A legal action initiated by northern Californians who are fed up with their Congress members’ support of Israel, is breathing new life into the pro-Palestine movement.

This is where it began. Boyes Hot Springs resident Seth Donnelly had been trying for 14 months to convince his congressional Rep. Mike Thompson to vote against sending more military aid to Israel.

“I went through the usual channels,” Donnelly said. He even invited Thompson to speak before a student human rights group at Rancho Cotate High School, where he taught until he recently retired. During that meeting students asked Thompson if he would agree to vote against more military aid and Thompson refused.

At that point Donnelly decided to try another tactic, one that is unprecedented as far as he knows. With the help of San Jose civil rights attorneys Dean Royer and Szeto Wong he drafted a class action lawsuit against Fourth District Rep. Mike Thompson and Second District Rep. Jared Huffman, claiming that both men are violating federal and international laws against providing military aid to entities committing human rights violations and genocide.

Sonoma County for Palestine, a coalition group that formed soon after Israel began assaulting Gaza Oct. 7, 2023, quickly involved itself in the lawsuit and created a new entity, Taxpayers Against Genocide (TAG) to enlist class members from the 10 counties where Mike Thompson and Jared Huffman serve as congressional representatives. They include Marin, Sonoma, Napa, Trinity, Mendocino, Humboldt, Del Norte, Lake, Yolo and Solano.

When TAG filed the lawsuit Dec. 9, 2024, there were some 500 class members and a couple dozen class representatives whose names appear on the complaint. As of press time there are over 1,000.

One of the class representatives, Sonoma resident Maria Barakat, said she joined because it was clear that calling, emailing, protesting and petitioning Thompson and Huffman was not working and she felt the group “needed to do something else.” Barakat is Lebanese/Palestinian/American, and using her tax dollars to directly fund genocide of her own people has put her in a “constant psychic and end emotional crisis,” she said.

“I have become so numb looking at body parts every day,” she said, referring to the daily videos of people in Gaza being blown to bits, “that I don’t even try to look anymore. I talk to people about it but our local community doesn’t care. I feel isolated. There is no way to explain the hell of seeing pieces of children’s faces.”

The lawsuit claims that the two congressmen overstepped their tax and spend authority when they voted in favor of the Israel Security Supplemental Act April 20, 2024, which authorized $26.38 billion in military for Israel. The bill passed both houses of the US Congress and former President Joe Biden signed it into law. Article I, Section 8 of the US Constitution limits the legislature’s power to collect taxes only for the common defense and general welfare of the US. Allotting tax money for any other purpose is a violation of the taxpayers’ constitutional rights, according to the lawsuit.

The complaint also specifies both international and federal laws, which prohibit Congress from providing military aid to entities who are committing genocide and other human rights violations. They include the Leahy Law, the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, the Arms Export Control Act, the international Genocide Convention, which the US has ratified, and the Genocide Implementation Act, which criminalizes complicity in  genocide. According to a United Nations agency and a growing number of experts and rights organizations, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, Israel has committed genocidal acts against the Palestinian people during its ongoing invasion and bombing of Gaza.

The lawsuit received enormous press coverage and TAG immediately began receiving hundreds of emails from people around the country who were interested in holding their congress members to account in the same manner. As a result, TAG hosted a webinar January 25 to explain how other pro-Palestinian groups could file their own lawsuits. As of this writing over 400 people from at least 20 states had registered to participate in the webinar.

There was so much interest among activists in other parts of northern California that TAG filed an amended complaint January 17, which included representatives from San Francisco, Contra Costa, Alameda, San Mateo, Santa Clara and Santa Cruz Counties– Nancy Pelosi, Kevin Mullin, Jimmy Panetta and Anna Eshoo – as well as California’s two senators, Alejandro Padilla and Laphonza R. Butler, and United States Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III.

These new defendants are in addition to Huffman and Thompson. The amended lawsuit does not include former Congresswoman Barbara Lee and Congressman Ro Khanna, because they voted against the $26.38 billion military aid package.

What do they hope to achieve?

Tarik Kanaani, who is Palestinian-American, says the lawsuit is likely to be thrown out of court eventually, even though a judge of the Northern California District Court, where the case was filed, has set a March date for an initial case management conference.

“The system is made to protect itself,” Kanaani said, “so I am not optimistic about the actual case, although the legal case is solid.”

But, he added, “It is giving people a little bit of hope.

“Personally my goal is to spread the word. In that way it has already succeeded and it is growing.”

Barakat agreed that it is unlikely the lawsuit will reach its stated goal of finding Thompson and Huffman liable for violating their constituents’ constitutional rights.

“The system is still in place that has allowed this to happen and it will find a way to do what it can to protect itself,” she said.

But she is hopeful that it might have broader implications.

“This lawsuit (conceptually) challenges other illegal actions of the US around the world. Perhaps it will expose America’s other illegal actions around the world,” she said.
Lois Pearlman is a member of North Coast Coalition for Palestine and Sonoma County for Palestine.