Stein is a candidate for the Green Party, which advocates on a range of issues, including environmental action and the constitutional rights “of all Americans…reports Asian Lite News
Jill Stein, who is campaigning to stand as a third-party candidate in the US presidential election in November, said that if elected she would immediately halt military support for Israel’s “apartheid government,” and push Israelis and Palestinians to embrace a “genuine peace.”
She told Arab News that American policy on the Israel-Palestine conflict is driven by lobbyists, and that anyone who challenges the Israeli government over its responsibility for ethnic cleansing in Palestine is denied their constitutional rights.
Stein is a candidate for the Green Party, which advocates on a range of issues, including environmental action and the constitutional rights “of all Americans.” She said she would halt the “police oppression” of students who stage campus protests demanding an end to what many consider a genocide in Gaza, stop the flow of weapons to Israel’s government, and preserve the rights of Arab and Muslim Americans who “continue to be the victims of racism, violence and Islamophobia.”
She added: “Arab and Muslims have been taken for granted in America. They are victims of racial profiling, Islamophobia and the violence against Arabs in this country. There is an absolute violation of our constitutional rights, by the government, to shut down our dialogue. People are trying to grapple with this genocide we are seeing in live and real time on our iPhones and on our computer screens. We need to talk about it but both the Democrats and the Republicans want to label this discussion as insurrection, as a betrayal and to try to criminalize it,” Stein, a Jewish American physician who grew up during the Vietnam War, said in reference to the police response to the wave of protests by students on hundreds of campuses around the country against the war in Gaza. They send in the riot police and bash the heads of protesters who are simply saying what the highest courts in the land are saying, the international Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court: this is a genocide that is taking place in Gaza, this is against the law and it must be stopped. It is even against US law to send weapons to Israel, which is violating humanitarian rights, which is interfering in the delivery of humanitarian aid. On all counts, it is actually illegal to provide Israel with military support and weapons right now. The people who are standing up to assert our legal values and our human values are being criminalized and being charged with crimes.”
Stein approached 34-year-old Lebanese American Abdullah Hammoud, the mayor of Dearborn in Michigan, to be her vice presidential running mate, before it was pointed out that candidates must be at least 35 years old when they take office, and he would be three months short of meeting this Constitutional requirement.
“The Arab American community is being dealt an incredible injustice,” Stein said, adding that she believes they deserve a stronger political voice and protections from abuse. We need to stand up as Americans on behalf of all of us to assert our rights to a foreign policy that reflects our values. In fact, we need a foreign policy based on international law, human rights and diplomacy. That is what Americans are calling for. But we have a system led by political and economic elites who are used to, basically, fighting their way into domination. We have a foreign policy based on the exercise of raw military power.”
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