« Pushing our government and members of Congress to try to get them to call for a ceasefire and to try to get them to call for an embargo on weapons to Israel »
Interview of Medea Benjamin, co-founder of the American organization Codepink
- International, USA
Medea Benjamin is the co-founder of the women-led peace group CODEPINK. She has been described as « one of America’s most committed — and most effective — fighters for human rights » by New York Newsday, and « one of the high profile leaders of the peace movement » by the Los Angeles Times. She was one of 1,000 exemplary women from 140 countries nominated to receive the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the millions of women who do the essential work of peace worldwide.
What is Codepink doing?
We are pushing our government, particularly our members of Congress, initially to try to get them to call for a ceasefire and to try to get them to call for an embargo on weapons to Israel. We go into our Congress every single day. You know, it’s interesting that ordinary people can go into Congress in the United States.
You can just walk into the buildings and you can walk into their office. I would say we have tremendous access, but not tremendous influence because the influence is from the big money groups.
We go in every day to be a presence there, to question them, to expose them on social media about how heartless some of them are, that says you can kill all the Palestinians, we don’t care.
And I think it has opened the eyes of a lot of people in the U.S. and around the world to who are these people in Congress who are supposed to represent us, but are representing the lobby groups like AIPAC and the weapons industry.
Did you have any success?
We have had success in changing some of the positions of some of the members of Congress. And this is particularly when we work together with their local constituents because while they are beholden to the big money interests, they also care about their reputations and their voters. So when we work together with the local groups and we work on the national level, we’ve managed to force some of these Congress people to come out in favor of a ceasefire and to take better positions on some other pieces of legislation that have come up around Israel.
Have you got any support from Rashida Tlaib1Member of the Democratic Socialists of America, first woman of Palestinian origin elected to the US Congress. from the Congress, as she has been involved in support of the Palestinian people against the genocide?
Yes, we work very closely with Rashida Tlaib in her office. And a number of good Congress people. There was a resolution put forward in two weeks after the October 7th that got 18 members of Congress to sign on calling for a ceasefire. And so those 18 members have been solidly pretty good on this issue. Since then, there is about 100 members of Congress who are calling for a ceasefire. So it certainly has increased, but it’s not where we would like it to be.
Netanyahu has been invited to speak to Congress, isn’t it?
Yes, we are just appalled that both the leadership in the Democratic and Republican parties have invited Netanyahu to speak before a joint session of Congress. It’s just appalling that here is a guy who the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court would like to have arrest warrants for war crimes, and yet he’s been invited to speak here.
It will be the first time ever that somebody has addressed Congress four times. It’s unprecedented. We will have massive demonstrations here in Washington, D.C.
When is it going to take place?
It’s July 24th, and we will have quite a number of members of Congress who will protest in some way, either by not showing up, boycotting the visit, or by going inside and then walking out. But we already have commitments from several dozen members of Congress that they will protest his visit.
Washington DC, 7th of July 2024
