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Nearly 99 percent of the House voted against an amendment to nix just $500 million in military funding for Israel from the towering $830 billion Pentagon budget bill last week, with just six lawmakers voting for the amendment even as Israel prepares to erect a concentration camp in Gaza to confine Palestinians.
The amendment targeted funding for the Israeli Cooperative Program, which provides Israel with funding for its missile programs separately from the $3.3 billion in military and supposed “security” funding allocated to Israel yearly by the U.S.
The House overwhelmingly opposed the amendment, and it failed 422 to 6. Representatives Al Green (D-Texas), Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia), Summer Lee (D-Pennsylvania), Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky), Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota), and Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan) voted for the legislation.
Greene introduced the amendment, citing Israel’s strike on Gaza’s only Catholic church last week and criticizing the amount of money that the U.S. already sends to “nuclear-armed Israel’s missile defense system.”
The far right lawmaker has staked out an isolationist stance seen in some parts of the far right, and left-wing advocates have warned against viewing her stances as truly anti-war or in favor of humane treatment.
For instance, Greene also criticized the House for approving funding for HIV/AIDS assistance for African countries, saying, “I mean can’t they figure that out by now?” Greene also introduced an amendment to bar funds in the Pentagon budget from being used to assist Ukraine amid Russia’s war on the country. This was rejected 76 to 353.
The military appropriations bill passed the House in a late-night vote on Friday, 221 to 209. Five Democrats voted to pass the budget, while most Democrats and a handful of Republicans voted “no.” Most Democrats who voted against the bill were opposed to cuts to Ukraine assistance and provisions undermining abortion rights.
Tlaib, a vocal supporter of Palestinian rights and opponent of Israel’s slaughter in Gaza and aggression in other countries, voted against the Pentagon’s budget, citing the U.S.’s endless war coffers. “Our country is obsessed with war,” she said. “Every year, Congress votes to invest in death and destruction instead of health care, housing, clean air and water, or ending child poverty here at home.”
Notably absent from those voting for Greene’s amendment was Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York), who faced criticism for voting against the amendment.
In a statement online, Ocasio-Cortez said that she didn’t support the amendment because it would revoke some funding for Israel’s supposed “defensive Iron Dome capabilities.” This argument ignores the longstanding argument from anti-war and pro-Palestine advocates that there is no delineation between “defensive” and “offensive” weapons — especially when it comes to Israel, where weapons systems like the Iron Dome allow Israel to strike other countries with little fear of retaliation.
This statement was heavily criticized by advocates for Palestinian rights.“Saying nothing would have been better than this gaslighting. The structural problem is US provision of weapons and impunity. It’s necessary to undermine that structure,” said human rights lawyer Noura Erakat. “Distinguishing betweem offensive and defensive weapons attempts to normalize our role in genocide and how we got here.”
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