INDEPENDENT Senator Bernie Sanders has said that the United States cannot continue funding Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s war machine as it presses ahead with its horrific genocide of the Palestinians trapped in the besieged Gaza Strip.
Sanders, a former presidential candidate, condemned Israel’s killing of 112 people and injuring 750 more seeking aid in northern Gaza last Thursday.
‘Children are starving in Gaza. Instead of opening up the borders and allowing humanitarian aid to come in, Israeli soldiers are shooting people who are desperately trying to get food off of trucks,’ he said in a post on X, formerly Twitter.
‘This must stop.
‘The United States cannot continue funding the Netanyahu war machine.’
Sanders said the whole world is watching as Netanyahu and his right-wing backers starve the innocent children of Gaza and wage a genocidal war against the defenceless Palestinians in Gaza.
And he slammed Netanyahu as a ‘reactionary racist’.
Since October, more than 30,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have been killed as a result of the Israeli regime forces’ continuous onslaught on the Gaza Strip.
Meanwhile, international charity organisation Oxfam has condemned United States foreign policy as contributing to the risk of famine in the Gaza Strip.
And the United Nations human rights chief has also expressed dismay concerning the brutality with which Israel is leading its ongoing months-long war of genocide against Gaza.
Oxfam says it is opposed to US plans to airdrop packages of food into Gaza, saying that such efforts cannot cancel out US policies that have contributed to extreme hunger throughout Gaza.
‘Oxfam does not support US airdrops to Gaza, which would mostly serve to relieve the guilty consciences of senior US officials whose policies are contributing to the ongoing atrocities and risk of famine in Gaza,’ Scott Paul, who conducts humanitarian policy at Oxfam America, said in a statement.
‘While Palestinians in Gaza have been pushed to the absolute brink, dropping a paltry, symbolic amount of aid into Gaza with no plan for its safe distribution would not help, and be deeply degrading to Palestinians,’ he noted.
The Palestinian ambassador to the United Nations, Riyad Mansour, has pleaded for the Security Council to condemn the Israeli attack on thousands of starving Palestinians awaiting food relief that left more than 100 dead and hundreds injured.
‘Instead of indiscriminate airdrops in Gaza, the US should cut the flow of weapons to Israel that are used in indiscriminate attacks,’ he insisted.
‘What we need is a ceasefire.
‘The Security Council should say enough is enough,’ Mansour told reporters.
- The UN Security Council (UNSC) has expressed ‘deep concern’ after nearly 120 Palestinians lost their lives in last Thursday’s Israeli attack on civilians waiting to receive humanitarian aid southwest of Gaza City.
The joint statement from members added that several hundred people were also injured in the incident, and some had sustained ‘gunshot wounds as observed by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).’
It, however, did not specify who was responsible for the gunfire.
The Security Council members went on to ‘extend their sincere condolences to the families of the victims and wish a swift and complete recovery for those who have been injured.’
They also ‘urged Israel to keep border crossings open for humanitarian aid to enter Gaza, to facilitate the opening of additional crossings to meet humanitarian needs at scale, and to support the rapid and safe delivery of relief items to people in all of the Gaza Strip.’
They also urged for the protection of civilians and civilian infrastructure, and reminded all parties that they ‘must comply with their obligations under international law, including international humanitarian law and international human rights law.’
The council members went on to warn that they have ‘grave concern’ over the estimation … that all 2.2 million people in Gaza face ‘alarming levels of acute food insecurity’.
A United Nations team also said that ‘a large number’ of Palestinian civilians seeking food aid were shot in the incident last Thursday and that Israeli military forces had opened fire on the aid convoy in the besieged Gaza Strip.
They called for parties to the conflict to allow, facilitate, and enable the immediate, rapid, safe, sustained and unhindered delivery of humanitarian assistance at scale to the Palestinian civilian population throughout the Gaza Strip.
The statement came less than two days after the United States blocked a previous UN Security Council statement, which blamed Israel for the aid calamity.
One more Palestinian man died from his wounds on Saturday, bringing the total number of deaths from the Israeli military’s ‘flour massacre’ to 118.
The Gaza Health Ministry confirmed in a statement: ‘A citizen died at Kamal Adwan Hospital as a result of injuries sustained in the Rasheed Street massacre on Thursday morning.’
Meanwhile, the European Union has condemned restrictions imposed by the Israeli regime on the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza.
The bloc’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, in a statement, described last Thursday’s Israeli attack on civilians in the blockaded territory, as ‘unjustifiable’.
‘We request an impartial international investigation into this tragic event, allowing for a clear picture of the events and responsibilities’, he said, urging Israel to comply with the rules of international law and to protect the distribution of humanitarian aid to civilian populations.
Borrell urged Israel to ‘fully cooperate’ with the UN agencies and other humanitarian organisations involved in the response and to allow free, unimpeded and safe humanitarian access through all crossing points.
‘We condemn the restrictions imposed by Israel on the entry of humanitarian aid and on the opening of crossing points,’ he said.
Borrell added that the European Union also urges Israel to immediately remove all obstacles at the Kerem Shalom crossing, and open the access in the north at the Karni and Erez crossings so as to open the port of Ashdod to humanitarian aid and to allow a direct humanitarian corridor from Jordan.
Patriarchs and Heads of the Churches in Jerusalem have also condemned the Israeli attack on the Gaza humanitarian food queue.
Borrell has been one of the most outspoken European politicians on the ongoing Israeli ground and air strikes against Gaza, calling on Western countries, and particularly the US, to stop providing arms to Israel in light of the growing number of civilian casualties in the besieged coastal territory.
Last month, the top EU diplomat reacted to US President Joe Biden’s recent comment that Israel’s military action was ‘over the top,’ noting: ‘If you believe that too many people are being killed, maybe you should provide less arms in order to prevent so many people being killed.’
The chief EU diplomat also slammed an order by Israeli prime minister Netanyahu that the more than one million Palestinians sheltering in Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah must be ‘evacuated’ ahead of a planned military operation there.
‘They are going to evacuate — where? To the moon? Where are they going to evacuate these people?’ Borrell demanded.
At least 30,320 Palestinians, most of them women and children, have been confirmed killed and 71,533 others injured so far during Israel’s genocidal war, which began following Operation al-Aqsa Storm by Gaza-based resistance movements.
- High-ranking members of the Israeli military’s Spokesperson’s Unit have reportedly resigned as the regime’s devastating war on Gaza continues with no end in sight.
Israel’s Channel 14 reported on Monday that the unit’s head Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari had stepped down from his position.
It said among the resignees were the second man in Hagari’s team Colonel Butbul, as well as Colonel Moran Katz, and the International Spokesperson for the Israeli military Lieutenant Richard Hecht.
The mass resignations are due to the officers’ protest over operational and personal matters, the report said.
The ‘unusual’ move during wartime reflects a state of disturbance within the Israeli military’s Spokesperson’s Unit, it added.
Recently, Israeli minister of military affairs Yoav Gallant admitted that the regime’s army is ‘paying a very high price’ in its aggression against Gaza.
However, five months into the offensive, the Tel Aviv regime has failed to achieve its declared objectives and is getting bogged down deeper in the Gaza quagmire.
