A Rude Greeting for Netanyahu’s Coming UN Visit

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New York demonstrators intend to denounce the prime minister’s visit to the U.N., where members last week demanded that Israel end its illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories.

Protesting Netanyahu’s visit to Congress in Washington on July 24. (Diane Krauthamer, Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

By Natalia Marques
Peoples Dispatch

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is for now set to deliver an address at the United Nations General Assembly on Friday

In response, several anti-imperialist organizations, organized under the Shut it Down For Palestine Coalition, are planning a demonstration in New York on Thursday to denounce Netanyahu’s visit and demand that he be arrested for genocide and crimes against humanity.

With heightened tensions between Israel and Lebanon, Netanyahu delayed his visit to the United States, which was originally scheduled for Sept. 24 over security concerns. 

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 delivered a special address to a joint session of the United States Congress on July 24, where he received a standing ovation from U.S. lawmakers from both major establishment parties. On his way to the U.S., Netanyahu avoided stopping in Europe, where all nations are members of the ICC, in order to avoid any chance of arrest. 

On July 24, although U.S. 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.

Protesting Netanyahu’s visit to Congress in Washington on July 24. (Diane Krauthamer, Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

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 U.S. 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 Sept. 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 almost 42,000 people, [according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, with researchers at the Lancet warning in July that when indirect deaths were considered “up to 186,000 or even more deaths could be attributable to the current conflict in Gaza.”]

Israeli forces have devastated 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 Oct. 8.

Natalia Marques is a correspondent for Peoples Dispatch. 

This article is from Peoples Dispatch.

Views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.

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