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gregory meeks
'Every Single Senator Should Be Supporting' Sanders Bid to Block Massive New Arms Sale to Israel
Sen. Bernie Sanders said he would introduce a joint resolution to block the proposed sale of $18 billion worth of warplanes and other weaponry to Israel.
Jul 12, 2024
As the Biden administration pushes Congress to approve an additional $18 billion arms sale to Israel even as it wages what much of the international community considers a genocidal war against the people of Gaza, Palestine defenders on Friday urged U.S. senators to support an effort by Sen. Bernie Sanders to block weapons transfers to the key Middle Eastern ally.
The Biden administration is urging congressional lawmakers to sign off on the sale of a package involving as many as 50 McDonnell Douglas F-15 fighters, as well as munitions, training, and other support, to Israel. The sale cleared a key hurdle last month when two holdouts—Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.), the ranking Democratic member on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), the top Senate Foreign Relations Committee Democrat—agreed to support the transfer.
If given final approval, the sale would be one of the largest to Israel since it began its nine-month assault on Gaza in retaliation for the Hamas-led October 7 attacks. More than 137,500 Palestinians have been killed, maimed, or left missing by Israel's onslaught, which is the subject of both an International Court of Justice genocide case and International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khan's bid to arrest Israeli and Hamas leaders, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas Chief Yahya Sinwar.
The Biden administration has approved billions of dollars in U.S. military aid and more than 100 arms sales to Israel since October. This, atop the nearly $4 billion Israel already got from Washington annually.
"While much of the media is focused on the drama of the U.S. presidential election, we must not lose sight of what is happening in Gaza, where an unprecedented humanitarian crisis continues to get even worse," Sanders said Friday.
"Nine months into this war, more than 38,000 people have been killed and 88,000 injured—60% of whom are women, children, or elderly. The full toll is likely higher, with thousands more buried beneath the rubble," he continued. "Nine in 10 Gazans—1.9 million people—have been driven from their homes."
"Many people have been displaced four or five times, and most do not have homes to return to, with more than 60% of residential buildings damaged or destroyed," he added.
"Israel continues to restrict the entry of [United Nations] humanitarian aid trucks into Gaza, prevent the entry of key humanitarian items, and obstruct aid workers' access to many areas," the senator noted. "These restrictions have prevented aid organizations from setting up a sustained, effective response."
Sanders stressed:
Yet, in the midst of this horror and violations of international law, the United States continues to send billions of dollars and thousands of bombs and other weapons to support this war. We, as Americans, are complicit.
We must end our support for Netanyahu's war. Not another nickel to make this horrific situation even worse. I intend to do everything I can to block further arms transfers to Israel, including through joint resolutions of disapproval of any arms sales. The United States must not help a right-wing extremist and war criminal continue this atrocity.
Palestine defenders backed Sanders' effort.
"Every single senator should be supporting Sen. Sanders upcoming joint resolution of disapproval against an $18 billion weapons giveaway to Israel, which would further enmesh and implicate the U.S. in Israel's genocide against Palestinians in Gaza," Institute for Middle East Understanding policy director Josh Ruebner said on social media.
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Progressives Push Back as Biden Admin Works to Bypass Oversight of Israel Arms Transfers
"The Biden administration should provide the same transparency around arms transfers to Israel that it has for Ukraine and other countries," said Rep. Cori Bush.
Nov 10, 2023
Democratic U.S. lawmakers, including prominent progressives, are pushing back against an attempt by the Biden administration to circumvent congressional oversight of arms transfers to Israel, which has received an unspecified quantity of American weaponry since the October 7 Hamas-led attack.
Members of the watchdog group Women for Weapons Trade Transparency (WWTT) reported last week that the White House's October 20 supplemental funding request "sought permission to unilaterally blanket-approve the future sale of military equipment and weapons—like ballistic missiles and artillery ammunition—to Israel without notifying Congress."
The waiver would apply to the $3.5 billion earmarked in the request for Foreign Military Financing (FMF) for Israel. As the WWTT members explained in In These Times: "This means the Israeli government would be able to purchase up to $3.5 billion in military articles and services in complete secrecy. The House included the waiver language in a bill that splits off Israeli military aid from the rest of the package."
Josh Paul, a former senior State Department official who resigned in protest last month over the Biden administration's decision to rush weapons to Israel, called the proposal "an insult to congressional oversight prerogatives."
"I've never seen anything like it," Paul told the WWTT members.
The White House's waiver request has drawn backlash from congressional Democrats, including some lawmakers who support arming Israel as it carries out massive atrocities in the Gaza Strip and faces growing accusations of genocide.
U.S. Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.), the ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, toldThe Washington Post on Thursday that he opposes "the administration's request to write into law waivers of congressional notification of foreign military financing, including for Israel."
"There is no reason we cannot both ensure needed U.S. assistance is provided to Israel in an expeditious manner and ensure Congress is able to fulfill its constitutional oversight duty," said Meeks.
Progressive critics of the administration's unconditional support for the Israeli government have also spoken out against the White House's attempt to evade congressional oversight of military assistance.
"At a time when thousands of civilians are being killed by weapons provided by the U.S. government, the American people deserve to be fully informed about what is being provided to other countries, including Israel, with their tax dollars," Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.), the lead sponsor of a cease-fire resolution in the House, told the Post. "The Biden administration should provide the same transparency around arms transfers to Israel that it has for Ukraine and other countries."
As The Intercept's Ken Klippenstein reported earlier this week, the administration has done nothing of the kind.
"Whereas the Biden administration released a three-page itemized list of weapons provided to Ukraine, down to the exact number of rounds, the information released about weapons sent to Israel could fit in a single sentence," Klippenstein wrote.
Israel is the top beneficiary of U.S. weaponry and military aid, receiving nearly $4 billion a year under a deal inked during the Obama presidency.
In the wake of Hamas' October 7 attack, the U.S. quickly moved to transfer small-diameter bombs, Iron Dome interceptor missiles, and other munitions to the Israeli military.
On October 31, the State Department approved a $320 million sale of guided bomb equipment to Israel, despite a directive barring U.S. arms sales to countries that are "more likely than not" to use the weapons to attack civilians.
The Biden administration has admitted to being intentionally vague in divulging the exact quantity of weapons it has sent Israel over the past month.
John Kirby, a spokesperson for the National Security Council, told reporters on October 23 that U.S. military assistance is flowing to Israel "on a near-daily basis" and that the administration is "being careful not to quantify or get into too much detail about what they're getting—for their own operational security purposes, of course."
But experts toldThe Intercept that the administration's stated justification for shrouding the arms transfers in secrecy is bogus.
"The notion that it would in any way harm the Israeli military's operational security to provide more information is a cover story for efforts to reduce information on the types of weapons being supplied to Israel and how they are being used," said William Hartung, a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft who focuses on the arms industry.
"I think the purposeful lack of transparency over what weapons the U.S. is supplying to Israel 'on a daily basis' is tied to the larger administration policy of downplaying the extent to which Israel will use those weapons to commit war crimes and kill civilians in Gaza," Hartung added.
U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), deputy chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, told the Post on Thursday that the administration's refusal to be forthright about new arms transfers to Israel is unacceptable.
"This is particularly concerning, given the wanton killing of civilians, and constant reports of war crimes and human rights abuses, likely using U.S. weapons," said Omar.
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10 Years After Egypt Massacre, US Breaking Promise to Defend Human Rights: Report
"The Biden administration has not meaningfully changed the U.S. approach of providing military and political support to President Sisi's brutal and dictatorial regime," the report's author asserted.
Aug 11, 2023
A decade after Egyptian security forces led by then-Deputy Prime Minister Abdel Fattah el-Sisi massacred over 1,000 people protesting the general's 2013 military coup, a rights group on Friday released a report decrying the Biden administration's failure to support human rights in the key Middle Eastern ally.
The Human Rights First report asserts that "local activists say the United States government has failed human rights defenders in Egypt for the last 10 years."
"I don't feel the U.S. has in any way done enough to support human rights in Egypt since the Rabaa massacre."
Aya Hijazi, an Egyptian-American human rights defender featured in the report who was jailed for three years after the 2013 coup, said that "I don't feel the U.S. has in any way done enough to support human rights in Egypt since the Rabaa massacre."
Hijazi asserted that the Biden administration, Congress, and the U.S. media have failed Egyptians being repressed under el-Sisi.
"Rabaa was the worst massacre in modern Egyptian history and in no way has it got the attention it deserved," she said. "I read somewhere the numbers are equivalent to the Tiananmen Square massacre and yet within American common knowledge almost everyone knows about Tiananmen Square and almost no one knows about Rabaa," she added, referring to the deadly 1989 Chinese government crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators in central Beijing.
Brian Dooley, a senior adviser at Human Rights First and the report's author, said in a statement that "as they struggle to stay out of prison for their defense of human rights, Egyptian activists know that the United States is not keeping its promise to support human rights in Egypt."
"The U.S government has a legacy of ignoring human rights in allied countries like Egypt, and contrary to campaign promises, the Biden administration has not meaningfully changed the U.S. approach of providing military and political support to President Sisi's brutal and dictatorial regime," Dooley added.
The report offers recommendations from Egyptian activists on how the U.S. government can support human rights in the country, which is allocated $1.3 billion in annual military assistance from Washington. Of that amount, more than $300 million is subject to human rights certification. Last year, the Biden administration refused $130 million of the designated aid on human rights grounds, even as the U.S. State Department approved a sprawling $2.5 billion arms sale.
"The U.S government has a legacy of ignoring human rights in allied countries like Egypt."
On Thursday, a group of 11 U.S. House Democrats led by Rep. Gregory Meeks of New York sent a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken asking the Biden administration to withhold $320 million in foreign military assistance meant for Egypt. Their request comes weeks after 11 U.S. senators—10 Democrats plus Vermont Independent Bernie Sanders—also called on Biden to hold back the military aid "absent improvements on human rights," a demand previously made by dozens of advocacy groups.
The senators' letter states that the Egyptian government "has not only failed to investigate allegations of human rights abuses, it has also continued to commit 'significant human rights' violations such as extrajudicial killings; enforced disappearance; torture and life-threatening prison conditions; and severe restrictions on freedoms of expression, assembly, and association as documented in the State Department's latest human rights report."
"The Egyptian government's track record on these criteria has not improved," the senators noted, adding that el-Sisi's administration "has detained supporters and family members of a challenger" while forcing NGOs "to register under a draconian law that prohibits any activities it deems political."
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