In the latest fight over the foreign and military aid package Democrats are attempting to move through the legislative branch, Republicans in Congress are hoping to kill a proposal for $9 billion in humanitarian aid intended to go to civilians at Gaza. The GOP members argue that any money sent will be used by Hamas to bolster its war effort against Israel. 

On Tuesday, 11 GOP senators sent a letter to Senator Schumer demanding that he exclude the Biden administration proposal for Gaza humanitarian aid that was included in his $106 billion foreign and military aid budget request. 

The letter, written by Senator Blackburn and co-signed by 10 colleagues so far, states that “sending aid to the Palestinians in Gaza is akin to funneling aid directly to Hamas.” They say that “additional funding … will inevitably end up in the hands of a genocidal Palestinian terrorist organization that has evidenced its desire to destroy the Jewish state.”

“Israel is our strongest ally in the Middle East,” the senators write. “As such, it is perplexing why the President would ask Congress to enable the United States to inadvertently fund Hamas’ terror campaign against Israel. As we’ve seen in the past, this so-called ‘humanitarian aid’ will likely be channeled through international organizations, including the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees.”

One of the letter’s signatories, Senator Lummis, said she hopes her Republican colleagues and a few Democrats can band together to strike the proposal from any package that comes to the Senate floor. She argues that it is Hamas’s responsibility — not America or Israel’s — to raise the standard of living for their own people.

“Hamas is the elected leadership of Gaza,” the Wyoming senator says, referring to the last elections at the Gaza Strip and the West Bank that saw Hamas win a plurality of the vote. “It is incumbent upon Hamas to provide food and shelter and clean water to its own people.”

“The approach to literally give aid and comfort that will not go to the citizens” is unacceptable, she says. 

A Navy SEAL who recently returned from a mission to the Jewish state, Congressman Derrick Van Orden, tells reporters that what he saw surpasses anything he witnessed during his nearly three decades in the Special Forces, and that humanitarian aid to Gaza at this time is not prudent. Any member who votes for it or fails to support the $14.3 billion military package for Israel written by Speaker Johnson, Mr. Van Orden says, must “look at themselves in the mirror and justify that.”

“I still have dust on my boots from walking through that kibbutz,” Mr. Van Orden says, recounting the videos he saw and horror stories he heard from first responders on the ground in southern Israel. “It’s the most horrific thing I have ever experienced in my life. Through multiple combat tours on several different continents — and remember, I was a combat medic.”

“Franklin Delano Roosevelt … did not call Winston Churchill and say: ‘We must rush humanitarian aid to the people of Nazi Germany, we must rush humanitarian aid to the people of fascist Italy and Imperial Japan,’” the congressman says. “Let’s remember that the people of Gaza voted Hamas in, and it wasn’t just Hamas fighters that crossed that fence, it was civilians from Gaza.”