Block the Bombs to Israel: HR 3565 now has 47 co-sponsors
Illinois Rep. Delia Ramirez denounces genocide in Gaza
HAVANA TIMES – US Congressmember Delia Ramirez, one of the co-sponsors of the Block the Bombs Act, which would withhold offensive weapons that violate international law and humanitarian norms deals from Israel, responds to a U.N. commission’s recent conclusion that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. She provides an update on the bill and says, “It’s indefensible for anyone to, in this moment, try to make an excuse of what’s happening and allowing it to happen under our watch.”
Transcript
AMY GOODMAN: I know you have to go, Congressmember Ramirez, but I wanted to ask you about this latest news. A United Nations inquiry has concluded Israel has committed genocide in Gaza. This is Navi Pillay, who headed the commission.
NAVI PILLAY: In our report, the commission found that the Israeli authorities and Israeli security forces committed and are continuing to commit the following underlying acts of genocide against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip: one, killing members of the group; two, causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; three, deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; and, four, imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.
AMY GOODMAN: Congressmember Delia Ramirez, you have called for — you just recently held a news conference with Mahmoud Khalil and others calling for an arms embargo against Israel. Explain.
REP. DELIA RAMIREZ: Yeah, well, first of all, Israel is committing a genocide, and I think it’s indefensible for anyone to, in this moment, try to make an excuse of what’s happening and allowing it to happen under our watch. I have a bill. It’s a specific, concrete bill that blocks bombs to Israel. It is one of the first bills in its nature, where now we have 47 members of Congress who have joined the bill. And it says we are going to withhold weapons. We’re not going to allow Donald Trump and Bibi Netanyahu to just easily make a transfer of these weapons, that we know have violated international law and killed babies. This afternoon, I will be having a deep discussion with a number of my colleagues, calling for them directly, in a meeting, urging them to join this bill immediately and bring it to a committee hearing in Armed Services, in the jurisdiction of the bill.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yeah, I just wanted to ask Kevin Herrera: In the lawsuit that you, that your plaintiffs filed, they talked about, as well, the way that Venezuelans were singled out by these off-duty police, that they picked up the Venezuelans and beat them and had them arrested, but not other day laborers. Could you talk about that, as well?
KEVIN HERRERA: Yes, that’s correct. Based on the facts that we’ve heard from each of our plaintiffs, the off-duty police officers and Home Depot security, who dragged those individuals into the back of the Home Depot and abused them, also used nationalist epithets regarding their ethnicity, specifically accusing them of being Venezuelan, of being recent arrivals, of being someone that the government didn’t want there. One of our clients, who’s Colombian, told them that he was Colombian, and they said he was lying, and proceeded to hit him again.
So, with Willian, one of the saddest facts of his case is that he was profiled initially, during the first trauma that he experienced at the Home Depot, and now, over a year later, he’s been profiled again via the ways in which ICE is selecting people based on the color of their skin, based on their language and how they speak it, whether they speak with an accent, and here, apparently, based on their ability to speak out and call out injustice and racism in the United States. William was double-profiled, and now he’s suffering consequences within the ICE detention system, after he had already been through so much at the Home Depot.
AMY GOODMAN: Kevin Herrera, we want to thank you so much for being with us — of course, we’ll continue to follow this case — legal director of Raise the Floor Alliance. He’s an attorney for Willian Giménez González, speaking to us from Chicago. And thank you also to Congressmember Delia Ramirez of Chicago, the first Latina congressmember to represent Illinois.
I find it sad that so much of the world lives in conditions such as this. I don’t believe it can happen here without our judicial system going after the officers. I fear some falsehoods are being taken at face value in the furtherance of political agendas. I do believe it is a common practice in Mexico and Cuba, I wish the reporter would take these claims to any number of the civil rights groups that operate freely in the United States because if the claims are truthful the officers need to be held accountable! The practice is not and won’t be condoned by Americans irregardless of political party. Start at the question of which Home Depot as I’ve not seen or heard anything about such malfeasance in any of the papers here. Given the instant outrage that occurred when the Border Patrol conducted a focused enforcement action at a Home Depot the lack of any whispers about such occurrences. I do business with all the home supply store and can’t imagine their employees standing by while such activities were occurring without calling the local police to stop it. And frankly the idea that any business would allow their premises to be used for such activities is ludicrous, just won’t fly in America.