(Washington, D.C. – 3/8/2024) – The US Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO) – the nation’s umbrella group of national, regional, and local Muslim associations expresses its extreme disappointment in President Biden’s failure to use his State of the Union to announce any concrete steps to end U.S. support for the Israeli government’s ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza.
“Although President Biden now acknowledges the fact that 30,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, he still refuses to take any concrete steps that would force the Israeli government to stop its genocidal war crimes,” said Oussama Jammal, USCMO secretary general. “Building a pier in Gaza for aid delivery weeks from now is not a solution, nor is a temporary six-week pause in the genocide. The American Muslim community and many Americans of various backgrounds want our nation to secure an immediate and permanent end to this genocidal violence. The administration’s failure to fundamentally change course on Gaza is likely to continue driving our community and others away from this President.”
President Biden mentioned Gaza for the first time almost one hour into his State of the Union address. He admitted that 30,000 Palestinians, have been slaughtered in the Israeli government’s relentless 152-day starvation and bombing campaign but failed to condemn the Israeli government for its crimes or apologize for U.S. complicity in them.
“President Biden should have raised the mass extermination and starvation of the Palestinians of Gaza much, much earlier in his speech,” Jammal said. “This is not a mere foreign policy issue for America, which is sponsoring this genocide. It is in reality a domestic social and racial justice issue, an issue of supremacy, and nothing but the U.S. ending this wholesale slaughter of an entire people is going to change that reality.”
Jammal added that President Biden’s air-dropping of aid crumbs onto the heads of the beleaguered people of Gaza – in the midst of a barrage of thousand-pound bombs it has supplied the Israelis, who are blocking land routes for aid – will be nothing more than a publicity stunt if it is not accompanied by an end to the genocide.
President Biden’s proposal of “a temporary pier [that] will enable a massive increase in the amount of humanitarian assistance getting into Gaza every day” will, according to Pentagon Press Secretary Patrick Ryder, take up to two months and require 1,000 US troops.
Even then, the U.S. plans to give Israeli security forces – the same people responsible for cutting off and delaying thousands of laden aid trucks into Gaza now by land – oversight over the coastal aid operation. Major international aid agencies, including the U.N., have called the plan “time-consuming and inefficient” compared with supplying aid ready now through existing land crossings.
Save the Children has warned there is no time left for Gaza’s people falling deeper by the day into famine.
Biden could halt the Israeli assault on Gaza “with one phone call,” said Saul Takahashi, professor of human rights and peace studies at Osaka Jogakuin University and former deputy head of the Office of the UN High Commissioner of Human Rights.
“This is not predominantly a humanitarian issue. This is not some kind of natural disaster. … This is a manmade disaster. … The Israelis are inflicting genocide on the Palestinians.”
USCMO calls on President Biden to:
- Stop the flow of weapons to the Israelis.
- Stop the political and diplomatic support of this genocide of Palestinians of Gaza
- Make the call for an immediate, permanent ceasefire now.
- Lift the 17-year Israeli siege of Gaza..
- Organize the international community to rebuild Gaza.
- Take credible and concrete steps to end U.S. support for the Israeli occupation and secure Palestinian freedom
Our prayers are with the starving, the bombed out, and the besieged of Gaza. We pray for a Ramadan of relief and plenty for the Palestinians of Gaza, and that God will set the Palestinians throughout the Holy Land free from their long bondage.
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