Congressman seeks to impeach Trump over Gaza – but what about Biden?

US congressman Al Green has announced his intention to impeach president Donald Trump. And he did so as he insisted that:

ethnic cleansing in Gaza is not a joke—especially when it emanates from the President of the United States, the most powerful person in the world.

Al Green: impeach Trump over Gaza

Al Green stressed that “ethnic cleansing has always been a crime against humanity”. Then, he quoted Martin Luther King, asserting that “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere”.

He’s absolutely right. But Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden presided over 15 months of genocide in Gaza. And genocide sits alongside ethnic cleansing as one of the “four mass atrocity crimes“, with some calling it “the most serious war crime“. So the question is, where’s the movement to impeach both Trump and Biden at the same time?

There have been some calls from citizens to impeach Biden over his administration’s participation in Israel’s genocide. But the only impeachment talk in congress against Biden over Gaza seems to be from people arguing he wasn’t supporting Israel quickly enough.

So it appears Democrats like Al Green who want to hold Trump to account for supporting Israel’s crimes were fine with Biden backing genocide and ethnic cleansing because his government pretended to care about Palestinians while sending billions of dollars in military aid to the war criminals murdering them, and because it asked Israel to be ‘a bit more careful’ while it was destroying people’s lives.

Resist Trump, but don’t let Biden off the hook

Al Green was very active in efforts to impeach Trump in his first presidential term. But his allegiance to the Democratic Party likely played a key role in avoiding similar efforts against Biden.

He’s also far from perfect on Palestine. He backed Israel’s brutal 2014 assault on Gaza, for example, and has supported sending US funds to Israel. Additionally, he has received a comparatively small amount of money from pro-Israel lobbyists in the past.

However, Green has insisted on the importance of unilaterally recognising a Palestinian state. And in early 2024, he made a powerful speech regarding a letter he had sent to Biden, stressing that:

on May 14, 1948, President Truman was the first world leader to recognize Israel as a state within Palestine—effectuating an imbalance of political influence in favor of Israel.

Importantly, he added:

This was done unilaterally. Without the consent of the Palestinians. Without their approval. The Palestinians did not approve of Israel becoming a state. It was done over their disapproval. Many of them were forcibly relocated.

And he asserted:

Mr. President, just as the Palestinians of 1948 were not allowed to thwart Israeli statehood, in the name of justice, we should not allow Israel to thwart Palestinian statehood…

what President Truman did for Israel unilaterally in 1948, we can do unilaterally for Palestinians.

“Our fingerprints are all over this tragedy”

In the same speech, Al Green clarified why it was necessary for the US to unilaterally recognise Palestine. Because war criminal Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he emphasised, had long taken advantage of Hamas’s rule in Gaza “to maintain the pretense of a lack of a negotiating partner”. This, he said:

was a means by which he could say the words “two-state solution,” but he didn’t mean it.

He lamented that:

Netanyahu feigned support for a two-state solution while enabling Israeli settlers to lay claim to land intended for a Palestinian state.

But he stressed that:

We don’t have to do it with the consent of Prime Minister Netanyahu.

And he pointed out why it was only right that the US unilaterally recognise Palestine and “send tens of billions… of dollars in humanitarian aid to Palestine”. Referring to the ongoing genocide in Gaza, he insisted:

our fingerprints are all over this tragedy.

Our money made this possible.

Featured image via the Canary