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Ros-Lehtinen Removes Pro-Palestinian Activists From Congressional Hearing On Punishing PA For Joining ICC
Many Americans who support Palestinians’ human rights were dismayed a few weeks ago when a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee announced it would hold a hearing on cutting off aid to the Palestinian Authority. The panel was announced in response to the PA’s application to join the International Criminal Court—arguably, among Palestinians, the only popular initiative that Mahmoud Abbas has taken in recent memory. The panel was made all the more offensive when subcommittee chairperson Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) revealed that the witness table would be staffed exclusively by neoconservatives—three out of four of whom have written about Palestinian children as constituting a “demographic threat” to the Jewish state.
When the panel assembled yesterday in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill, citizens concerned about human rights in Israel/Palestine packed the hearing–to represent the growing-but-still-marginalized contingent of Americans who object to the US government’s one-sided diplomatic and military support for Israel. The chairperson would not be amused.
From the start, it was clear the hearing was anything but mundane, despite its lack of real significance. It was neither an oversight nor a mark-up hearing, but was well-attended by lawmakers when Ros-Lehtinen gavelled the room to order. Capitol Police officers, too, attended in abnormally large numbers, keeping a watchful eyes on attendees organized by the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation who gathered to carry out “a silent and dignified protest in support of Israel being held accountable at the ICC.” They held up signs bearing photographs of Israeli atrocities committed in Gaza last summer, adorned with the slogan “#ICC4Israel.” Or they did until the hearing kicked off.
Source: mondoweiss.net