Activists Demand: Enforce the Leahy Law

Below are remarks by Doug Hostetter at a rally in Boston Jan. 23, 2024, demanding that the state attorney general enforce the Leahy Law. The law requires that no assistance shall be furnished to any unit of the security forces of a foreign country if the secretary of State has credible information that such unit has committed a gross violation of human rights.

My name is Doug Hostetter, I live in Easthampton and am a member of the Pax Christi International Advocacy Team at the United Nations. I am a Mennonite and before I retired, I directed the Mennonite Central Committee United Nations Office in New York City, where I Co-Chaired the Israel/Palestine NGO Working Group at the United Nations. I have visited Israel and Palestine a dozen times over the last 3 decades, including numerous trips to Gaza where I visited the Mennonite supported development projects and learned to know the staff.

The Leahy Law requires that no assistance shall be furnished to any unit of the security forces of a foreign country if the Secretary of State has credible information that such unit has committed a gross violation of human rights.

It is clear from the reading of this law that both the Hamas attack on southern Israel on October 7, and the subsequent 108 days of the Israeli attacks on Gaza would constitute gross violations of human rights. Fortunately, our government has not supplied any US weapons to Hamas for their October 7th attack, while we have continued to provide the overwhelming majority of weapons used by the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) to destroy the land, the buildings and people of Gaza.

I will leave to others the documentation of the destruction of Gaza, its institutions, its housing, hospitals, and universities, but will share with you the story Maged Amgad, a Palestinian friend who is a staff member of Al-Najd Developmental Forum, one of the Palestinian NGOs that the Mennonite Central Committee has supported in Gaza. Al-Najd, with Mennonite support, helped Gazan families develop home gardens and raise rabbits & chickens. Maged lived with his extended family of about 50 people in a compound of houses near Gaza City. When the IDF ordered everyone to leave northern Gaza in the first week of the war, several of Maged’s extended family were killed while trying to travel to the south as ordered. Maged decided that it would be safer to move his wife and two sons under 5 to a UN School near Gaza City. A week or so after moving into the school it was bombed by the IDF, killing several people. Maged moved his family to a second school also in the North. That school was bombed in late November. Forty people were killed in the school including Maged’s father, a brother and a sister while 100 people were wounded, including both of Maged’s young sons. Maged reported that they were leaving the school, but he had no idea of where they would go as there was no safe place to live or move in Gaza.

I did not hear from Maged for a month and a half and was worried that he and his family had been killed in the massive bombing. Last weekend I got a short message, Maged and his family had reached Rafa, on the Egyptian border. “My family is tired, sick and cold. We do not even have a tent to live in,” he reported.
I told Maged yesterday that I would be speaking here today and asked what he would like to share with you. He wrote: “The children became sick. We are very tired. We need medical treatment, psychological support and food. We long to return to our homes, even though they are destroyed.”

Let Massachusetts lead the way to enforce the Leahy Law, to halt US weapons shipment to Israel and end the slaughter in Gaza.

On behalf of Maged and the people of Gaza, I thank you.

Doug Hostetter
Pax Christi International
United Nations Advocacy Team
January 23, 2024