News Release

U.S. Billions to Israel

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Wednesday, Vice President Joe Biden said: “I condemn the decision by the government of Israel to advance planning for new housing units in East Jerusalem.” He also stated that the U.S. will hold Israel “accountable for any statements or actions that inflame tensions or prejudice the outcome of talks.”

JOSH RUEBNER
National advocacy director of the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, Ruebner said today: “Official written U.S. policy, which is based on the Fourth Geneva Convention, deems Israel’s colonization of Palestinian land as ‘inconsistent with international law.’ The Obama administration should translate its promise into action to hold Israel accountable for its ongoing violations of international law and its defiance of repeated U.S. calls to freeze all colonization of Palestinian land. The most effective way to do so would be to end U.S. military aid to Israel, amounting to $3 billion this year alone; [that would be] a real step towards a just and lasting peace between Palestinians and Israelis.”

The U.S. Campaign recently launched a new website — AidToIsrael.org — that documents “how U.S. military aid to Israel is being misused to injure and kill Palestinian civilians and to commit human rights abuses and violations of international law through Israel’s illegal 42-year military occupation of the Palestinian West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip.” The website also documents “the budgetary trade-offs in terms of affordable housing, green jobs training, early reading education programs, and primary health care that could have been funded with this money instead.”

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167