Israel Deliberately Blocked Humanitarian Aid to Gaza, Two Government Bodies Concluded. Antony Blinken Rejected Them.

archomrade [he/him]@midwest.social to politics @lemmy.world – 165 points – Israel Deliberately Blocked Humanitarian Aid to Gaza, Two Government Bodies Concluded. Antony Blinken Rejected Them.
propublica.org

Blinken told Congress, “We do not currently assess that the Israeli government is prohibiting or otherwise restricting” aid, even though the U.S. Agency for International Development and others had determined that Israel had broken the law.

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"We do not currently assess" is ludicrously blatant mealy-mouthed misdirection.

And then the US blocked aid to Gaza as well...

Hell, they passed a fucking law against it.

A couple are trying to undo it, but they dont have party leadership on their side, despite no valid reason

https://carson.house.gov/media/press-releases/reps-carson-jayapal-schakowsky-introduce-unrwa-funding-bill

Well, "blocked aid" can be a little ambiguous. Private organizations in the US are allowed to fund UNRWA and have done so, see for example https://www.unrwa.org/newsroom/news-releases/unrwa-usa-resumes-funding-un-agency-palestine-refugees-providing-5-million

What remains paused (and what the bill you reference is trying to unpause early) is, along with New Zealand, US gov't funding to the agency, which currently is scheduled to be lifted (rather late) on March 2025 as per https://unwatch.org/updated-list-of-countries-suspending-unwra-funding/

That's still quite bad, but it's not as bad as preventing individual US donors too.

Biden/Harris still continuing to send weapons to a country committing war crimes like denying aid to civilians is against US and international law.

It's so heartening that Democrats and Republicans have been able to set aside their differences and stopped their cycle of oversight investigations this one time where a crime has apparently actually happened

Getting real Collin Powell and GWB vibes from Blinken and Biden, these days.

They're literally breaking the law to continue sending weapons to Israel. You could impeach Biden over that, but because there's such a consensus around continuing the genocide they're letting this slide despite doing bullshit investigations on Biden for things he obviously didn't do.

It just shows that Congress is just an elaborate theatre production.