Anti-War

On Friday, July 19, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued an advisory opinion requested in 2022 by the UN General Assembly to address the legality of Israel’s continued occupation of Palestinian territories seized in 1967. 

Confirming everything that legal scholars, human rights activists, and people of conscience have been saying for decades, the court found that Israel’s continued presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory is illegal.  Israel is under obligation to end settlement expansion, evacuate all settlers, and remove parts of the apartheid wall that are situated on Palestinian territory.  Israel must provide full reparation for the damage caused by the wrongful acts, including the return of land and assets seized and must allow all Palestinians displaced during the occupation to return to their original location of residence. And important to U.S. policy, under the ruling, the international community and organizations have an obligation “not to render aid or assistance in maintaining the situation created by” the occupation.”

Great orators in history would not have been recognized as such if their words carried no value. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is neither a great orator, nor did his speech before a joint Congressional session on July 24 have actual worth. It was an expression of his desperation, if not defeat, on all fronts. 

 This is not new. For years, Netanyahu has served the role of a social media meme. During his United Nations General Assembly speech in September 2012, the Israeli leader displayed a bomb diagram to fan the flames for another Middle East war. 

When are American soldiers not really engaged in combat?

Our legal actions and activist mobilizations prevented Israeli arms companies from exhibiting at Eurosatory 2024.

A coalition of human rights, anti-armament, arms-control, and Palestine advocacy groups sustained legal and campaign pressure to stop the Israeli pavilion at the world’s biggest arms fair, Eurosatory. Despite the legal complexities and manoeuvring encountered, and the inaccurate media coverage that continues, the central fact is that this coalition ensured that Israeli companies were stopped from exhibiting at the arms fair. It is easy to see that commercial relationships forged at shows like these by Israeli companies and delegations generate billions of euros worth of contracts, strengthening the economic power of the arms companies and, through them, Israel’s war machine. For a few days we managed to have Eurosatory prohibit any employee or agent of these companies, regardless of their nationality, from being present in the hall. At one point, up to 850 participants linked to Israeli arms and security companies had their badges disabled.

The term is “banal militarism” – that is to say, violence and the preparation for violence so utterly commonplace that most people don’t even notice. Banal militarism is as American as apple pie. It’s also global in scope.

As Richard Rubenstein writes: “Part of the reason for the relative immunity of militarism to criticism is the extraordinary cultural power in American society of pro-military institutions and ways of thought. What some analysts call ‘banal militarism’ is omnipresent, so much so that it becomes virtually invisible, part of the air that one breathes.”

On a warm evening almost a decade ago, I sat under the stars with Daniel Ellsberg while he talked about nuclear war with alarming intensity. He was most of the way through writing his last and most important book, The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner. Somehow, he had set aside the denial so many people rely on to cope with a world that could suddenly end in unimaginable horror. Listening, I felt more and more frightened. Dan knew what he was talking about.

Yurii Sheliazhenko is facing trial on June 11 and the possibility of 5 years in prison for speaking in support of peace in Ukraine. Yurii has been formally charged by the Ukrainian government with the crime of justifying Russian aggression. The evidence is this statement which explicitly condemns Russian aggression.

Please sign and share this petition to the Ukrainian Government:

We call on you to drop any legal proceedings against Yurii Sheliazhenko, and to respect human rights, the right to conscientious objection, and the right to freedom of speech. The absurdity of prosecuting someone for justifying Russian warmaking on the basis of a statement in which he has explicitly condemned Russian warmaking, is matched by the absurdity of waging war in the name of freedom and democracy while engaging in this sort of harassment of citizens. We urge you to do better.

New York, New York- May 29, 2024 – In a one-of-a-kind alliance aimed at alleviating the financial burden of unpaid personal debt owed by America’s veterans, Jerry Ashton, founder of the 501(c)(3) charitable foundation End Veteran Debt (EVD), and Craig Antico, co-founder of ForgiveCo (FGVC), a Public Benefit Corporation, have joined forces to see these debts forgiven – in full.

Antico and Ashton, distinguished former executives in the collections industry, earned acclaim in 2014 for co-founding RIP Medical Debt, one of America's most successful charities. Over the past decade, that charity, now known as Undue Medical Debt, has garnered sufficient donations to eliminate billions of dollars in unpayable medical debt, relieving millions of Americans. Having made their mark on the general population, this renewed alliance signifies their commitment to addressing the unique needs and challenges faced by America's returning heroes and their families.

Bringing different skills to the challenge