The influential group of lawmakers has damaged its reputation as “conscience of the Congress” by staying silent on the Gaza genocide.
The influential group of lawmakers has damaged its reputation as “conscience of the Congress” by staying silent on the Gaza genocide.
October 23, 2025 (The Nation Magazne)
by Anthony Conwright
Illustration by Adrià Fruitós.
More than a year has passed since the International Court of Justice, the United Nations’ highest judicial body, issued its first order in the landmark case brought against Israel by South Africa, which contends that Israel has been committing acts of genocide in its war in Gaza. The ICJ found that “with respect to the right of the Palestinians in Gaza to be protected from acts of genocide…and the right of South Africa to seek Israel’s compliance,” South Africa’s case was “plausible.” Plausible: a restrained word that, in this context, fails to convey the harsh truth of the war Israel has been conducting. Palestinians are being starved, displaced, and slaughtered. More than 60,000 Palestinians have died, and 1.9 million are being brutally displaced, in a manner eerily similar to the dispossession of their forebears in the Nakba of 1948. By the end of September, according to a group of international food-aid organizations, more than 600,000 Palestinians would be experiencing famine, a completely preventable calamity marked by extreme food deprivation, acute malnutrition, and starvation-related deaths.
Since the International Court’s ruling, a growing number of genocide scholars and human-rights advocates have concluded that the genocide in Gaza is not merely plausible but actual. In early September, an overwhelming majority (86 percent) of the voting members in the International Association of Genocide Scholars voted to endorse a declaration that “Israel’s policies and actions in Gaza meet the legal definition of genocide in Article II of the United Nations Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948).” The UN’s own Commission of Inquiry reached the same conclusion a few weeks later. Rabbis and Israeli human-rights groups—B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights—have testified that their own nation has betrayed the solemn pledge “Never again.” Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and other groups have witnessed the appalling deaths, displacement, and famine in Gaza and issued the same indictment: Israel is committing acts of genocide.
Yet to this day, the Congressional Black Caucus—the long-standing corps of lawmakers dedicated to safeguarding civil rights (and known as “the conscience of Congress”)—has not issued a formal declaration condemning Israel; it hasn’t even produced a statement calling for a ceasefire. The CBC’s silence isn’t accidental: More than half of its current 61 members have been endorsed or funded by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the powerful US lobbying arm for Israel’s agenda. In the 2023–24 election cycle alone, AIPAC endorsed 26 of the caucus’s members, raising $4.6 million for them and another $3.5 million for Black Democratic candidates…
