The United States government must stop blatantly violating the law with regard to arms sales to Israel.
The Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 and the Arms Export Control Act are very clear: The United States cannot provide weapons to any country that violates internationally recognized human rights.
Section 620I of the Foreign Assistance Act is also explicit: No U.S. assistance may be provided to any country that “prohibits or otherwise restricts, directly or indirectly, the transport or delivery of United States humanitarian assistance.”
According to the United Nations, much of the international community and every humanitarian organization on the ground in Gaza, Israel is clearly in violation of these laws.
That is why I have introduced, with colleagues, several joint resolutions of disapproval that would block offensive arms sales to Israel. The votes will take place in the Senate on Wednesday.
As I have said many times, Israel clearly had a right to respond to the horrific Hamas terrorist attack on Oct. 7, 2023, which killed about 1,200 innocent people and took 250 hostages, including Americans.
But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s extremist government has not simply waged war against Hamas. It has also waged all-out war against the Palestinian people.
Within Gaza’s population of just 2.2 million, more than 43,000 Palestinians have been killed and more than 103,000 injured — probably 60 percent of whom are women, children or elderly people.
A recent U.N. assessment of satellite imagery found that two-thirds of all structures in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed. That includes 87 percent of housing, 84 percent of health facilities, and about 70 percent of water and sanitation plants. Every one of Gaza’s 12 universities has been bombed, as have hundreds of schools.
During the past year, millions of desperately poor people in Gaza have been driven from their homes, forced to evacuate again and again with nothing more than the clothes on their backs.
Families have been herded into so-called safe zones, only to face continued bombardment. The children of Gaza have suffered a level of physical and emotional trauma that is almost beyond comprehension and that will stay with them for the rest of their lives.
As horrific as the situation in Gaza has been over the past year, it is getting unimaginably worse.
Humanitarian aid workers on the ground report that tens of thousands of children are now experiencing malnutrition and starvation because of Israel’s restrictions on humanitarian aid.
The need is greater than at any other time in the conflict; the volume of aid getting into Gaza in recent weeks is lower than at any point since the war began. And Israel’s recent decision to ban the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, the backbone of the humanitarian response in Gaza, will only make a horrific situation even worse.
I have met with doctors who have served in Gaza, treating hundreds of patients a day without electricity, anesthesia or clean water, including dozens of children arriving with gunshot wounds to the head. I’ve seen the photographs and the videos.
