By SheerPost - Marjorie Cohn - October 7, 2025

As the number of Palestinians killed by Israel in Gaza exceeds 67,000, including 18.000 children, and famine has reached the “catastrophic” phase, thousands of taxpayers across the country have united with Palestinian-Americans to file an international legal complaint against the U.S. government for funding Israel’s genocide in Gaza. 

An initial petition was filed in the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) in Washington D.C., on May 15, 2025, by Taxpayers Against Genocide (TAG) and the National Lawyers Guild. It charged the United States with aiding and abetting Israel in its commission of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity in Gaza, in violation of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, and the Geneva Convention. The petition alleged that the U.S. violated the American Declaration on the Rights and Duties of Man. 

On Oct. 7, 2025, the second anniversary of Israel’s horrific genocide in Gaza, the petitioners filed an amended and expanded legal petition with the IACHR. It includes substantial evidence of the U.S. role in the Israeli campaign of starvation and adds new Palestinian-American petitioners. It also documents the sanctions imposed by the Trump Administration against UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, officials of the International Criminal Court (ICC), and Palestinian human rights organizations for their efforts to hold Israeli leaders accountable for their grave human rights violations. 

“We’re bringing this case before the Inter-American Commission because the United States has effectively shielded itself from any kind of accountability for its international crimes, including genocide, in its domestic courts,” said lead counsel Huwaida Araf, renowned Palestinian-American human rights attorney and co-founder of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition.

“This case isn’t just about Gaza. It’s about whether our government can force us to be complicit in genocide without consequence. We are not making a mere moral appeal. We are invoking binding legal principles that the United States has pledged to uphold. The duty to prevent genocide is immediate, non-derogable, and universal. It is not suspended for allies, and it cannot be sacrificed to politics.”

“This genocide is not only carried out with American weapons– it is carried out in America’s name, with our tax dollars, by politicians who trade Palestinian blood and anguish for campaign checks, political favor, and defense contracts,” lead petitioner, Palestinian-American human rights activist, and best-selling author Susan Abulhawa stated.

“This is why we bring this lawsuit. Not because the courts are pure, but because even the halls of power must, at times, be forced to look at the blood on their own hands. This is not just a legal claim– it is a moral indictment. It is a demand that those who profit from unfathomable death and horror be made to face the masses.”

IACHR is the official human rights body in the Western Hemisphere established by the Organization of American States (OAS). The American Declaration established the jurisprudence of the IACHR and the binding human rights requirements to which OAS member states, including the U.S., must adhere.

Although the IACHR cannot criminally prosecute U.S. officials, it can determine that the U.S. government is guilty of violating its international obligations. A finding of guilt of the U.S. government by the IACHR can be leveraged by human rights advocates in their other efforts to hold the U.S. government accountable on an international level. 

This is the only direct international test of U.S. complicity with Israel’s genocide pending anywhere in the world. It challenges both the Biden and Trump Administrations as well as the U.S. Congress – for their role in perpetuating Israel’s two-year-long genocide.

The petitioners include Taxpayers Against Genocide, an expanding grassroots movement now representing more than 4,000 taxpayers across the U.S., as well as several Palestinian-Americans, who brought the petition on behalf of themselves and Palestinians in Gaza. 

“I am a Muslim Palestinian-American woman living in New York with my husband and four children,” said Hadil El Wahidy, one of the lead petitioners with the case. “Since October 7, 2023, over 100 members of my family have been killed in Gaza. We are not just statistics– we are professionals, scholars, children, and community leaders. Yet we are constantly dehumanized. Despite being a taxpayer and US citizen, I feel betrayed by the continuing funding of a genocide that has devastated my family.”

The petition has been endorsed by a wide range of organizations, including the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Center for Constitutional Rights, U.S. Palestinian Community Network, Palestinian Youth Movement, Jewish Voice for Peace, American Muslims for Palestine, Global Exchange, and CODEPINK.

TAG was established one year ago, when activists in Northern California counties united to launch a historic class action lawsuit against their Congresspersons for illegally using their tax dollars to fund the genocide in Palestine. 

On Feb. 10, 2025, U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria dismissed the lawsuit on the grounds that it raised a “non-justiciable political question” – that foreign policy determinations are limited to the executive and legislative branches –  even though the commission of genocide violates laws whose review is squarely within the purview of the judicial branch.

This was the same reasoning used to dismiss the previous lawsuit against high officials of the Biden Administration by Palestinian-Americans, Defense for Children International- Palestine et al v. Biden et al. These rulings demonstrated the failure of the U.S. court system to uphold U.S. and international law and hold the U.S. government and its leaders accountable for their participation in the genocide.

On April 7, 2025, TAG filed an unprecedented report with the UN Human Rights Council, that charges U.S. officials with direct participation in the genocide. The report documents how both the Biden and Trump administrations, in concert with specific members of Congress, used U.S. tax dollars to finance genocide and war crimes, in violation of the U.S. Constitution, federal laws, and the Genocide Convention.

This report will be included in the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of the U.S. human rights record. The UPR calls on each of the 193 UN member states to submit to a peer review of its human rights record every 4.5 years. Each state receives reports and recommendations from other UN member states and civil society, including nongovernmental organizations, for improvement. But on Aug. 28, 2025, the Trump administration announced that it will boycott the UPR process, the first time in history a state has refused to participate in a review of its own human rights record. 

No Accountability in US Courts, so TAG and Palestinian-Americans Sue US in Inter-American Human Rights Commission

Since the initial petition was filed in the IACHR, thousands of U.S. taxpayers have joined TAG and endorsed the petition. 

The new petition adds voluminous new evidence of the U.S. role in causing escalating starvation in Gaza; U.S. provision of thousands of bombs and munitions to exterminate the mostly unarmed civilians of Gaza; U.S. organizational and logistical help to establish the notorious Gaza Humanitarian Foundation “death traps”; and many other atrocities and massacres.

“It is often said that there is no daylight between Washington and Tel Aviv — a relationship whose deadly consequences are etched into the mass graves of Gaza,” the amended petition begins. The Biden and Trump administrations have delivered more than $30 billion in weapons to Israel since Oct. 7, 2023, including $12.5 billion so far during Trump’s second term. “The U.S. policy of accelerating arms sales in the face of mounting atrocity did not change with the transition of administrations.”

“After October 2023, the United States shifted from ally into public accomplice,” the petition continues. “For almost two years, it has knowingly and deliberately sustained Israel’s assault on Gaza. By providing weaponry, technology, funding, and diplomatic shield, the U.S. has entwined itself in Israel’s genocidal machinery, turning what might have been a short-lived offensive into a protracted campaign of annihilation, conducted with impunity.”

The petition cites Israel’s “widespread, indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks,” disabling most of Gaza’s hospitals, and damaging approximately 97% of the schools–“devastating civilian infrastructure across Gaza.” Israel has damaged or destroyed approximately 90% of all housing units in Gaza. In addition, “Israel has dramatically intensified its closure regime on Gaza, severely restricting or entirely cutting off the entry of essential goods including food, water, fuel, electricity, and medicine and other humanitarian aid.” 

Despite the January 2024 finding of the International Court of Justice that Israel’s actions plausibly fall within the scope of the Genocide Convention and the ICJ’s order of provisional measures requiring Israel to prevent genocidal acts, Israel continues its genocidal onslaught in Gaza.

Israel’s “Total Blockade” on Gaza Is Starving Palestinians to Death

On March 2, 2025, Israel declared a “total blockade” on Gaza, stopping the entry of all essential goods, including food, water, medicine, fuel, and electricity, “devastating a population already ‘starving, sick, and dying,’” according to the petition.

After almost four months of the total blockade on the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza, the U.S.-sponsored and financed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) — a militarized aid distribution system which replaced humanitarian aid that had been delivered by the UN and other neutral aid organizations — began operating in Gaza. 

But GHF “has exacerbated the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.” GHF attracts desperate Gazans seeking food and then kills many of them when they arrive to obtain vital aid. As of Oct. 6, 2025, the petition says, nearly 3,000 Palestinians have been killed while seeking aid and almost 20,000 have been injured. 

The petition adds that as of Oct. 1, 2025, 641,000 people — about one-third of all Palestinians in Gaza — were experiencing “catastrophic” famine “characterised by starvation, destitution and death.” 

“The evidence demonstrates a deliberate and systematic policy aimed at forcibly displacing Gaza’s population, weaponizing starvation, deliberately depriving civilians of water, electricity, medical care, and other essentials, and destroying or severely damaging Gaza’s infrastructure, homes, schools, universities, and hospitals,” the petition alleges. “

These actions have dismantled Gaza’s health, education, and other vital systems necessary for survival. The risk and gravity of these violations are compounded by the fact that Israel has been able to carry out this assault to such an extent only because of the support and acquiescence of the United States.”

In the course of aiding and abetting Israel’s genocide, the U.S. has violated several rights protected by the American Declaration on the Rights and Duties of Man, the petition says. They include the rights to: life, personal liberty, security, equality before the law, expression and dissemination, health, fair trial, and protection against arbitrary detention.

When considering the allegations in the petition, the Inter-American Commission will apply provisions and related jurisprudence of the American Convention on Human Rights — in addition to other international and regional human rights instruments — including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights; the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment; the Geneva Conventions; and the Genocide Convention —  all of which provide authoritative guidance for interpreting the meaning and scope of the American Declaration.

The Petition Requests Precautionary Measures

The new petition requests that the Commission take the following additional “precautionary measures” to accelerate the legal processing by the IACHR Commissioners due to the urgency of the situation:

1. Ensure the immediate protection of life and integrity: Ask the U.S. to take all necessary measures to protect the life and personal integrity of the beneficiaries, including, at a minimum, a suspension of all weapons transfers from the U.S. to Israel.
2. Guarantee unhindered access to humanitarian aid: Ensure that humanitarian aid reaches the beneficiaries with no obstruction – including the provision of food, clean water, and medical supplies. This requires the immediate dismantling of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation and U.S. support for unhindered operation of human rights groups, including the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).
3. Suspend arms transfers pending review of complicity: Call on the U.S. to suspend all arms export licenses, end-use waivers, and related approvals for Israel, pending comprehensive review of U.S. compliance with international humanitarian law and obligations under the Genocide Convention. This suspension would last until the review concludes that arms transfers don’t materially contribute to legal violations or exacerbate the risk of genocide or crimes against humanity.
4. Cancel sanctions on the International Criminal Court and UN Special Rapporteur: Request that the U.S. immediately lift all punitive measures, sanctions, and coercive actions it has imposed on the International Criminal Court and on UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, to ensure that these independent bodies can carry out investigations and monitoring without interference, intimidation, or obstruction.
5. Cooperate fully with all relevant UN mechanisms to ensure independent investigation, accountability, and enforcement of provisional measures ordered by the International Court of Justice.
6. Suspend or prevent acts leading to irreparable harm: Call upon the U.S. to cease any actions that contribute to the ongoing violations, including the provision of military support to Israel, obstruction of accountability measures in UN Security Council resolutions, and punitive actions designed to silence advocacy for Palestinian rights within the U.S.
7. Facilitate periodic reporting and oversight by the Commission: Require the U.S. to submit regular, detailed reports to the Commission containing steps taken to halt arms transfers, support real humanitarian assistance to Palestinians in Gaza, and prevent irreparable harm to Petitioners and victims. 

“Our petition provides damning evidence of the myriad ways in which the United States government has funneled billions in our tax dollars to turn Gaza into a graveyard for thousands of civilians,” co-counsel Maria Kari, who is also a member of Mahmoud Khalil’s legal team, noted. “The truth is the U.S. is not a bystander to Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people. It is a key enabler. We turn to the IACHR to ask it to do what U.S. courts, Congress and the administration cannot or will not do to put a halt to the American government’s complicity in genocide.”

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Marjorie Cohn

Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, dean of the People’s Academy of International Law, and past president of the National Lawyers Guild. She sits on the national advisory boards of Veterans For Peace and Assange Defense, and is a member of the bureau of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers and the U.S. representative to the continental advisory council of the Association of American Jurists. Her books include Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral and Geopolitical Issues. Author SIte

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