American Taxpayers Defy Trump Sanctions to Seek ICC Investigation Over Gaza Genocide

Freddie Ponton
21st Century Wire

On November 11, American taxpayers and human rights lawyers plan to submit evidence to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, seeking an investigation into President Donald Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other senior US officials. Their case draws on medical affidavits, eyewitness accounts and records of US military support to argue that these officials helped enable genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity against Palestinians in Gaza.

The Taxpayer Alliance Against Genocide (TAAG), formed in spring 2026, is seeking to hold US officials individually accountable for decisions it says helped sustain Israel’s campaign. For co-founder Tariq Ra’ouf, a Palestinian-American writer, that effort is deeply personal. In an October 23 essay published by Truthout, he wrote that his family had lost 49 members in Gaza.

“I helped found Taxpayers Alliance Against Genocide because I’m sick of our tax dollars being used against my own family in Gaza, while our communities here in the U.S. suffer from a lack of housing, education and healthcare.”

IMAGE: Palestinian American writer and TAAG cofounder Tariq Ra’ouf whose family lost 49 members in Gaza (Source: Tariq Ra’ouf via Facebook)

Witnesses documented the consequences

Dr Feroze Sidhwa, a California trauma surgeon and TAAG member serving as an expert witness, volunteered in Gaza in 2024 and 2025. Addressing the United Nations Security Council on May 28, 2025, he described treating wounded children and pregnant women and warned that Gaza’s healthcare system was being systematically dismantled. He urged Council members, especially his own government, to demand an immediate ceasefire and a halt to all arms transfers.

“I cannot pretend not to have seen it,” he told the Council. “You, too, cannot claim ignorance.”

IMAGE: Dr Feroze Sidhwa performs his first operation at European Gaza Hospital in 2024. Photograph courtesy of Feroze Sidhwa (Source: Prism)

His appeal echoed an October 2024 letter to President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris from 99 American medical professionals who had volunteered in Gaza. They described malnutrition, infections, preventable deaths and children with gunshot wounds, and urged Washington to withdraw military, economic and diplomatic support from Israel.

David McIntosh, a former British Royal Marines commando and TAAG member serving as an expert witness, worked for Safe Reach Solutions, the logistics partner of the US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. From August to October 2025, he mainly managed the foundation’s aid distribution site near the Netzarim corridor in central Gaza. Months earlier, in June, the State Department had announced approval of $30 million in funding for the foundation.

McIntosh shared footage and three internal reports he had saved with Drop Site News and Middle East Eye for their April 2026 investigation. In a September 10 report to his superiors, he warned that Israeli forces were firing heavy ordnance dangerously close to the contractors’ compound, alongside sustained machine-gun fire until aid distribution began. Three days later, he reported a tank round passing directly over the contractors’ heads during distribution.

McIntosh also described witnessing Israeli soldiers fire on Palestinians seeking food. Safe Reach Solutions said it was unaware of fatalities caused by Israeli forces within GHF sites, but acknowledged that staff had escalated concerns about Israeli conduct outside them, including through formal complaints.

Evidence linking American weapons to deadly attacks on Palestinian families had emerged much earlier. In a December 2023 investigation, Amnesty International identified fragments of US-manufactured Joint Direct Attack Munition kits, which guide bombs to their targets, in the rubble of homes struck by Israeli forces in Deir al-Balah. The two attacks, on October 10 and 22, 2023, killed 43 civilians, including 19 children.

IMAGE: A munition fragment documented by Amnesty International during its investigation into US-made JDAM kits used in two Israeli strikes that killed 43 civilians in Deir al-Balah in October 2023 (Source: Amnesty International)

Investigators examined weapon fragments and their identifying codes, satellite imagery and survivors’ accounts. Amnesty found no indication of military objectives at either site and called for the attacks to be investigated as war crimes.

Washington kept the pipeline open

Warnings were also coming from within the US government. In April 2024, the US Agency for International Development sent Secretary of State Antony Blinken a memorandum concluding that Israel was blocking humanitarian assistance and recommending a pause in additional arms sales, according to ProPublica’s September 2024 investigation.

Internal emails obtained by ProPublica showed that the State Department’s refugee bureau had concluded Israel was blocking humanitarian aid and that restrictions on military assistance under the Foreign Assistance Act should apply. Yet on May 10, 2024, Blinken told Congress that Washington did not assess Israel was prohibiting or restricting US humanitarian assistance. Responding to the investigation, the department said it had pressed Israel to increase aid deliveries and that Israel had subsequently taken steps to improve access.

In its May report to Congress, the administration considered it reasonable to assess that US-supplied weapons and military equipment had been used inconsistently with international humanitarian law obligations or established practices for reducing civilian harm. It nevertheless accepted Israel’s assurances as sufficiently credible and reliable for military assistance to continue.

On March 1, 2025, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced an emergency declaration to expedite approximately $4 billion in military assistance to Israel. He praised Trump’s repeal of a Biden-era memorandum imposing conditions on that assistance, calling the conditions “baseless and politicized.”

The previous day, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency had notified Congress of a proposed $2.04 billion sale to Israel, including 35,529 bomb bodies for 2,000-pound-class weapons and 4,000 penetrator warheads. Rubio invoked emergency authority to waive the usual congressional review requirements. Deliveries were estimated to begin in 2026.

IMAGE: Bunker buster bombs staged in the hangar bay aboard USS Constellation. Archival AFP photograph accompanying reporting on renewed American bomb deliveries to Israel (Source: Arab News Japan)

On June 4, 2025, the United States vetoed a UN Security Council resolution demanding a ceasefire, the release of all hostages and the lifting of restrictions on humanitarian aid to Gaza. All 14 other Council members voted in favour.

IMAGE: Acting US representative Dorothy Shea vetoes a UN Security Council resolution demanding a Gaza ceasefire on June 4 2025, while all 14 other members vote in favour. Alamy Stock Photo (Source: The Journal)

On November 3, 2026, Trump said annual military aid to Israel would end in 2027, but American weapons sales would continue, according to Associated Press reporting.

More than a year earlier, on September 16, 2025, a UN commission of inquiry had concluded that Israel committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. Examining conduct from October 7, 2023 through July 31, 2025, the independent investigators found four of the five acts defined in the Genocide Convention and the specific intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza, in whole or in part.

The commission called on states to halt weapons transfers that could be used for genocidal acts and pursue accountability for direct and indirect involvement. In its October 2026 report, the commission said that, as of September 30, it knew of no effective investigations, disciplinary action or judicial measures by Israeli authorities in the Gaza and West Bank cases it had investigated. None of the victims’ families in those cases had received a remedy.

Seeking accountability at The Hague

Democracy for the Arab World Now, known as DAWN, had already asked the ICC to investigate the American officials supplying Israel. Its January 2025 submission argued that Joe Biden, Antony Blinken and then-Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin bore criminal responsibility for aiding and abetting Israeli crimes in Gaza. TAAG describes its forthcoming submission as extending that effort to senior Trump administration officials.

DAWN argues that officials who knowingly supplied military, intelligence and diplomatic support can bear criminal responsibility alongside those who ordered or carried out the attacks. Its submission examines the assistance American officials authorised, the warnings they received, and whether they intentionally contributed to the crimes.

The ICC prosecutes individuals, not governments. Although the United States is not a member, the court has jurisdiction over crimes committed on Palestinian territory. DAWN argues that American officials who assisted those crimes can therefore fall within its reach. The submission asks the prosecutor to investigate their responsibility and seek arrest warrants, which require approval from the court’s judges.

On November 21, 2024, the court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant. Its judges found reasonable grounds to believe both bore criminal responsibility for starvation as a method of warfare and crimes against humanity, including murder and persecution.

IMAGE: Benjamin Netanyahu and then Defence Minister Yoav Gallant attend a military officers ceremony near Mitzpe Ramon on October 31 2024, three weeks before the ICC issued arrest warrants against both men. Photograph by Amir Cohen/Reuters (Source: Le Monde)

To submit evidence against American officials, TAAG first had to confront sanctions imposed by the administration it wanted investigated. Trump’s February 6, 2025 sanctions order prohibited providing or receiving “services” to or from sanctioned individuals, including ICC personnel. TAAG feared that sharing its evidence with the prosecutor could expose its members to civil or criminal penalties.

On February 17, 2026, the researchers who later formed TAAG asked the Treasury Department to confirm that they could lawfully submit their evidence to the ICC or grant them a licence to do so. Neither request received an answer. On July 15, TAAG, DAWN and two TAAG officers filed suit. On October 13, US District Judge Jesse Furman granted a preliminary injunction protecting the plaintiffs’ specified activities, finding that the sanctions order’s services prohibition likely violated their First Amendment right to free speech.

DOCUMENT: Federal court complaint filed on July 15, 2026, by DAWN, TAAG, TAAG president Tarik Kanaana and treasurer William Doares, challenging the Trump administration’s restrictions on sharing evidence and working with the ICC (Source: US District Court, Southern District of New York. Complaint obtained through a document link provided by TAAG.)US District Court, Southern District of New York; complaint

Two days before the lawsuit was filed, Rubio singled out DAWN’s advocacy in a July 13, 2026 Wall Street Journal op-ed portraying the ICC as a threat to American sovereignty.

“Using all the tools at our government’s disposal, working beside every ally with whom we can make common cause, we will dismantle the ICC—brick by brick, if necessary.”

On October 9, Rubio escalated that threat by announcing sanctions against the ICC itself, extending Washington’s campaign beyond individual court officials. The measures blocked assets under US jurisdiction and prohibited transactions subject to licences and exceptions. “Either the ICC will end its threats, or we will end the ICC,” he said.

The delegation plans to make its case publicly as well, with an 11 AM CET press conference on November 11 at The Hague Marriott. UN special rapporteur Francesca Albanese is scheduled to deliver a keynote intervention.

Ra’ouf and the other delegates plan to bring their evidence to the ICC that day. They want the prosecutor to investigate not only those who carried out the attacks, but the American officials whose support they say helped make them possible.

VIDEO: LIVE from The Hague: US Taxpayers Seek ICC Warrants for Trump, Rubio Over Genocide (Source: BreakThrough News)

 

READ MORE US NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire US Files

SUPPORT OUR INDEPENDENT MEDIA PLATFORM – BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV

VISIT OUR TELEGRAM CHANNEL

21st Century Wire is an alternative news agency designed to enlighten, inform and educate readers about world events which are not always covered in the mainstream media.

Source: https://21stcenturywire.com/2026/11/09/american-taxpayers-defy-trump-sanctions-to-seek-icc-investigation-over-gaza-genocide/