House Bill Would Withhold Military Aid To Israel Over Detention Of Palestinian Children
(JTA) — Rep. Betty McCollum, a Minnesota Democrat, has introduced legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives that would withhold funding from Israel over its detention of Palestinian children.
The bill establishes the Human Rights Monitoring and Palestinian Child Victims of Israeli Military Detention Fund, authorizing $19 million annually for nongovernmental organizations to monitor human rights abuses associated with Israel’s military detention of children.
“Israel’s system of military juvenile detention is state-sponsored child abuse designed to intimidate and terrorize Palestinian children and their families,” McCollum said in a statement. “It must be condemned, but it is equally outrageous that U.S. tax dollars in the form of military aid to Israel are permitted to sustain what is clearly a gross human rights violation against children.”
More than 10,000 Palestinian children have been arrested, detained, abused and prosecuted by Israeli security forces in the Israeli military court system since 2000, McCollum’s statement said, citing monitoring groups such as Human Rights Watch and B’Tselem.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., last month praised McCollum for her previous efforts to limit aid to Israel during an interview when she said that cutting military and economic aid to Israel “is certainly on the table.”
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO