Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Slams Biden Admin’s ‘Indefensible’ Move – By Nick Mordowanec (Newsweek) / Jan 29, 2024
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat, wants the Biden administration to reverse course and “restore” humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza amid the Israel-Hamas war.
On October 7, 2023, Hamas led the deadliest Palestinian militant attack on Israel in history. Israel subsequently launched its heaviest-ever airstrikes on Gaza, home to more than 2 million Palestinians. Israeli officials have said that about 1,200 people in Israel were killed and some 250 hostages were taken by Hamas, according to the Associated Press. Meanwhile, more than 26,000 Palestinians have been killed, officials from the health ministry in Gaza said. International organizations have sounded the alarm of the worsening humanitarian situation in the region after Israel cut off Palestine’s supply of water, fuel, and electricity in response to the attack.
The United States is one of nine countries pausing funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) after allegations that a dozen of its workers aided Hamas in its attack on Israel. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said last Thursday that Israeli officials provided “specific information” resulting in the funding cutoff that affects an agency with approximately 13,000 workers in the region, most of them Palestinian.
“Cutting off support to @UNRWA—the primary source of humanitarian aid to 2 million+ Gazans—is unacceptable,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote Monday morning on X, formerly Twitter. “Among an organization of 13,000 UN aid workers, risking the starvation of millions over grave allegations of 12 is indefensible. The US should restore aid immediately.”
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