Complaint to Hold US Accountable in Gaza Genocide Filed with IACHR

A press conference was held on May 14 to introduce a legal complaint filed with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) by TAG (Taxpayers Against Genocide) a grassroots movement, DAG (Doctors Against Genocide), the National Lawyers Guild, and CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations). The complaint calls for an end to the US “material support of Isreal’s commission of war crimes, genocide and other crimes against humanity and for its blatant obstruction of international justice.”

Additionally, the complaint urges the US to comply with sanctions under international law to impose an arms embargo against Israel and to rescind the February 6, 2025, executive order sanctioning the ICC.

The complaint was filed in reaction to the court’s decision in 2024 to dismiss an earlier action filed on behalf of ten plaintiffs all of whom have had numerous family members killed in the genocide in Gaza.

“Defense for Children International-Palestine, et al. v. Biden” was filed on November 13, 2023, in the United States District Court for The Northern District of California naming the US government and government officials for its “failure to exercise influence over Israel to prevent genocide” under international human rights law.

In dismissing the case on appeal in January 2024, the court found that “Israel’s assault and siege on the Palestinian people in Gaza plausibly constitute genocide and ‘implor[ed]’ the Biden administration to examine its ‘unflagging support’ for Israel.” The finding of plausibility is in alignment with the historic ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

The cause for dismissal was based “on jurisdictional grounds, invoking the political question doctrine” which government lawyers cited in their appeal brief, arguing that “foreign policy decisions – even a decision to enable genocide – are not subject to judicial review.” 

Lead attorney Huwaida Arraf who drafted the petition described genocide as “the mother of all crimes” and went on to say that the US is not a signatory of the Rome Statute of the ICC which includes the crime of genocide among others within its jurisdiction. But the “ICC could have jurisdiction over US officials if other countries and the ICC had the political will” saying that however was “far off.”

While the US is a signatory to the Genocide Convention of ICC, it entered a “reservation to jurisdiction” effectively saying that “we can’t be brought to court unless we agree to it.”

So, it is in that framework that the complaint was filed using the International Human Rights System of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) which the US recognizes but has never ratified, nor does it recognize the jurisdiction of its courts. Therefore, it cannot be brought before the IACHR courts for binding judgement.

The complaint is intended rather to show the world that the US and Israel are accountable for their actions and that the “diplomatic cover” afforded to Israel and the delegitimizing of the international courts by the US is part of a coverup to escape accountability, which Arraf summed up as “might is right.”

Unfortunately, however, a finding of accountability would, for lack of an enforcing mechanism, not be enforceable. Enforcement, she said, “comes down to people and to political will. It’s what the movement in the streets continue to do which is to support each other.” Instead, she suggested that the real strength of the petition is “to use it in campaigning and to organize to divest, boycott, and sanction Israel to educate and to advocate” in seeking justice.

Robert Mc Caw of CAIR asked how Americans could ensure “our individual hands are not stained with the blood of Palestinians when it’s our tax dollars and our elected officials and government agencies that are facilitating these atrocities.” “Our own government has failed us” including the Biden administration and now President Trump who continues “unabatedly to provide funding, and political cover and support for Israel’s genocidal actions.”

Giving personal testimony of the genocide were two activists who related the deaths of numerous family members saying that all Americans are complicit as taxpayers for the US support of Israel’s genocide. They voiced an open plea to the international community to do something to end the ongoing slaughter by calling upon the world to see what this moment is: “that power-hungry politicians see Palestine as nothing more than a lucrative spot of real estate for their already bulging pockets.”

Jacque Luqman from Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) gave a forceful and impassioned appraisal regarding solidarity with African Americans, Palestinians and the genocide of Indigenous people saying, “all our struggles are connected.” She went on to discuss the plight that enslaved Africans in America have endured historically naming racism, discrimination, lynchings, killings and destruction of entire families and communities.

On the power of the petition, she said, “it will raise the conscious of people who think this is not our fight.” While people respond differently to the genocide in Gaza, “some people need to have the reality of the horror to slap them right in the face. We need to bring to people the evidence” and referred to mainstream news media’s lack of doing so, as “scribes of the empire” in presenting a one-sided narrative of the genocide. The petition, she said, would do this by presenting evidence “to people who have been misled.” And in debunking Israel’s right to self-defense, she said that “starving people is not self-defense.”

Dr. Nabil Jaboor of DAG (Doctors Against Genocide) in describing the war zone said that “no amount of doctors and no amount of hospitals could keep up with the amount of killing in Gaza and that we cannot take it anymore.” In citing a commonly used medical phrase “Stop the Bleed,” he said “As long as the bleeding is going on, we as doctors cannot do much. The bleeding here is the ongoing genocide, that’s why we step out of our bedsides and hospitals to appeal to the world to stop this genocide. This is mass slaughter.”

“We as doctors cannot wait. We go to school for two decades to learn how to save one life, only to witness an American 2,000-pound bomb mass slaughter hundreds of women and children in one second. And to see this day in and day out for two years, we could not stay silent anymore.”

He went on to accuse the “Judeo-Christians, Arians, the higher moral people, who don’t see the lives of other people, the brown people, the Palestinian people, the black people as equal.” This allows the genocide to continue unabated with little regard for the death and suffering of the Palestinians.

In stopping the war in Gaza, he said that it could be stopped by “one phone call” to Netanyahu from the US. “We don’t need any more peace talks to delay and continue the genocide.”

Following the press conference, the group marched across the city to the Organization of American States Headquarters building where the complaint was filed with the IACHR while a crowd of supporters held a rally outside before proceeding to the White House where they held a demonstration.

Report and photos by Phil Pasquini

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