FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

November 19, 2019

The effort comes one day after the Trump Administration announced that it will no longer treat Israeli settlements as illegal under international law.

Following the Trump Administration’s announcement that they no longer will respect the international law ruling Israeli settlements as illegal, IfNotNow is urgently moving forward with the next stage of its campaign to encourage every public official to commit to #DefundOccupation, and leverage American military funding to pressure the Israeli government to end its human rights abuses, including settlement expansion.

Today IfNotNow launched a petition, calling on Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY16), the Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, to hold a #DefundOccupation hearing to find out how the American government funds the daily injustices of Israeli government’s military occupation of the Palestinian people. IfNotNow wants to have an answer from Rep. Engel’s office by the end of the year.

“Yesterday’s announcement, that the Trump administration no longer views settlements as illegal, was made possible by decades of failed policy from leaders across the spectrum,” said Emily Mayer, IfNotNow co-founder, “If we want any chance of bringing freedom and dignity to all Palestinians and Israelis, we need to embark on a new, bold approach to the occupation — and we need to start today. As the head of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, it’s Engel’s responsibility to ensure that American funding isn’t going towards child detention, killing innocent people in Gaza, building settlements on stolen Palestinian land, or any other horrifying facets of the occupation.”

The effort to get a #DefundOccupation Hearing will target Rep. Engel and his colleagues — including many who also sit on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. It will be lead by IfNotNow members, 75 of whom gathered in Chicago this past weekend to create a strategy to get their representatives to commit to the entire IfNotNow 2020 Platform and to endorse the #DefundOccupation Hearing.