On May 8, President Joe Biden vowed that he would halt offensive weapons to the Israeli government if it moved forward with an assault on Rafah.
While we celebrated the statement as a significant positive step, we noted that we must hold our government accountable for making good on President Biden’s vow.
Sadly, despite a major, devastating escalation of Israeli military operations in Rafah in recent days, President Biden has not made good on that promise. The time for us to ramp up pressure to hold him and our leaders in Congress accountable has come.
By any humane standard, this war has been far over “the line” since the beginning.
This week, we were devastated as a moment we long feared came to fruition. As Israeli tanks rolled into Rafah, U.S.-supplied bombs decimated a tent encampment for displaced Palestinians, killing nearly 50 people including children in a gruesome, horrifying massacre.
Despite international outrage, the Biden administration has claimed the Rafah assault has not crossed its arbitrary “red line” for halting military aid. But the truth is that by any humane standard, this war, and the U.S. role in enabling it, has been far over “the line” of what’s morally acceptable since the beginning.
As former Obama administration Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes said, “it’s hard to fathom what else needs to happen for the U.S. to finally and fully withdraw support for a military operation that is this utterly devastating in its human consequences.”
As we share in deep global mourning and outrage, we must never give way to despair.
Our collective advocacy has been crucial in pushing our government in the right direction previously, and we must do everything in our power now to continue to build pressure to hold President Biden accountable, both to his own promises and to U.S. and international law.
One of the most impactful ways we can do so is to raise pressure in Congress by urging our representatives to speak out and send a clear message: the U.S. must immediately end its shameful complicity in these atrocities and secure a permanent ceasefire to stop the killing, free all hostages, and begin the long road toward healing.
