Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi threw her political weight behind a letter sent over the weekend to President Biden, urging a halt to weapons transfers to Israel.
“In light of the recent strike against aid workers and the ever-worsening humanitarian crisis, we believe it is unjustifiable to approve these weapons transfers,” read the letter, signed by Pelosi and more than three dozen Democrats, including anti-Israel congressional representatives Rashida Tlaib and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
The letter calls on Biden to withhold future arms transfers pending an independent US investigation into the recent Israeli airstrike on World Central Kitchen (WCK) aid workers or if Israel “fails to sufficiently mitigate harm to innocent civilians in Gaza.” A spokesperson for Pelosi commented to The Guardian that the congresswoman was optimistic about the early actions the White House has taken to investigate the WCK incident.
An Israeli investigation following the tragic death of seven WCK workers last week found that during a humanitarian mission in central Gaza, Israeli forces mistakenly identified the WCK aid convoy as hostile, leading to an erroneous airstrike. The IDF has taken disciplinary actions, including the dismissal of two officers and formal reprimands for others.
On Friday, the United Nations Human Rights Council passed a resolution to help prevent “human rights violations” in the Gaza Strip by calling on countries to stop selling arms to Israel. The US, which provides Israel with $3.8 billion in military aid annually, voted against the motion.
