President Joe Biden is being sued over the US response to the ongoing crisis in Palestine.
A federal complaint was filed on Monday against President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.
The President and the two cabinet members have been accused of “failure to prevent and complicity in the Israeli government’s unfolding genocide”.
The complaint was filed by New York civil liberties group, The Centre for Constitutional Rights (CCR).
President Biden has promised support for Israel
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In the introduction to its complaint, the CCR wrote: “Numerous Israeli government leaders have expressed clear genocidal intentions and deployed dehumanising characterisations of Palestinians, including ‘human animals."
Speaking to Al Jazeera, Astha Sharma Pokharel, a lawyer at the CCR, said: “They have a significant responsibility under customary international law, under federal law, to prevent this genocide, to stop supporting this genocide.
"At every step of the way, at every opportunity, they have failed.
"They have continued to provide cover to Israel; they have continued to provide material support to Israel; and currently, they intend to send more money and more weapons to Israel.”
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President Joe Biden struggled to stay on topic during a meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu in October
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US citizen and one of the plaintiffs in the case Laila al-Haddad has lost relatives in Gaza since the beginning of the conflict.
She said: “I paid for Israel to kill my cousins and my aunt, there’s no two ways around it. It was my tax dollars that did that, that sent those bombs to Israel to kill my family.
"And so I feel I and all other American taxpayers have a very unique responsibility to hold our government and our elected officials responsible."
Following the beginning of the conflict, the US government has supported Isreal, with President Biden offering ‘unwavering’ support for Israel.
However, earlier this year, the President struggled to stay on topic during a meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu.
During the talks, he said he was "delighted" to be in the war zone and struggled to stay on topic.
The lawsuit put forward by the CCP also calls for an end to $3.8bn in annual military support the US sends to Israel.
The White House has not yet responded to Al Jazeera’s requests for comment on the case.
