From CodePink | Original Article

WASHINGTON – The morning of Dec. 18, 2024, 17-year veteran and intelligence officer Josephine Guilbeau disrupted the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs to call out the billions of dollars Congress sends to fund genocide in Gaza while neglecting veterans at home. Here is what she had to say: 

“US Congress is complicit in the genocide in Gaza! You keep sending billions of dollars to Israel meanwhile veterans are homeless and committing suicide with more budget cuts on the way. As a 17-year veteran and intelligence officer, I am watching you destroy American values and jeopardize our national security.

Israel is burning children alive! Israel is burning children alive!

For one year, I have watched Israel burn children alive. You don’t care about veterans. You don’t care about American values. You are destroying this country –  shame on all of you! May God give you the moral courage to do the right thing! May God give you your hearts. Please! Please! Shame on you.”

After being expelled from the committee room, she made a plea to all US veterans:

“We need veterans from California all the way to New York to stand against what we are witnessing right now. Your voice is so powerful! We know as veterans that they are not giving us any of the help that we need while they send our tax dollars to other countries who are committing genocide. Right now is the time to use your powerful voices as veterans to say enough is enough. We need to save our country from what our own congressmen are doing right now! Free Palestine!”

Josephine decided to disrupt the hearing after witnessing over a year of the United State’s complicity in the genocide of the Palestinians inside of Gaza. Josephine has been in the halls of Congress with CODEPINK for much of that time, desperately trying to convince members of Congress that the majority of the country wants the US to impose a weapons embargo on Israel. 

“I’m a mother with four children, and every single day, I am watching Israel burn babies alive and starve them to death, and it’s been over a year of this and I’m quite frankly traumatized by what I’m witnessing,” she explained when asked why she was compelled to disrupt. 

To interview Josephine or for unedited videos of the disruption, please contact Melissa at melissa@codepink.org.