(The Guardian) Retired US marine dragged out of Senate hearing shouting 'No one wants to fight for Israel!'
A retired US marine was dragged out of a Senate hearing in Washington on Wednesday by the Capitol police and a Republican senator, Tim Sheehy, as he protested the US-Israeli attack on Iran by shouting: “No one wants to fight for Israel!”
The protester, who was dressed in a marine uniform and had been seated in the audience at the rear of the hearing room, was identified by the activist group Codepink as Brian McGinnis, a former US marine who fought in Iraq and is the Green Party candidate for Senate in North Carolina.
Codepink posted video of McGinnis being carried out of the armed services subcommittee hearing he disrupted as the assistant commandant of the Marine Corps was about to speak on the readiness of the force.
The Codepink video also shows that as McGinnis wrestled with the police, he called out to the marine general in the front of the room, saying: “Commandant, please stand up, as a marine, stand up for America!”
McGinnis began his protest by standing up from his seat at the back of the room and saying: “Israel is the reason for this war; America does not want to fight this war for Israel,” according to video posted on Instagram by another military veteran turned peace activist, Josephine Guilbeau, and a livestream of the hearing on the armed services committee’s website.
After two police officers started to drag McGinnis away, he shouted: “America does not want to send its sons and daughters to war for Israel! Your inability to name that shows your ineptness as leaders.”
“This is wrong, and nobody wants to fight for Israel” the protester continued to shout as he resisted being dragged away and toppled to the ground with the officers.
At that point, a third police officer and Sheehy, a former Navy Seal from Montana who served in Afghanistan and was elected to the Senate last year despite questions over his war record, joined in the effort to drag the protester out.
Sheehy later derided McGinnis as “an unhinged protestor” and said that his own role in bundling him away was just an attempt to “deescalate the situation”.
In an Instagram video posted before the hearing, McGinnis told his followers he was there to demand accountability for what he called “this betrayal” by elected officials who had promised there would be no war. “Free Palestine. Free America.” he said at the end of the video.
Codepink also shared video recorded on Wednesday of it cofounder, Medea Benjamin, pressing another Republican senator, Kevin Cramer of North Dakota, to explain why the US is at war with Iran.
Cramer first made the false claim that the international nuclear deal struck with Iran during the Obama administration, which barred Iran from making a nuclear weapon, “allowed Iran to have a nuclear weapon.”
The senator then told the activist that the United States had to support its military ally Israel because “we have a biblical responsibility to them, as well as an allied responsibility to Israel”.
