Submitted by Terry Hansen, Milwaukee
I want to thank Senators Martin Heinrich and Ben Ray Lujan for voting to halt the transfer of offensive weapons to Israel because of its transgressions in the war against Hamas, including Israel’s blocking of U.S. humanitarian aid to Gaza. Unfortunately, despite their courageous votes, the resolutions did not pass.
This spring, the U.S. Agency for International Development and the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration provided an assessment to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, which concluded that Israel was deliberately blocking deliveries of food and medical aid into Gaza. USAID also accused Israel of killing aid workers and bombing ambulances and hospitals.
And in June the global poverty organization Oxfam issued a press release titled, “Famine risk increases as Israel makes Gaza aid response virtually impossible.”
More recently, in October a group of 99 U.S. medical professionals who volunteered in Gaza sent an urgent letter to President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. The letter asserts that conditions are so dire that malnutrition in pregnant women is resulting in spontaneous abortions, and that babies are starving to death daily because mothers are too malnourished to breastfeed, coupled with a lack of formula and clean water.
The letter also concludes that there is strong evidence of Israel’s “widespread violations” of International Humanitarian Law.
I encourage Senators Heinrich and Lujan, as well as other members of Congress, to meet with the American healthcare workers who are signatories to this letter in order to obtain a first-hand account of the atrocities that are occurring in the Gaza Strip.
Terry Hansen is a retired high school counselor and kindergarten teacher. He lives in Milwaukee.