Judge Dismisses Lawsuit Seeking to Stop US Aid to Israel

Update, 4:30 p.m. Wednesday: A federal judge in Oakland on Wednesday dismissed a lawsuit alleging that the Biden administration is complicit in genocide against residents in Gaza.

Plaintiffs in the case sought to block the U.S. government from providing military aid to Israel, arguing in court last Friday that doing so was in violation of international and domestic genocide laws.

The judge ultimately sided with attorneys for the U.S. government, who argued that the courts lack authority over certain political decisions made by Congress and the executive branch.

Original story, 4 p.m. Friday (Jan. 26)
Crowds of at least 200 people protested outside an Oakland federal courthouse on Friday as attorneys gave arguments in a lawsuit seeking to stop U.S. aid for the Israeli government’s attacks on Gaza.

Attorneys from the Center for Constitutional Rights, representing Palestinians in the U.S. and abroad, filed the lawsuit (PDF) in November. They are seeking a court order (PDF) to stop U.S. military aid to Israel, arguing it is fueling a genocide against Palestinian people and urging the Biden administration to pursue a cease-fire. On Dec. 8, the federal government responded with a motion to dismiss the case, saying the court had no oversight on foreign policy.

Friday’s single-day hearing laid out arguments from Palestinians and U.S. officials. Plaintiffs argued that by aiding Israel’s military operations in Gaza, the U.S. government has violated international law codified in the 1948 Genocide Convention, as well as the U.S. Genocide Convention Implementation Act of 1988.

Plaintiffs had seven witnesses call in, including a doctor currently based in Gaza. “Every single one of the testimonies that we heard was gut-wrenching,” Diala Shamas, senior staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, told KQED.

U.S. District Judge Jeffrey S. White said he would take a hard look at the arguments and evidence and is expected to deliver a decision in the coming weeks. “The question of what he can do is what he’s sitting with,” Shamas said, adding that they are hopeful he will “issue some kind of order to stop the genocide.”

Lawyers for the U.S. Department of Justice, however, argued that the court does not have authority over international policy decisions made by the president and Congress.

“It is not the court’s role to sit in judgment of U.S. foreign policy decisions concerning the conflict in Gaza or to assess whether Israel has transgressed limits imposed by international law,” Biden’s defense attorneys wrote in a court brief (PDF) this month.

It’s a concern Judge White had also expressed in the days leading up to the hearing. He questioned what authority the courts have in foreign policy decisions typically decided by other branches of government.

Since Oct. 7, when an attack led by Hamas killed about 1,200 Israelis, more than 26,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s counterattacks, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.

Palestinian author Laila El-Haddad said in court testimony on Friday that she has lost more than 85 family members in Gaza air strikes and other attacks from Israel in the last 16 weeks.

“Israel has displaced or is starving the surviving family members, and they are having trouble just trying to survive at this point,” El-Haddad said. “It’s consumed every aspect of my life. It’s been a living nightmare, figuratively and literally.”

Friday’s hearing brought a packed courtroom, and a digital livestream of the proceedings, capped at 1,000 people, quickly reached capacity. Hundreds who were turned away from the courthouse painted phrases like “no bombs” and “Biden complicit in genocide” on the streets outside the federal building in downtown Oakland, while other supporters of the lawsuit handed out coffee and snacks.

Early Friday morning, the U.N.’s International Court of Justice ordered Israel to prevent death, destruction and acts of genocide in Gaza. However, the court did not order an end to Israel’s military offensive. Shamas of CCR said that the ruling and Friday’s effort in Oakland to stop the genocide are in “parallel postures.”

“The ICJ was looking at this plausibility threshold to issue what they call provisional measures in those contexts to stop immediate harms,” she said. “That’s what we are asking the judge here to do.”

In the meantime, the Biden administration has continued to fund weapons for Israel and has bypassed congressional approval to do so. And in December, the U.S. vetoed a U.N. resolution to order a cease-fire for both sides.

Mike Zerelli, who has several family members currently in Gaza, was outside the courthouse on Friday morning waving a Palestinian flag.

“They are struggling to survive. My brother’s home was totally bombed. His father had a farm there in the north of Gaza that’s totally gone,” Zerelli told KQED. “They have been moving from the U.N. school shelter and they were bombed out of that. Water and food is extremely hard to get. We have been getting funds to them for some of it.”

He and others said they hope the lawsuit can stop the violence and the subsequent health and environmental disasters happening in Gaza.

“There are people getting the flu, getting COVID, all of these things are easily treated and prevented,” said Dr. Mahz Shaikh-Gingras, who was at Friday’s action along with more than a dozen other health care workers calling for a cease-fire. “There is nothing that can be done about any of it now because there is no health care infrastructure there now.”