President Joe Biden should scuttle an expected arms sale to Israel unless Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ends operations against Palestinian targets in Gaza, according to Rep. Ilhan Omar.
“The United States should not stand idly by while crimes against humanity are being committed with our backing,” said Omar, a Minnesota Democrat who was born in Somalia and is one of the first Muslim women to serve in Congress. “We should be affirming the right of all people, regardless of their faith, to have self-determination and equal rights. That includes both Israelis and Palestinians because, yes, Palestinian lives matter.”
Omar’s statement amplifies the rhetorical pressure on Biden from the left wing of the congressional Democratic majority, as the administration has attempted to strike a balance between supporting Israel and pressuring Netanyahu to curtail military operations. The public perceptions of the conflict have been clouded by unprecedented barrages of rocket attacks from Hamas, along with Israeli airstrikes that have killed Palestinian civilians — as well as one bombing that targeted a building that housed international media organizations, although Israel officials say that Hamas maintained a presence there as well.
“It would be appalling for the Biden administration to go through with $735 million in precision-guided weaponry to Netanyahu without any strings attached in the wake of escalating violence and attacks on civilians,” Omar said. “If this goes through, this will be seen as a green light for continued escalation and will undercut any attempts at brokering a ceasefire.”
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Omar is a junior member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee who has been rebuked in the past for statements that her Democratic colleagues deemed antisemitic. She and Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a Michigan Democrat who also is Muslim, angered some colleagues and were barred temporarily from visiting Israel due to their support of the boycott, divest, and sanctions movement that aspires to target Israel with the kind of economic measures that doomed the apartheid regime in South Africa.
Both lawmakers have sought to link the Israeli-Palestinian dispute to the Black Lives Matter movement in the U.S.
“What they are doing to the Palestinian people is what they continue to do to our black brothers and sisters here,” Tlaib said last week. “It is all interconnected.”
The Biden administration reportedly notified the committee of an impending arms sale on May 5, according to the Washington Post. That message came two days after clashes over impending evictions of several Palestinian families in East Jerusalem, but before the unrest culminated in major Hamas rocket attacks and Israeli military operations.
“The violence in Israel and the Gaza Strip is spiraling out of control. Far-right, ethno-nationalist Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu is now responsible for at least 1,505 casualties in Gaza, including 200 deaths, 59 of them children,” Omar said. “At least 10 Israelis, including two children, have also been killed by indiscriminate Hamas rocket attacks. To be clear, this is also a war crime.”
Netanyahu dismissed such criticisms in a Sunday morning televised interview in which he argued that Israel has done a better job of minimizing civilian casualties than U.S. troops have in similar situations.
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“You have your own experiences, I think, in Mosul and Fallujah and Afghanistan. I think you can appreciate the efforts we go through in dense urban fighting when terrorists are targeting civilians who are hiding behind civilians, how difficult that is,” he told CBS.
“When the international community attacks Israel, they’re actually encouraging Hamas to continue these attacks because Hamas … they’re happy with their own civilian casualties because it gets,” he added, “the international community to focus their attacks on Israel instead of Hamas.”
