45 Democrats Joined Every Single Republican In The Disgrace
Lou Correa is a pretty conservative Orange County Democrat but yesterday, he voted with his own party to try to shut down a misguided attempt to sanction any non-U.S. citizens who assist the International Criminal Court (ICC) in investigating, arresting, detaining, or prosecuting the Israeli genocidists. The bill, introduced by Texas fascist Chip Roy, passed anyway 243-140 with 45 AIPAC-oriented Democrats voting with all the Republicans in favor. Noting Roy’s bill was “misguided and badly written,” Correa told his constituents that it “would impose sanctions on supporters of the International Criminal Court (ICC), including many of the United States’ critical allies. It would also put at risk many American companies that provide technical support to the ICC— like Apple, Google, and others— and force them to relinquish their services, opening the door to companies of foreign adversaries to have access to sensitive data and put international security at risk… [T]his bill would hinder our international reputation, set back our long-term interests, and destroy the international rule of law.”
Wisconsin progressive Mark Pocan told me right after that vote that “Telling the ICC what they can do and who they can investigate when we aren’t even a part of the international courts is arrogance at best. In reality, it’s just another way to say Netanyahu isn’t a war criminal despite the international community’s recognition of his crimes against humanity. It’s too bad Congress isn’t taking reducing costs for ordinary Americans as a priority rather than providing cover for a potential criminal.”
Sticking with our theme of identifying the rotten apples among Democratic freshmen, These are the 10 freshmen who crossed the aisle for genocide. The bolded names are the ones who also voted for the xenophobic immigration bill the GOP passed this week:
Yassamin Ansari (AZ)
Wesley Bell (New Dem-MO)
Gil Cisneros (New Dem-CA)
Shaman Figures (New Dem-AL)
Laura Gillen (New Dem-NY)
Adam Gray (Blue Dog-CA)
George Latimer (New Dem-NY)
April Delaney (New Dem-MD)
Josh Riley (New Dem-NY)
Suhas Subramanyam (New Dem-VA)
AIPAC paid out bribes of over $20,000,000 to the 45 Democrats who voted for the bill.
Karoun Demirjian termed it “a frontal assault on the tribunal in a rebuke of its move to charge top Israeli leaders with war crimes for their offensive against Hamas in Gaza. The bill instructs the president to freeze property assets and deny visas to any foreigners who materially or financially contributed to the court’s efforts to ‘investigate, arrest, detain or prosecute a protected person.’ Protected persons are defined as all current and former military and government officials of the United States and allies that have not consented to the court’s jurisdiction, such as Israel. The measure is one of several that were pushed through the House by Republicans last year but died in the Democratic-led Senate, and is now all but certain to be enacted now that Republicans control both chambers of Congress and Trump is taking office on Jan. 20.”
AIPAC shill Brian Mast (R-FL) called the ICC “a kangaroo court” because he disagrees with their finding and “accused the court of antisemitism, trying to prevent the Israeli military from being successful and of stymying efforts to release Israeli and American hostages being held by Hamas. This bill sends an incredibly important message across the globe. Do not get in the way of America or our allies trying to bring our people home. You will be given no quarter, and again, you will certainly not be welcome on American soil.”
Most Democrats objected to the legislation, arguing that it was trying to punish too wide a swath of people for the decision.
“Republicans want to sanction the I.C.C. simply because they don’t want the rules to apply to everyone,” said Representative Jim McGovern, Democrat of Massachusetts. “There is no international right to vengeance, and what we are seeing in Gaza is vengeance.”
The International Criminal Court claims jurisdiction over alleged war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide that are committed by citizens of states that have recognized the court or occur in countries that have recognized the court. The Palestinian Territories did so in 2015, a few years after the United Nations admitted Palestine as an observer state.
The United States and Israel were among only seven countries that voted against the creation of the criminal court in 1998. Though both countries later became signatories to its founding document, the Rome Statute, neither country ratified it.