WASHINGTON (Dispatches) – More than 500 former Democratic Party staffers signed an open letter on Monday urging President Joe Biden to “hold Israel accountable for its actions” and take “concrete steps” to end the Zionist regime’s occupation of the Palestinian territories.
The letter was signed by staffers and organizers who worked either directly at Biden’s national campaign headquarters, at the Democratic National Committee or at state Democratic parties that worked to campaign for Biden.
“The very same values that motivated us to work countless hours to elect you demand that we speak out in the aftermath of the recent explosive violence in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, which is inextricable from the ongoing history of occupation, blockade, and settlement expansion,” the letter read.
The signatories said the administration must hold the Zionist regime accountable for the disproportionate number of Palestinian deaths.
The regime’s airstrikes killed at least 248 people, including 66 children in Gaza, and wounded 1,948 others, Gaza’s health ministry said.
“We need to end the illegal occupation once and for all. And to do that requires all of these steps that we included in the letter,” Heba Mohammad, a Palestinian American and former Wisconsin Digital organizing director for the Biden campaign, told Middle East Eye.
In addition to calling for an end to the occupation, the staffers listed a number of demands to Biden, including calls to stop the Zionist regime’s settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank, allow for a humanitarian corridor in Gaza, and ensure American aid to the occupying regime “no longer funds the imprisonment and torture of Palestinian children” and the “annexation of Palestinian land”.
Meanwhile, attempts to proscribe the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign (BDS) have suffered a major blow after a U.S. federal district court ruled that the State of Georgia’s 2016 law punishing boycotts of the Zionist regime is an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment.
Judge Mark Cohen ruled over a lawsuit brought by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) on behalf of journalist and filmmaker Abby Martin against Georgia Southern University.
The developments come as Biden and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Sisi in a telephone call discussed the latest situation in Gaza, the White House said in a press release.