اندیشمند بزرگترین احساسش عشق است و هر عملش با خرد

Monday, September 1, 2025

American Citizens on the Frontlines of Gaza’s War Crimes

September 1, 2025
Jamal Kanj
Serving in the military is the ultimate test of loyalty. When young Americans raise their right hand, they pledge to defend their nation, their Constitution, their people. Yet for many young Americans, that oath is NOT made to the United States military. Instead, they pack their bags, fly across the Atlantic, and enlist in a foreign army—the Israeli War Machine, aka, Israeli Defense Forces (IDF).
The numbers speak loudly. According to the Washington Post, 23,000 Jewish American citizens are currently serving in the Israeli military. By contrast, U.S. Department of Defense data shows that in 2006 fewer than 4,000 American service members identified as Jewish. A later DoD report, released in January 2019, placed the figure at roughly 0.4 percent of active-duty personnel. Put simply, more Jewish Americans—both in raw numbers and percentage—serve under the misappropriated Star of David than under the Stars and Stripes.
Naturally, many new Americans maintain personal cultural and ancestral ties to their homelands—a land they actually come from, with real last names, not Hebraized East European family names. Furthermore, no group has a lobby dedicated to serving a foreign country, like AIPAC. Mexican Americans celebrate Mexico’s victory on Cinco de Mayo, but do not promote enlisting in Mexico’s military. Irish Americans rejoice Saint Patrick’s Day, but had not lined up to join the Irish Republican Army. No ethnic American group raises nonprofit tax-deductible funds for a foreign army, other than the Jewish billionaires, who bankroll “Friends of the IDF.”
Controlled by this foreign lobby, Congress not only tolerates this Israeli exception, it tries to reward it. Two Jewish Republican lawmakers; Guy Reschenthaler and Max Miller, have proposed legislation, H.R. 8445, to amend the American Servicemembers Civil Relief Act to include (Jewish) Americans serving in the Israeli army. If passed, it would grant these “foreign” soldiers the same benefits reserved for Americans in uniform.
Let that sink in: Israeli (American) soldiers would have the same protections as American army soldiers. An Israeli soldier starving babies and committing a war crime in Gaza would be legally indistinguishable from an American Marine guarding Camp Pendleton.
When it comes to Israel though, AIPAC, through the disproportionate Jewish representation in both Houses—three to five times higher than their share of the U.S. adult population—exerts outsized clout. Combine this with the campaign finance power over other elected officials, AIPAC can flex its muscles to institutionalize the Israeli exception. In any case, if this is good for Israeli (American) soldiers, why not provide all Americans serving in foreign armies the same benefits? Maybe for Muslim American soldiers, if any, serving in Pakistan or Egypt. Such idea would most likely cause a revolt in Washington. Accusations of dual loyalty, even treason, would dominate the headlines. Why not in the Israeli exception case?
One of those soldiers is David Meyers from California, who spent six years in the Israeli navy. He explained his decision to enlist in the Israeli military, citing “… an incredibly deep and long connection that I have to Israel.” When asked why he chose a foreign army over his own, his answer was more telling: “The United States with its strength and size, perhaps, isn’t quite needing your abilities and your efforts.”
Since when did America’s strength become an excuse to abandon it for a foreign army? At any rate, Meyers’s statement suggests he does not have a deep or long connection to the country of his birth—or at least not one as deep as to a foreign country. America is strong only because its citizens choose to serve it, not because they shirk duty in favor of a foreign uniform. To dismiss the U.S. military as too mighty to need Jewish Americans isn’t about necessity; it’s about misplaced loyalty.
Many of the Americans serving in the Israeli army are called lone soldiers. They are the young Americans with New York or Texas accents that I’ve encountered at Israeli checkpoints. Their job is to humiliate Palestinians in the West Bank, and enforce a starvation siege on Gaza.
Some may frame it as defending “the Jewish people.” Even though they’re not safeguarding a synagogue in New Jersey or families in San Diego. On the contrary, they are fueling Jewish hate in the West for being the face of the “Jewish-only” colonies built on stolen Palestinian land, or for imposing an apartheid occupation on behalf of a foreign political entity, whose leaders stand indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC).
With this in mind, these Americans are participating in a war the UN, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch have described as war crimes—from the engineered starvation of babies in Gaza, to the subjugation of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. As the ICC continues to investigate Israeli crimes, one day, these “Americans” could face reality, not as heroes, but for their roles in the crimes against humanity. Ironically, Congress wants to make these foreign soldiers, and potential war criminals, as equal to American servicemembers.
The numbers do not lie. Jewish Americans enlist in the Israeli army at more than five times the rate they serve in their own country’s military. While this by no means represents all Jewish Americans, it raises a troubling question: why are so many Jewish Americans more willing to die for a foreign country than for the nation that gave them everything they have? That is not an anti-Jewish statement; it is a fact that would, and should be uniformly applied to any ethnic group in the U.S.
If some Jewish Americans choose to devote their lives and loyalty to a foreign state, that is their business. However, it is an insult to every American in uniform when Congress considers equating American soldiers with those serving in a foreign army. Worse, by ignoring the moral and legal consequences, U.S. policymakers risk entangling America in war crimes committed by these so-called American citizens, crimes that may one day be judged in The Hague, and for which today’s members of Congress should be held to account by their own constituents.
 
T. Hoxha, image courtesy Cage International.
Calla Mairead Walsh
Political prisoner T. Hoxha is dying.
She is on her 18th day of hunger strike in HMP Peterborough in protest of the prison’s politically-targeted abuses. One of the Filton 24 detained indefinitely under the UK’s “Terrorism Act” while awaiting trial next spring, Hoxha is alleged to have participated in the heroic dismantling of an Elbit Systems weapons factory, causing €1 million in damages.
Over two weeks into her strike, Hoxha’s loved ones report that her physical and mental health is deteriorating fast, her hair is falling out, her jaw is in pain, and her brain fog is worsening, while the prison neglects her medical care. Supporters on the outside are organizing a call-in campaign to demand the prison administration give her electrolyte sachets and meet her demands: the reinstatement of her job in the prison library and the delivery of her mail that the prison administration is withholding from her. On 27 August, she developed a fever, experienced a persistent headache, vomited after taking vitamins, and noticed skin discoloration, and a nurse practitioner announced Hoxha is in the “danger zone.” As of 28 August, supporters are calling for her to be urgently admitted to a hospital.
Now more lives are on the line. When Casey Goonan, the only political prisoner in the US from the 2024 student intifada, heard about Hoxha’s hunger strike on 26 August, they and their cellmate at Santa Rita jail immediately declared a hunger strike in solidarity with Hoxha until her demands are met, internationalizing the strike. Refusing to intake food is especially risky for Casey as a diabetic, but they have organized successful collective hunger strikes in the past.
Similarly to the Pal Action UK prisoners, Casey has been repeatedly targeted for the political nature of their alleged crime, and deliberately isolated from other inmates, a classic tactic used by the state against political prisoners to prevent prisoner organizing. Just this summer, they were retaliated against for filing a grievance against a threatening deputy, and had their phone calls, visitations, and commissary revoked for over a month. Several times, the state has pushed back Casey’s sentencing hearing, supposed to be in April but now set for 23 September 2025. They are facing up to 20 years in federal prison with “terrorism enhancement” for allegedly burning police vehicles at the University of California, Berkeley. Also similar to the weaponization of counter-terrorism lawfare in the UK cases, this “terrorism enhancement” addition to Casey’s charges gives the federal government far more room for abuse and draconian overreach in their sentencing and treatment of Casey.
To announce the strike’s expansion, Casey published the following statement:
Today I learned about T Hoxha, a Pal Action prisoner in the UK who is on Day 16 of her hunger strike at HMP Peterborough. As of 4pm EST on August 26, 2025, 2 out of 3 of her demands have been met, and she is still on strike to demand that the prison release the mail they have been withholding from her.
As captives imprisoned for our participation in the Palestinian liberation movement in the west, we have a responsibly to each other across borders to pursue our lives in prison with the same steadfastness as the Palestinian prisoner movement held captive in Israeli prisons.
The states that we have been captured by are the enablers of the Zionist entity’s accelerated genocide and the extermination of Palestinians in Gaza, as well as the ongoing genocides of Black and Indigenous people whose lands they continue to occupy.
As the western left continues to move from crisis to crisis and avoid their responsibilities to Palestine, we are all that we have. By we I am referring to people facing repression for their support of Palestine, who are sacrificing, truly sacrificing. People such as T Hoxha, who has suffered through 16 days of starvation just to get her mail.
The Palestine solidarity movement in the west cannot abandon people like her who have risked their lives and continue to do so in resistance to this intolerable condition of genocide.
Solidarity is actions, not words. As of today, my cellmate and I are on hunger strike at Santa Rita jail until her demands are met. Solidarity with T. Hoxha and all prisoners of the Palestine solidarity movement!
RAZE THE WALLS! LIBERATE ALL PRISONERS OF SETTLER EMPIRE!
As Hoxha and Casey’s bodies shrink and weaken and start eating themselves alive, it begs the question, why do we not hear their names chanted in the streets at pro-Palestine protests, their faces raised on signs and murals, their demands echoed in conferences and pamphlets? Where are the cash-rich NGOs that could be using their huge platforms to speak out for Casey and the Filton 24, if not donating to their legal funds, at least acknowledging their existence? What about Elias Rodriguez, Jakhi McCray, Tarek Bazrouk, the countless other political prisoners in the so-called United States? There are too many to name. How dare anyone here express defeatism from their warm homes or complain about how none of us will sacrifice, while doing nothing to escalate, and ignoring the people who have made sacrifices and are now stuck in cold cells? How many people will get to the end of this article but fail to make a call for the hunger strikers?
Hoxha, the Filton 24, Casey, Elias, Jakhi, and long-term political prisoners like Mumia, Imam Jamil al-Amin, and those of the George Floyd Uprising do not get the kind of support they deserve from the movement, especially not from NGOs that identify themselves as the movement’s leadership, because they are not “perfect victims.” They are not accused of being peaceful; they are accused of resisting, and for that, they are unapologetic.
As one of Casey’s comrades wrote in the piece On Casey Goonan and the Abandonment of Political Prisoners in the Pro-Palestine Movement, “Despite vague assertions of the interconnectedness of repression and struggles between the American policing and prison apparatuses to that of Israel, there has been little material manifestation from that understanding within the US pro-Palestine movement. Meanwhile, coordinated struggle between prisoners and outside militants has been a key point of success for Palestinian liberation.” They point to the petit bourgeois class character and NGOization of the “movement” in the US, and its reformist attitude toward US imperialism and settler colonialism, as likely explanations for its isolation of militants and failure to escalate in general. As D. Musa Springer put it in Mondoweiss, this tendency is opportunistic and suicidal — “to not see ourselves reflected in the faces of our political prisoners and organize accordingly…We have allowed our political prisoners to become ghosts, within a movement claiming to want radical exorcism of oppressive systems.”
“Our prisoners are our compass” is not an empty slogan in Palestine, it is the material reality of struggle. When Lebanese revolutionary communist Georges Abdallah was released in July after decades in French prison, he explained this axiom in the clearest terms: “The one who resists is the one who has the final say and determines what should and should not be done. The ultimate decision-maker is the one who sacrifices himself to the resistance. All spectators have no right to discuss any topic.” Prisoners of the Palestinian revolution are not forgotten, or only paid lip service, they are bled for. We cannot forget, after all, that the Al-Aqsa Flood was itself a prison break and it birthed the Toufan al-Ahrar, the Flood of the Free. But until the honoring of political prisoners is actually put into practice here in the west, it will be just that, just a slogan, and an increasingly hollow one at that.
There is not much more to say here that is not already referenced above about this tendency to abandon militants facing repression, but the stakes feel imminently higher when it is not just life in prison on the line, but physical life itself. I remember when I was in jail last year for taking direct action with Pal Action US, for a relatively very short bid (40 days), and at the time, Casey was the only other political prisoner from this iteration of the Palestine movement, as well as the Pal Action UK prisoners. I felt like we were all breathing together, our spirits soaring across metal bars, concrete, mountains, and seas, never alone. We wrote happy birthday messages from our jail tablets to be passed on to prisoners in the UK. We asked our supporters to stop writing letters to us and instead to write to people inside for much longer, like Casey. It is like Casey said — “we are all that we have. By we I am referring to people facing repression for their support of Palestine, who are sacrificing, truly sacrificing.” Since I was released I fear sometimes that I have slipped back into my comforts or my numbness, that I have lost touch with the raw clarity and urgency (not despair) that I felt while inside, that we should all feel, all the time, everywhere. But Casey’s words jolt me right back into that clarity. They remind us that Casey and Hoxha are actually freer than us all, because they are resisting.
To save Hoxha and Casey’s lives, call and email HMP Petersborough to demand they meet all of Hoxha’s demands. For the latest updates, instructions, and set of demands, go to instagram.com/prisoners4palestine and x.com/Workshops4Gaza. 

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