CAIR calls for Blinken to step down for lying to Congress so that the government can keep funding Israel’s genocide in Gaza

10/01/2024 / By Belle Carter

The largest Muslim civil rights advocacy group in the U.S., the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), is calling for U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken to resign for lying to Congress so that the Biden-Harris administration can keep funding Israel’s genocidal operations in Gaza.

The call came after ProPublica published a report detailing how Blinken contradicted the findings of his own department’s experts to maintain the flow of American weaponry to Israel, which has repeatedly used the arms to commit war crimes in the Gaza Strip.

According to the report, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the State Department’s Refugees Bureau provided the secretary of state with an assessment that U.S. law requires the government to cut off weapons shipments to countries that prevent the delivery of U.S.-backed humanitarian aid.

However, Blinken and President Joe Biden’s administration ignored the finding. On May 10, Blinken told Congress, “We do not currently assess that the Israeli government is prohibiting or otherwise restricting the transport or delivery of U.S. humanitarian assistance.” (Related: Blinken buried reports indicating Israel blocked aid to Gaza so U.S. would keep sending them weapons.)

Moreover, in a detailed 17-page memo, USAID described instances of Israeli interference with aid efforts, including killing aid workers, razing agricultural structures, bombing ambulances and hospitals, sitting on supply depots and routinely turning away trucks full of food and medicine.

CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad slammed Blinken for his actions and said: “When a senior American official lies to Congress in the middle of genocide so that the government can keep funding that genocide, he is deliberately flouting the law and prolonging the suffering of millions of innocent people who desperately need our government to stop funding their slaughter.”

He then called for his resignation.

“He must resign and the Biden administration must be held accountable for its violation of the law and its complicity in the Israeli genocide in Gaza,” he argued, adding that the American people deserve honest and upright leaders to represent their values and protect their interests.

Some are already echoing CAIR’s call for Blinken’s resignation. British-American journalist Mehdi Hasan posted on X, saying: “Blinken should be impeached.”

Sam Perlo-Freeman, an academic who has worked as a researcher for the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) and the Campaign Against Arms Trade, also said he “should resign or be impeached,” as he further pointed out: “most of Congress was very happy to be lied to and would have denounced Blinken for the truth.”

Meanwhile, Congressional Republicans are currently pushing to hold Blinken in contempt, but for a matter entirely unrelated to U.S. support for Israel’s war on Gaza.

Blinken previously backtracked sanctions on an Israeli military unit

Last month, CAIR already appealed that Blinken step down from his post after reports that he had ended the investigation into the Israel military’s Netzah Yehuda battalion for war crimes and human rights violations in the occupied West Bank.

As per reports, Blinken told Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant that the U.S. will not impose sanctions on the unit that killed the 80-year-old Palestinian American Omar Assad back in January 2022.

A senior U.S. official said that while Blinken determined the battalion committed gross human rights violations, the information provided by Israel over the last three months showed the IDF remediated the behavior of the battalion and addressed U.S. concerns.

According to Axios, the IDF provided the U.S. evidence that the two soldiers who were involved in the incident investigated were discharged from combat missions and would not be called for reserve service and that the criminal investigation against them didn’t materialize because Palestinian witnesses refused to testify. IDF also reportedly reasoned out that the incidents occurred before the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel and all took place in the occupied West Bank.

The U.S. official added that the IDF showed the U.S. it has taken additional steps regarding the unit to avoid such incidents, including changing the vetting process for soldiers who want to join the unit and holding a two-week seminar about human rights violations specifically for this unit.

But this should not be enough, according to CAIR.

“Secretary Blinken is knowingly violating U.S. law by backtracking on his plan to sanction an Israeli military unit that has clearly committed gross human rights violations using U.S. weapons,” CAIR Deputy Director Edward Ahmed Mitchell said back then. “Secretary Blinken’s cowardly, morally reprehensible and blatantly illegal decision confirms what numerous State Department whistleblowers have said: he is disregarding the conclusions of career diplomats, as well as experts on federal and international law. Secretary Blinken is now as much of a war criminal as the war criminal he will continue to arm, Israeli defense minister Gallant and he should resign his office in disgrace.”

He also noted that earlier this year, CAIR condemned Blinken’s apparent backtracking on sanctioning the unit for human rights abuses.

In the end, the department still deemed that it would continue to support the controversial Israeli unit.

“The Department has for the past several months continued to review an additional unit to evaluate new information provided by the Government of Israel. After thoroughly reviewing that information, we have determined that violations by this unit have also been effectively remediated. Consistent with the Leahy process, this unit can continue receiving security assistance from the United States of America,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said.

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