Phyllis Bennis Quotations

Before and After: US Foreign Policy and the September 11th Crisis.

Despite the urging of some U.N. and U.S. officials for Washington to enter the race for membership on the new Human Rights Council, it is absolutely appropriate for the United States to remain absent.

We don't have a refugee crisis in America; we have a racism crisis here.

Instead of ending U.S. military aid to the 23rd wealthiest country to use for its consistent violations of international law and human rights, we see the Obama administration escalating the annual amount of aid, so that Israel will now start each year with almost $4 billion, with $3.8 billion a year of military aid coming from our tax money to support its military, without any restrictions on how it makes - how it uses that money, what weapons in the U.S. it's able to buy.

The question of Israeli apartheid was anathema a decade ago. Now it's even talked about by top Israeli officials, who say - they differ on the timing: We say it's already there; they say that if we don't do something different, we're going to face apartheid.

Whether the proposed constitution is approved or rejected . . . it is a process and a text largely crafted and imposed by U.S. occupation authorities and their Iraqi dependents, and thus lacking in legal or political legitimacy.

The United Nations is based on principles, embodied in the U.N. Charter, that require its leadership, especially the secretary-general, to stand and defend its principles against those trying to force the United Nations to become part of illegal wars, to endorse illegal occupations, or to ignore looming genocides,

That was foreseen by many of us 10 years ago when the issue popped up, and again in 2004-2005 when the question returned to the top of the U.N.'s agenda.