Murphy sides with Sanders over ‘unacceptable’ civilian death toll in Gaza

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said in a Sunday interview that the civilian death toll in Gaza was “unacceptable” and that he did not think it was controversial to stipulate that U.S. aid given to any country should be conditional on its adherence to international law.

Murphy doubled down on his previous remarks when pressed on Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-Vt.) comments that the U.S.’s “blank check approach must end” and that the U.S. “must make clear that, while we are friends of Israel, there are conditions to that friendship and we cannot be complicit in actions that violate international law and our own sense of decency.”

“Well, I stand by what I said,” Murphy said when asked on CNN’s “State of the Union” whether he agrees with Sanders. “I do believe that the level of civilian harm inside Gaza has been unacceptable and is unsustainable.”

“I think there’s both a moral cost to this — many civilians, innocent civilians, children often, losing their life — but I think there’s a strategic cost,” he continued. “Ultimately, Hamas will get stronger, not weaker, in the long run, if all of this civilian death allows them to recruit more effectively and ably inside Gaza.”

More than 12,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since Hamas launched its surprise attack on Israel on Oct. 7, according to estimates from the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry. Since then, people have protested around the world calling for a cease-fire, and incidents of antisemitism have skyrocketed.

Murphy noted that it is not unusual for the United States to include conditions on aid to allies, saying, “It’s very consistent with the ways in which we have dispensed aid, especially during wartime, to allies, for us to talk about making sure that the aid we give Ukraine or the aid we give Israel.”

“I guess I’m not sure what would be controversial about simply saying that aid we give any country has to be used in compliance with international law. And, yes, of course, I do think that Israel needs to be more careful in the way that it is conducting these operations,” he said.

“I think that you can defeat Hamas without this level of civilian casualty. And so that’s an appropriate discussion for us to have, in part because I really don’t know that it serves Israel’s strategic aims in the long run if Hamas ultimately is given this kind of bulletin board recruiting material.”