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USCMO Reiterates Call on President Biden to Stop the Gaza Genocide After U.S. Airman Aaron Bushnell Dies in Protest
The US Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO) – the nation’s umbrella group of national, regional, and local Muslim associations today reiterated its call on President Biden to stop the Gaza genocide after 25-year-old Aaron Bushnell, an active-duty member of the United States Air Force died after setting himself on fire outside the Israeli embassy to protest U.S. support for the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
In a statement, USCMO Secretary-General Oussama Jammal said:
“Because of the Biden administration’s refusal to end its support for the genocide, our nation is spinning out of control in ways we have not seen since the Vietnam War. The U.S. military is fighting unauthorized wars in half a dozen places. Hate crimes against Muslims and Palestinians have occurred in Chicago, Burlington, Austin, Minneapolis and elsewhere. Protesters have literally set themselves on fire in Atlanta and now Washington, DC.
“President Biden must stop this madness. He must end U.S. support for the Israeli government’s genocide, which has killed at least 30,000 Palestinians and rendered most of Gaza uninhabitable. Every day that the genocide continues, this crisis escalates in Gaza and spreads around the world, reaching even the streets of Washington, DC and leading to the death of U.S. service member Aaron Bushnell.
“We extend our condolences to the family of airman Aaron Bushnell and everyone else who has directly or indirectly lost loved ones as a result of the genocide in Gaza. We encourage everyone who is frustrated and saddened by U.S. support for the genocide to join the front lines of the movement to peacefully stop it. Please do not harm yourself; this is not what God or the victims of this genocide ask of you. We need your voice, your time and your efforts more than ever.”
In a video recorded immediately before his self-immolation, Aaron Bushnell said he could “no longer be complicit in genocide” and “I am about to engage in an extreme act of protest – but compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers it is not extreme at all.”
On Facebook, he once posted, “Many of us like to ask ourselves, ‘What would I do if I were alive during slavery, or the Jim Crow South, or [the South African] Apartheid?’ What would I do if my country was committing genocide?” The answer is, ‘You’re doing it right now.’”
On November 21st, the U.S. Air Force issued orders to specific active duty personnel, under the heading: “Compliance with This Guidance Is Mandatory.” The orders contained “specific guidance for Airmen and Guardians deploying to Israel,” according to The Intercept. The U.S. special operations forces are likely participating “for the first time in history,” to provide satellite targeting intelligence and surveillance activities “for the purposes of offensive targeting” of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, “information used to conduct airstrikes and fire long-range artillery weapons.”
After Bushnell’s death, an anonymous group of White House staffers today released a letter calling on President Biden to change course.
Since at least November 2023, government workers from the White House to the State Department to NASA have been promulgating open letters of dissent insisting that President Joe Biden bring about a ceasefire to end the gratuitous Israeli mass slaughter and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.
A recent 12-nation, mass international protest of 800 U.S. and European and EU officials warns their leaders of the “plausible risk that our governments’ policies are contributing to grave violations of international humanitarian law, war crimes, and even ethnic cleansing or genocide.”
USCMO extends sincere condolences to Aaron Bushnell’s loved ones. American Muslims know too well the great moral brink of sadness and frustration caused by President Biden’s steadfast support for the Israeli government’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.
USCMO calls on President Biden to immediately stop supporting and enabling the mass starvation and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Gaza, as well as the massive Israeli military and extremist settler-colonist assault on Palestinians in the West Bank.
The U.S. and the world can no longer aid and abet this clear Israeli genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza, the most egregious act of mass slaughter in our time. Palestinians are paying with their lives and livelihoods for our inaction.
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Hanania also writes about Middle East issues for the Arab News, and The Arab Daily News criticizing government policies in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Hanania was named "Best Ethnic American Columnist" by the New America Media in November 2007, and is the 2009 recipient of the SPJ National Sigma Delta Chi Award for column writing.
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