1. United States
2. Letter

In just one day this past week, Israel’s government killed over 558 people in Lebanon, including 50 children. As in Palestine, Israel’s indiscriminate bombing campaign in Lebanon has targeted civilian infrastructure. About 500,000 people have been forcibly displaced already, and thousands have been wounded. The Biden-Harris administration can stop the bloodshed, rather than continuing to allow the Israeli government to operate with impunity as they carry out war crimes. You must cut off weapons to Israel now. Implement an immediate arms embargo to end the slaughter of civilians and de-escalate the risk of a wider regional war. This week, ProPublica released an investigation showing that U.S. Secretary of State Blinken knew that Israel’s government deliberately blocked humanitarian aid to Gaza, but lied about it to Congress. Experts from multiple state agencies shared abundant evidence with Blinken. They called for a pause on arms transfers to Israel in order to comply with U.S. law—which mandates cutting off weapons to governments that block U.S. humanitarian assistance. The U.S. government should at least have stopped arming Israel’s genocide of Palestinians then—though it never should have armed Israel in the first place. In the months since Blinken’s statement to Congress in May, Israel’s government has continued to devastate and ethnically cleanse Gaza, and recently launched the largest invasion of the West Bank in decades—with fighter jets, drones, armored vehicles, and ground forces. Now, Israel’s government is expanding its violence in Lebanon, threatening a ground invasion. Instead of deploying more U.S. troops to the region, our government must stop military assistance to Israel.