Overcoming Congress, Biden Continues To Sell Weapons To Israel To Fight Palestine

United States President Joe Biden. (Wikimedia Commons/The White House)

WASHINGTON - United States President Joe Biden for the second time this month passed Congress to certify the sale of other emergency weapons to Israel in the midst of an ongoing war in the trapped Gaza Strip. Foreign Minister Antony Blinken told Congress that there was a state of emergency, requiring him to avoid the obligation to notify Congress in foreign military sales. US approved the immediate sale of M107 155 mm artillery shells and related equipment estimated at US$147.5 million (Rp2.3 trillion).The Foreign Department said the memo including the detailed justification of Blinken was delivered on Friday, December 29. The US is committed to Israel's security, and is critical to the US's national interest in helping Israel in developing and maintaining strong and ready-to-use self-defense capabilities. The sale proposal is in line with those objectives, "said the Defense Security Cooperation Agency. The artillery weapons will be taken from the US weapons stock. The Gaza war came after Hamas attacked Israel on October 7 which killed about 1,200 people and hundreds others were held hostage.

More than 21,500 Palestinians were killed in Gaza, and nearly 56,000 injured, local health authorities said. Israel's decision to limit the flow of humanitarian aid has exacerbated the humanitarian disasters experienced by 2 million Gazans, many of whom depend on outside food, water and medicine assistance.