US Taxpayers Appalled at Funding Genocide Turn to UN

With no recourse in U.S. courts or Congress, the Taxpayers Against Genocide movement pivots to the U.N. Human Rights Council, Marjorie Cohn reports.

By Marjorie Cohn
Truthout

Taxpayers Against Genocide (TAG), a nongovernmental grassroots mass movement comprised of more than U.S. 2,000 taxpayers who have been protesting their congressional representatives’ votes to fund Israel’s genocide in Gaza, filed an unprecedented report with the U.N. Human Rights Council on April 7.

“We have gone through all the channels open to us in our effort to stop U.S. officials from using our tax dollars to fund genocide. We have called and met with these officials, we have peacefully protested and we have taken them to federal court. To date, none of this has stopped them,” Seth Donnelly, lead taxpayer plaintiff in the federal lawsuit, told Truthout.

“The genocide in Gaza rages on, fueled by our tax dollars,” he said. “We have now elevated our struggle to the international arena, starting with our report to the U.N. Human Rights Council, as one necessary step towards countering the impunity of the U.S. government.”

The introduction to TAG’s report says:

“The focus of this report is on violations of U.S. obligations by the U.S. Congress and executive in committing residents’ tax dollars — including those of Palestinian-Americans whose families have been decimated in Gaza — to support what the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and International Criminal Court (ICC) as well as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Medecins Sans Frontieres, and many other human rights organizations have recognized as an unfolding genocide in Gaza.”

Tarik Kanaana, TAG’s lead contact for the report and a Palestinian activist in Northern California, told Truthout, “Since October 2023, our people in Gaza have suffered unimaginable horrors at the hands of Israel. Our families, our mothers and fathers, our sons and daughters, our siblings, our newborn children, our grandmothers and grandfathers, our friends and neighbors have been slaughtered, tortured to death, burned alive, starved and executed and buried in shallow graves.” He added,

“Those who survived death are facing famine and disease and will be scarred, both physically and mentally, for generations to come. Israel has, at the same time, destroyed cultural, educational, medical and municipal institutions.”

TAG’s report outlines how Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians would not be possible without the support of the U.S., which funds the vast majority of weapons used to commit it.

The report charges U.S. officials with directly participating in the genocide in Gaza. It provides evidence of how both the Biden and Trump administrations, together with specific members of Congress, used U.S. tax dollars to fund war crimes and genocide, in violation of the U.S. Constitution, federal laws and the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

“Israel’s genocidal war against the Palestinian people has only been possible with support and aid from its allies in the West, especially the United States. The U.S. government — all three branches — is a full partner and bears responsibility for this genocide,” Kanaana told Truthout.

“The American people have no recourse within the U.S. political or judicial systems when it comes to their government’s crimes against the people of the world. We, Americans who cannot accept our government’s actions, are forced to appeal to international bodies to influence our own government to do what its citizens overwhelmingly want.”

Pivot to International Arena 

In December, after their Congress members repeatedly refused to meet with them, the taxpayers filed a federal lawsuit, Seth Donnelly et. al. v. Mike Thompson, and Jared Huffman, against two Democratic Congress members, alleging that they illegally abused their “tax and spend authority” on April 20, 2024, when they voted for the Israel Security Supplemental Appropriations Act, which authorized an additional $26.38 billion in military assistance to Israel.

Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution specifies that funds can be allocated only for debt repayment, “the general welfare” or “common defense.”

Funding a known genocide does not qualify as the “general welfare” of anyone or the “common defense” of the U.S., the suit alleged. It also charged that the Congress members violated the Genocide Convention and several U.S. laws.

Donnelly v. Thompson was dismissed in February on the grounds that it posed a “non-justiciable political question” to the court. That means that only the two political branches — the executive and the legislative, not the judiciary — can decide foreign policy issues.

“When TAG’s federal lawsuit was dismissed in February, they decided to pivot to the international arena to amplify their complaint that no branch of the U.S. government is willing to enforce the Genocide Convention — or any other ratified human rights or humanitarian law treaty, making U.S. taxpayers and constituents complicit in the Gaza genocide,” Susan Scott, a member of the National Lawyers Guild International Committee and one of the report’s lead authors, told Truthout.

TAG’s report will be included in the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of the U.S. human rights record. The UPR is a unique mechanism of the Human Rights Council that calls on each of the 193 U.N. member states to submit to a peer review of its human rights record every 4.5 years.

Each state receives reports and recommendations from other U.N. member states and civil society, including non-governmental organizations, for improvement. “We look forward to the ‘interactive dialogue’ hearing in Geneva between the U.S. and other member states in November,” Scott told Truthout.

Violating Constitution & Federal Law

In addition to violating the Constitution’s “tax and spend” authority, the U.S. Congress is violating federal statutes, TAG’s report states. They include the Leahy Law, which requires the State Department to bar U.S. assistance to foreign security forces responsible for gross violations of human rights. But when it comes to Israel, the State Department looks the other way.

The TAG report quotes Stephen Rickard, a former State Department official and former senior staff for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who helped pass the Leahy Law and monitored its implementation for more than 25 years. He stated, “There is only one country where the Department of State has a ‘see no evil, hear no evil’ policy: Israel.”

“Trump has enthusiastically supplied $12 billion in additional weapons, and the U.S. Congress is currently in the process of allocating yet another $8 billion in weapons sales to Israel,” the report says.

Charging that the U.S. “is in the grip of a ‘trifecta’ of control” which includes all three branches of the government, the report notes that “voters who oppose U.S support for genocide and apartheid (the majority) are left with no remedy but marching in the streets and shaming their leadership in international fora.”

The report also documents the Trump administration’s repression (in the name of combating “anti-Semitism”) of those who protest the use of their tax dollars to fund genocide and who support Palestinian rights. Students and faculty who are lawfully in the country are having their visas revoked.

Even lawful permanent residents have been targeted. Universities are threatened with loss of federal funding if they refuse to crack down on political protest. Criticism of Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians is conflated with hatred of Jews. This is the “Palestine exception” to free speech.

This student was just disappeared. He holds a green card. No crimes.

The Trump regime is ignoring the Constitution and the courts. #Mohsen #Mahdawi https://t.co/N4jb9iVEIf

— Equinox ??? (@SpringF_kx) April 15, 2025

“The government repression and targeting of those who speak out about the ongoing genocide has created a chilling effect on this very UPR submission,” the report states. “In fact, six of the TAG plaintiffs, including several naturalized citizens, who made statements for Annex A have withdrawn them, and one of the endorsing organizations withdrew for fear of retaliation.”

Here are some of the statements written by taxpayer plaintiffs that are included in Annex A:

Judith Green, a Jewish woman: “That descendants of those who did or did not survive the Holocaust are now doing to Palestinians what was done to their ancestors is horrifying.”

Haleh Sheikholeslami: “As a physician committed to preserving life, it has been excruciating to focus on treating patients here while witnessing the mass bombing and killing of innocent children and civilians in Gaza and Lebanon — acts funded by my own government. This genocide violates every fiber of my being as a human and a healer.”

Health care worker Ariel Mihic: “Watching daily as hospitals are bombed and dismantled, and healthcare workers are targeted and killed has been a dystopian nightmare of a country set on destroying the infrastructure and healing centers of an entire people.”

Nida Liftawiya, a Palestinian refugee: “American tax dollars should have been allocated for public services and essential government functions for the American people and not misappropriated for unlawful purposes contributing to the ethnic cleansing of my homeland and people.”

Elliot Helman: “Working for social justice is a core component of my identity as a Jew. There is a famous teaching in the Jewish tradition that is said to encapsulate all of our teachings and scriptures: That which is abhorrent to you, do not do to others; now go and learn. …This is what informs my rejection of Zionism and Israel as the exclusive homeland of the Jewish people, and this is what motivates my commitment to the pursuit of justice. … This is why … I fight for justice for the Palestinian people.”

TAG’s report recommends that the U.S. government:

— Stop funding genocide and war crimes in violation of U.S. and international law;

— Stop prosecuting, persecuting, deporting and threatening advocates for Palestinian self-determination and protesters against genocide;

— Institute effective judicial safeguards against U.S. funding and support of genocide and war crimes;

— Establish a National Human Rights Institute to train legislators, judges and federal agency directors in international humanitarian and human rights law and the supremacy of all U.S.-ratified human rights treaties under Article VI of the U.S. Constitution;

— Honor the principles of academic freedom: Stop pressuring universities to police the protected speech of faculty and students; and do not threaten to cut funding in pursuit of a political agenda that violates international law;

— Take all necessary measures to ensure independent and effective oversight of U.S. treaty obligations;

— Sign and ratify the Rome Statute for the International Criminal Court, eliminate sanctions against court personnel and encourage cooperation with ICC investigations.

The National Lawyers Guild International Committee and the International Association of Democratic Lawyers contributed to TAG’s report. It was endorsed by The Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom–U.S. Section, CODEPINK, Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace, and Roots Action.

In the next few weeks, TAG will also file a petition with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, a judicial organ of the Organization of American States which endeavors to promote and protect human rights in the American hemisphere.

“We are turning to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights because U.S. courts have shut their doors to victims of Israel’s crimes and to those seeking to hold the U.S. accountable for its support,” Huwaida Arraf, the lead attorney preparing the petition, told Truthout.

Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, dean of the People’s Academy of International Law and past president of the National Lawyers Guild. She sits on the national advisory boards of Veterans For Peace and Assange Defense, and is the U.S. representative to the continental advisory council of the Association of American Jurists. Her books include Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral and Geopolitical Issues.

This article was first published by Truthout.

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