“For decades, the U.S. has sold billions of dollars in weaponry to Israel without ever requiring them to respect basic Palestinian rights,” Ocasio-Cortez in a statement.
By Josh Plank, World Israel News
U.S. Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Rashida Tlaib (D- Mich.), and Mark Pocan (D- Wis.) introduced a resolution to block a $735 million arms sale to Israel.
“For decades, the U.S. has sold billions of dollars in weaponry to Israel without ever requiring them to respect basic Palestinian rights. In so doing, we have directly contributed to the death, displacement and disenfranchisement of millions,” said Ocasio-Cortez in a statement.
“At a time when so many, including President Biden, support a ceasefire, we should not be sending ‘direct attack’ weaponry to Prime Minister Netanyahu to prolong this violence,” she said.
Joint Direct Attack Munitions, kits that transform “dumb” bombs into precision-guided missiles, are said to make up a large portion of the proposed arms sale.
“The harsh truth is that these weapons are being sold by the United States to Israel with the clear understanding that the vast majority of them will be used to bomb Gaza,” said Tlaib.
“You cannot claim to support human rights and peace on Earth and continue to back the extremist Netanyahu regime; it’s that simple,” she said.
Tlaib’s fellow Muslim congressmen Reps. Andre Carson (D-Ind.) and Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) co-sponsored the resolution along with Reps. Cori Bush (D-Mo.), Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), Betty McCollum (D-Minn.), and Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.).
“Let’s be clear: these are the exact bombs being used to kill children in Gaza right now,” said Omar.
“The United States should be doing everything in our power to bring about an immediate end to this conflict and the carnage it has caused, not continuing to sell Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the very bombs used to kill Palestinian children,” she said.
Bush, a Black Lives Matter activist elected to congress last year, said, “Our government is directly complicit in the human rights atrocities being inflicted by the Israeli military on Palestinians, and it is our job as members of Congress to make sure that we stop funding these abuses.”
The resolution was also endorsed by over 70 organizations including IfNotNow, Jewish Voice for Peace Action, Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), and Presbyterian Church USA.
IfNotNow has announced a “Rise Up Shabbat” this Saturday to “come together as a Jewish community to tell President Biden: stop using our money to fund apartheid.”
IfNotNow has been criticized as a fringe group with little influence in the Jewish community. Or as conservative U.S. filmmaker Ami Horowitz put it, “a radical leftist organization who have weaponized their Judaism in order to spread falsehoods about Israel.”