Hey Klobuchar don’t you know, Israeli apartheid has got to go!

Hey Klobuchar don’t you know, Israeli apartheid has got to go!

Speech by Meredith Aby-Keirstead, Anti-War Committee member,  at protest outside Senator Klobuchar’s office on 3/15/2019

Minnesota’s Senator Amy Klobuchar is making a run for president and Palestine looks to be an important issue in the upcoming Democratic presidential primaries in a way we have never seen before.  So far Klobuchar has gone out of her way to try to stand out from the competition as being the friendliest candidate to AIPAC – the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Many members from the Anti-War Committee were at Klobuchar’s announcement speech and today’s action is a part of our work to hold her accountable for her horrible foreign policy record.  

This year year she was the only Democratic presidential candidate who voted for the recent bill to penalize the BDS – Boycott Divestment Sanctions movement against the internationally recognized apartheid state of Israel.  Additionally when her own colleague, MN’s 5th district Representative Ilhan Omar was attacked nationally for daring to question the power of AIPAC, Klobuchar publicly criticized Omar instead of defending her.

Klobuchar instead would rather portray herself as a friend of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu.  The Times of Israel reported that while “speaking last March at the annual conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Klobuchar relished telling how in a meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister lavished more attention on her than her colleague from New York”.  

But it’s important to note that although she has been touting her status as a “friend of AIPAC” as a presidential candidate her support for the apartheid state of Israel is not a recent stance.  Since her election to the US Senate in 2006 there are no examples of her ever speaking out against Israeli human rights atrocities. She said nothing to defend Palestinians last spring as 183 Palestinians were killed and 9,000 + were shot, hit by shrapnel or tear gas canisters as they protested at the Gaza border during the Great March of Return.  She said nothing to defend Palestinians when during the 7 week Gaza War in 2014 2,000 Palestinians were killed and over 10,000 were wounded. She was silent in 2012 when 160 Palestinians were killed by Israeli Defense Forces in Operation Pillar of Defense. And she was silent in 2008 when during Operation Cast Lead 1,417 Palestinians were killed.

In 2008 I was at a constituent meeting with Senator Klobuchar where she heard testimony from our local Palestinian community about how Operation Cast Lead was affecting their families in Palestine.  They showed her pictures of dead children and told her horror stories, but she was shockingly unmoved despite the heartache of her constituents.

Representative Ilhan Omar has given our movement’s message of the unjustness of Israel’s occupation of Palestine to a national stage.  Now is a time for us to be louder in our demands for an end to US aid to Israel and in our defense of the BDS movement. We cannot be quiet as MN’s senator tries to position herself as an advocate for Israel while she ignores the concerns of her constituents.  We cannot be silent as Israel bombards Gaza with over 100 precision missiles just this week! We cannot be silent when at least 15 people, mostly children and women, died when the school in Jabaliya refugee camp was hit by five shells in Gaza this week!

Thank you for coming out today and be prepared to come out again as we keep up the pressure on both parties to end US aid to Israel!