Benny Gantz Meets VP Harris at White House

WASHINGTON (03-04) – Former Israeli Army General and War Cabinet Member, Benny Gantz met today at the White House with Vice President Kamal Harris and others where they were scheduled to discuss increasing aid to Gaza. The meeting, by excluding Netanyahu, is a clear signal that the strained American Israeli relationship continues.

Before departing for his trip to Washington, it was reported that Gantz was given his “marching orders” by Netanyahu to remember that “there is only one prime minister.”

Activists organized by Code Pink and others were on hand to make sure that their message of an immediate and permanent ceasefire be clearly heard as they demonstrated outside while calling Gantz a war criminal and promising to eventually see him at the International Court of Justice in the Hague.

One Palestinian demonstrator using a megaphone aimed at the White House announced the death of 20 family members and invited Gantz out to speak to a Palestinian. While the group chanted calling Biden Genocide Joe, they promised that he would not be re-elected.

Holocaust survivor Marione Ingram, who has kept a daily vigil at the White House since the war began, spoke of her life as a child and the horrors she knows personally that the children of Gaza are experiencing daily since the beginning of the war. She ended her remarks by saying that “My dead relatives in Minsk would be ashamed of Israel.”

A Palestinian woman next spoke and questioned why no one in the White House thinks of the people of Gaza as human beings and implores the horrors of children and babies being killed daily during this genocide. She questioned why there is no international outcry.

David Sperber, a Jewish doctor who visited Gaza in 2020, related that for his group to enter the area, the Israelis took several days in granting access. Once inside he fully understood why the UN had earlier declared the entire area unfit for human habitation. Having befriended a young doctor there, he most recently learned of the doctor’s fate during the latest war when he was informed that the ambulance the doctor had crewed was shot up by Israeli snipers. The entire crew was killed, and the doctor who was wounded had survived only to be shot a second time in his leg after emerging from the destroyed vehicle.

He was rescued and taken to a hospital where the building was bombed with white phosphorous. After he was transferred to a second hospital he underwent surgery without anesthesia. Lacking any antibiotics, his leg became infected and required further surgery. Presently, the doctor is assisting patients in the hospital while in a wheelchair and hoping for the ability to receive further medical intervention for his wounded leg.

Dr. Sperber also told of how the IDF routinely raids ambulances after attacking them and removing and destroying any medical supplies including antibiotics and other medication, thereby disallowing their use by depriving those wounded of any relief.

After rallying outside of the White House, the group walked to the west vehicle entry gate to greet Gantz should he leaving by the route where he had arrived earlier. As they stood outside the gate waving signs and chanting, they urged the press on the White House grounds to accurately report the truth while calling for people inside the White House to “Quit your jobs.”

This action like many others has become a daily occurrence in the ongoing effort by human rights activists to see an immediate ceasefire and for food and other aid to flow into the Gaza Strip to end the genocide taking place there now for the past 150 days.

Report and photos by Phil Pasquini

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