Demonstrators stand outside Sen. Bernie Sanders’ Burlington office on Friday, Nov. 17, 2023. Almost exactly a year later, Vermont’s entire congressional delegation is asking the Biden administration to stop sending offensive weapons to Israel.
Vermont’s congressional delegation is criticizing the Biden administration after it announced this week it will not withhold military aid to Israel.
U.S. officials had given Israel 30 days to increase humanitarian aid to Gaza, or risk limits to arms transfers. The deadline passed Tuesday.
Humanitarian groups, the United Nations and news outlets say conditions in Gaza remain catastrophic, including ”imminent” famine in northern Gaza.
But Biden administration says Israel has made some progress — and that the U.S. will not restrict military aid.
Sen. Peter Welch said the United States shouldn’t be “accepting ‘small steps’ and empty promises” from Israel, and should not send more offensive weapons.
“It is long past time for the Biden Administration to insist that Israel adheres to international humanitarian law, the Leahy Law, and its obligation to facilitate — not impede — humanitarian aid,” Welch wrote in a statement.
The Leahy Law — named for former Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy — prohibits the government from providing assistance to foreign security forces when there is credible information they’ve committed “gross violations of human rights.”
Rep. Becca Balint said in a statement to Vermont Public that the United States is not holding Israel to the same standards it expects of other countries when they receive U.S. weapons and military aid.
“The current flow of aid into Gaza is still nowhere near acceptable levels to provide meaningful assistance to Palestinians,” Balint wrote. “The United States cannot continue to fund this war that has brought unimaginable death and destruction to Gaza. Israel must urgently work to surge aid into Gaza and take steps to immediately end the war.”
Balint noted that she voted “no” earlier this year to sending offensive weapons to Israel — and that her position remains unchanged.
Sen. Bernie Sanders has said he plans to bring joint resolutions of disapproval to the Senate floor next week — to block certain weapons sales to Israel as it “wages a barbaric war against the Palestinian people in Gaza.”
“This war has been conducted almost entirely with American weapons and $18 billion in U.S. taxpayer dollars,” he wrote in a statement on Wednesday. “Israel has dropped U.S.-provided 2,000-pound bombs into crowded neighborhoods, killed hundreds of civilians to take out a handful of Hamas fighters, and made little effort to distinguish between civilians and combatants.”
Sanders said these actions are immoral and illegal — and that the United States “cannot continue to be complicit.”
Israel’s bombardment and ground invasion in Gaza have killed more than 43,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities, and has displaced around 90% of the 2.3 million people living there. The war began after Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas stormed Israel, killed about 1,200 people and took 250 hostage, according to Israeli authorities. Around 100 hostages are still in Gaza, and about a third of those are believed to be dead.
This war is the latest flareup in an ongoing conflict.
Story Written by Elodie Reed, Vermont Public