Has Gregory Meeks succumbed to Jewish lobby pressure?

Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee will not request a delay to an arms sale to Israel after the Biden administration agreed to brief lawmakers on the deal. “What we wanted to do is to have a dialogue and conversation,” committee Chairman Gregory Meeks told reporters Tuesday.

Meeks’ comments come after he told Democrats on the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Monday night he was planning to send a letter to the Biden administration asking for a delay in a recently approved US$735 million sale so members could have more time to review it.

“We’re going to have a meeting with the administration tomorrow where the issues and the questions that one may have will be able to be asked, and that was the purpose of considering the letter.”

The administration notified Congress on 5^th May it approved the sale to Israel. The bulk of the deal is for Boeing-made Joint Direct Attack Munitions that can turn so-called dumb bombs into precision-guided missiles.

The notification set off a 15-day congressional review period in which lawmakers could block the sale. But that window is all but closed now with just three days left in the review period.

The approval for the arms sale came five days before Hamas, the militant group that controls the Gaza Strip, began firing rockets toward Israel in response to Israeli police action at Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Several Democrats have expressed concern about the administration proceeding with the sale amid the conflict, including Foreign Affairs Committee member Rep. Ilhan Omar, who said it would be “appalling” for the sale to move forward.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Tuesday defended the Biden administration’s approach to the conflict, saying intensive diplomatic discussions behind the scenes are the best means of reducing the violence. 

“The president’s objective is clear, which is that he wants to see an end to the violence on the ground, an end to the suffering of the Israeli and Palestinian people,” Psaki told reporters aboard Air Force One on Tuesday.

“Our focus and our strategy here is to work through quiet, intensive diplomacy, and he’s been doing this long enough to know the best way to end an international conflict is typically not to debate it in public.” 

Biden administration officials have conducted more than 60 calls to date with Israelis, Palestinians and other regional officials, Psaki noted, including President Biden’s three calls with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in less than a week.

Biden last spoke with Netanyahu on Monday and expressed support for a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, but stopped short of backing or publicly urging a cease-fire.

“UK should freeze arms sales to Israel”, demands Jeremy Corbyn

UK Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn renewed his call for a British arms embargo against Israel after a United Nations Human Rights Council commission of inquiry said that IDF has likely committed war crimes on the Gaza border.

“The UK government must unequivocally condemn the killings and freeze arms sales to Israel,” Corbyn tweeted on Friday. Last year, the Labour Party approved a motion that called for an arms ban to Israel.

The 22-page report investigated the death of 189 Palestinians by the IDF during the Hamas-led weekly Great March of Return protests which have taken place along the Gaza border.

The UNHRC report was authored by a three-person commission of inquiry, which plans to submit a full report prior to a March 18 debate on the matter at the UNHRC’s 40th session in Geneva.

The report focused primarily on Israeli and not Hamas violence, and concluded that the protests were peaceful. It warned that the International Criminal Court could prosecute Israeli leaders and soldiers.

Last year, the UNHRC passed a resolution which called on all UN member states to halt the sale of any arms to Israel that could be used to violate international human rights law. United States special envoy Jason Greenblatt attacked the UNHRC report on Gaza in a series of tweets.

“This [commission of inquiry] report is another manifestation of the UNHRC’s clear bias against Israel, which remains the only country that the Council dedicates an entire standing agenda item to targeting. When will the HRC speak the truth?” he wrote.

Hamas behaved with reckless irresponsibility [and] disregard for human life when it incited violent (not ‘civilian’) protests, breaches [and] attacks at the Gaza fence-line,” Greenblatt wrote. “Hamas is directly responsible for the miserable situation of the people of Gaza.”

Israel has rejected the report and holds that the protests are violent riots led by Hamas members.

During those riots, Palestinians in Gaza have thrown stones and Molotov cocktails at soldiers. The protesters have attempted to breach the border fence and have placed explosive devices by the fence. Palestinians in Gaza have also launched incendiary devices into Israel, burning thousands of dunams of fields and forests.

Republican lawmakers in the US also spoke out against the report and in support of Israel’s right to self-defense.

Congressman Lee Zeldin, a ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations and co-chair of the House Republican Israel Caucus, was among those who issued a statement on the matter.

“This one-sided, highly biased and woefully inaccurate report fails to take into account key facts; most evidently, Hamas’s provocation and orchestration of this violence, its purposeful destabilization of order along the border and its continued incursions into Israel’s sovereign soil, including the launching of over 10,000 rockets and mortars on Israeli towns and villages, and the dozens of tunnels, enabling their death squads, since the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza,” Zeldin wrote.