Retired UAW Leader Frank Hammer to U.S. Politicians: Boycott “Genocide Netanyahu” July 24, 2024 at the U.S. Congress

July 22, 2024 

U.S. Senator Gary Peters

https://www.peters.senate.gov/contact/email-gary

U.S. Senator Debbie Stabenow

https://www.stabenow.senate.gov/contact

U.S. Congressman Shri Thanadar, 13^th District, MI

https://thanedar.house.gov/contact/email

To Michigan Senators Gary Peters & Debbie Stabenow, House Representative Shri Thanadar:

By invitation of the Republican speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu will – on Wednesday, July 24th – be addressing a joint session of the U.S. House and Senate.  Speaker Johnson, as you well know, is a staunch Trump supporter, and an unapologetic election denier.

We believe the invitation of the Israeli commander of the current genocide against tens of thousands of Palestinian people in Gaza, and especially women and children, is an abomination and an insult to the American people, 55% of whom expressed disapproval of Israel’s brutal war of aggression.^[1]  The International Court of Justice has not only ruled that Israel is “likely” committing genocide, it has now rendered an unprecedented opinion that Israel’s 57-year occupation of Palestinian territories is illegal and should be terminated at once. The International Criminal Court, in the meantime, will be issuing a warrant for Netanyahu’s arrest.

As our representatives in the Senate and the House, we urge you to join a growing list of your colleagues who are choosing to not honor Netanyahu and who will boycott instead.  We respectfully ask that you not attend, in protest of the death and destruction wrought on the Palestinian people by the U.S.-supported, Israeli war machine. We urge you to demand, instead, an immediate ceasefire as a first step toward Palestinian liberation.  Let the world know you stand on the right side of history.

We denounce Mr. Netanyahu’s baseless and shameful attacks on U.S. opponents of the war – repeated by U.S. Zionist organizations including the American Israeli Political Action Committee (AIPAC) – as being “antisemitic.” 

My mother and father fled the antisemitism of Hitler’s Nazi regime in the lead up to WW2; other family members who did not have the foresight of what was to come died in the Nazi concentration camps.  It is Netanyahu and the Israeli Zionists who today fill Hitler’s shoes. 

We urge you to act on your conscience. Leave your chair unoccupied at Wednesday’s encounter with “Genocide Netanyahu.”

Sincerely yours, 

Frank and Karen Hammer

U.S. House District 13

Detroit

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^[1] https://news.gallup.com/poll/642695/majority-disapprove-israeli-action-gaza.aspx