon and expanding its genocidal war. Peoples Dispatch spoke to Lebanese-American journalist Rania Khalek, who said that protests like the one happening in New York City are crucial. “We are at a very dangerous point of escalation, and thus far there have been zero consequences for all the horrific crimes that the Israelis have committed, and the only thing that we have that we can do is to get in their faces and make them uncomfortable wherever they go,” Khalek said.
She added, “It’s of the utmost importance that people here in the imperial core continue to protest against people like Netanyahu as they continue to carry out a genocide against Gaza and try to expand the war to Lebanon, and possibly drag even the US into a regional war.”
After perpetrating a series of cyber terrorist attacks last week, Israel launched a series of deadly airstrikes in southern Lebanon on September 23. According to Lebanese health officials, today Israel has killed at least 182 people and wounded 727, including women, children and paramedics.
It’s been almost a year since Israel began its genocidal war on Gaza. To date, Israeli forces have killed over 42,000 people, and decimated nearly all of the enclave’s health care facilities, educational institutions, and infrastructure. Unable to achieve its military objectives in Gaza, Israel has turned its focus to Lebanon’s Hezbollah which has maintained a Gaza support front since October 8.
With heightened tensions between Israel and Lebanon, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delayed his visit to the United States that was scheduled for September 24 over security concerns. Netanyahu is set to travel to New York in the last week of September to take part in the United Nations General Assembly. Netanyahu is expected to deliver a speech before the UN body, despite the UN condemnation of Israel’s aggressions and violations of human rights across the region.