'Not in our name': US citizens take legal action over tax dollars fueling Gaza genocide
By Alireza Akbari
On May 14, the grassroots group Taxpayers Against Genocide (TAG), along with the National Lawyers Guild International Committee, submitted a legal filing to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, charging the US government of enabling Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.
The historic complaint states that US military and financial support for the Israeli apartheid regime has played a direct role in the destruction of Palestinian lives in Gaza.
The 133-page document includes sworn affidavits from Palestinian-American plaintiffs who lost loved ones in Israel’s ongoing genocidal war on Gaza, where more than 53,000 Palestinians have been killed and nearly 120,000 injured over the past 19 months, as per official estimates.
The complaint names former US presidents Joe Biden and Donald Trump, as well as members of US Congress, accusing them of funding and arming a genocidal campaign.
Huwaida Arraf, a civil rights attorney and Palestinian solidarity activist, announced the filing of the complaint in Washington, D.C.
Arraf, who also helped lead the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, drafted the petition and is serving as lead attorney on the case.
She said the complaint was brought before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights because the US has “effectively shielded itself from accountability for its international crimes under its own legal system, even for crimes against humanity and genocide.”
“The US cannot continue to finance, arm, and politically cover for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide abroad while remaining immune from international scrutiny,” she noted.
“This petition is a call for accountability where none has yet been possible.”
Arraf was joined by several co-complainants, including Robert S. McCaw, director of government affairs at the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR); Dr. Nidal Jboor, co-founder of Doctors Against Genocide (DAG); and Jacqueline Luqman, chair of the coordinating committee for the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP), along with TAG members and Palestinian-American plaintiffs.
The complaint is supported by a broad coalition of advocacy groups, including the Arab Resource Organizing Center Action, Palestinian Youth Movement, US Palestinian Community Network, CAIR, the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, CODEPINK, Black Alliance for Peace, Doctors Against Genocide, Friends of Latin America, the Nicaraguan Solidarity Coalition, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, the Alliance for Global Justice, and many others.
At a press conference held Wednesday in Washington, several plaintiffs delivered prepared statements condemning US support for the Israeli regime’s genocide in Gaza. They called for an immediate halt to the use of American tax dollars to fund Israel’s genocidal campaign.
Seth Michael Donnelly, a social worker and co-founder of TAG, cited his long-standing activism against US-backed human rights abuses worldwide.
“As a social worker,” he said, “I’ve spent years trying to stop human rights violations perpetrated by the US government.”
Donnelly also emphasized the efforts of high school students in his community, who, in January 2024, met with Congressman Mike Thompson to express their concerns about US complicity in the ongoing campaign of extermination of Palestinians in Gaza.
“They urged him to stop sending weapons and US tax dollars as military aid to Israel in light of the growing evidence of genocide in Gaza,” he said.
Despite the students’ appeal, Donnelly said, “Representative Thompson did not heed the information he was provided. Thompson willfully ignored the concerns of these students, and the majority of his own constituents.”
Donnelly pointed out that Thompson was one of 365 members of Congress who, on April 20, 2024, voted to approve $26.38 billion in funding through the so-called ‘Israeli Supplemental Security Act’, with most of it designated for military aid to the Tel Aviv regime. On April 23, 2024, 79 Senators also approved the $26.38 billion Israeli aid package as part of a broader spending bill. “In so doing, these representatives demonstrated a blatant disregard for the bill’s illegal provision of US weapons to support ongoing war crimes and plausible genocide,” he stated.
According to the plaintiffs and human rights advocates, the vote came despite mounting evidence that US-supplied weapons were being used by the Israeli military to commit acts that meet the legal definition of genocide in the Palestinian territory.
Jacqueline Luqman, chair of the Coordinating Committee of the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP), reiterated the group’s full support for the legal effort led by TAG.
“We support TAG’s campaign to end the use of US taxpayer dollars to fund genocide in Palestine, Lebanon, and everywhere else Israel is implicated in human rights violations and war crimes, such as in Congo,” she stated.
She also emphasized that while US citizens struggle to make ends meet under a capitalist dictatorship that deprives people of their basic needs for the profit of a few, the US government is once again violating international law and its own Congressional mandates by facilitating genocide using its citizens’ resources.
Palestinian-American plaintiff Tarik Kanaan underscored Israel’s “systematic destruction” of Palestinian history, heritage, and culture.
“The intentional destruction of the ancient Al-Omari mosque, the ancient Byzantine Church and the Church of Jabalia, the third oldest in the world, to name a few, inflicts irreversible damage to our traditions and cultural history,” he said.
Kanaan added that Israel’s acts of genocide have only been possible because of Washington’s unwavering support. He pointed to “the full support and protection of the US” that has allowed the Israeli regime “to destroy anything and everything that sustains life to the Palestinian people.”
Tariq Raouf, a human rights activist and one of the plaintiffs, described Israel’s genocidal actions in Gaza as “a blatant violation of morality, human rights, and ethics.” He added that without accountability, the genocide would continue unchecked.
“I did not consent to my tax dollars being used to commit violence against my own family; I did not consent to paying for the bullets and bombs that have killed 43 of my family members,” he said.
Raouf called on fellow Americans to reject the use of public funds for war.
“It is a ludicrous and delusional expectation that we, the American taxpayers, will stand idly by while money that should be going to our education, healthcare and veterans is instead going on to fund more war crimes, and more deaths,” he remarked.
Dr. Nidal Jboor, co-founder of Doctors Against Genocide, emphasized the medical community’s alarm over the Israeli weaponization of basic necessities in Gaza.
“We are doctors. We swore to protect life—not to fund its destruction,” he said. “In our name, with our tax dollars, children in Gaza are being starved and bombed while food and medicine sit just five miles away,” he said.
Robert S. McCaw, Director of Government Affairs at the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), also voiced support for the plaintiffs and their legal team.
He stated that CAIR offers its fullest support in efforts to hold the US government accountable for its complicity in Israel’s ongoing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, as well as its occupation and apartheid of Palestinians throughout the region, including the occupied West Bank.
Nida Liftawiya, a Palestinian refugee, US taxpayer, and organizer with the Arab Resource and Organizing Center (AROC), expressed her outrage at how public funds have been used.
Committed to justice and human rights, she said she seeks “restitution” for the US government’s role in “misusing” her “tax dollars to commit genocide and ethnic cleansing” of Palestinians.
Cynthia Papermaster, Bay Area coordinator for the anti-war group CODEPINK, condemned the US government’s continued military support for the Israeli regime.
She pointed to the early April 2025 allocation of $8.8 billion in additional weapons and aid, saying the funding amounts to “thousands more 2,000-pound bombs and thousands more Hellfire missiles which are shredding the children of Gaza.”
She also called for a shift in focus to humanitarian relief. “We demand that our Senators and Representatives stop funding this barbaric and illegal massacre,” she said.
Monadel Herzallah, another plaintiff who lost 43 family members in the ongoing genocidal war, added, “We as Palestinians in the US have sought accountability in federal court, but we also made a pledge to seek justice in any other possible venue available.”
Immediately following the press conference, plaintiffs and supporters marched to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights headquarters to formally file the complaint.
From there, they continued on to the White House, where members of TAG rallied with banners, calling out the US government’s complicity in genocide.
Protesters voiced their support for Palestine by holding banners reading, “free Palestine.”
They also condemned the unabated bombardment of Palestinians in Gaza by the Israeli military, holding banners with images of bombed Palestinian civilians and the message, “stop bombing.”
They further denounced the blockade of Gaza and the prevention of basic necessities from entering the blockaded territory, as well as the regime’s weaponization of starvation against Palestinians. Banners read, “bread not bombs” and “let the children eat.”
The legal filing came just one day before the anniversary of Nakba Day and followed months of sustained activism.
On April 7, TAG, a growing movement of over 2,000 American taxpayers, submitted a groundbreaking report to the UN Human Rights Council, detailing US congressional votes that have enabled Israel’s war on Gaza.
“We have gone through all the channels open to us in our effort to stop US officials from using our tax dollars to fund genocide. We have called and met with these officials, we have peacefully protested, and we have taken them to federal court. To date, none of this has stopped them,” Donnelly said following the April report.
He added that the genocide in Gaza continues, driven by American tax dollars.
“We have now elevated our struggle to the international arena, starting with our report to the UN Human Rights Council, as one necessary step towards countering the impunity of the US government.”
The report centers on violations by the US Congress and the executive branch, charging them with misusing taxpayers’ money to support, aid and abet genocide in Gaza.
TAG asserts that Israel’s acts of aggression against Palestinians would not be possible without US support, which supplies the majority of weapons used in war on Gaza.
It condemns US officials’ direct complicity in the genocide, presenting evidence that both the Biden and Trump administrations, as well as specific members of Congress, used federal funds to support war crimes—violating the US Constitution, domestic laws, and the Genocide Convention.
In December, after being repeatedly denied meetings with their representatives, the taxpayers filed a federal lawsuit—Seth Donnelly et al. v. Mike Thompson and Jared Huffman—against two Democratic congressmen.
