McConnell dismisses calls to put conditions on US aid to Israel

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Tuesday slapped down the proposal backed by some Senate Democrats to condition U.S. foreign aid to Israel on the Israeli Defense Forces complying with international law to minimize civilian casualties in Gaza.

“I think it’s ridiculous,” the GOP leader said when asked about the debate among Democrats about attaching conditions to aid to Israel.

“Our relationship with Israel is the closest national security relationship of any country in the world. And to condition, in effect, our assistance to Israel on their meeting our standards it seems to me is totally unnecessary,” he said.

Sens. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) have been two of the most outspoken critics of the civilian death toll in Gaza, which the health ministry in the Hamas-controlled territory says has climbed past 14,000.

Top Stories from The Hill

• California Democrat moves to force vote on expelling Santos after Ethics report
• House GOP lawmakers who flouted chamber’s mask rule take legal fight to Supreme Court
• Santos says he’ll stand for expulsion vote
• GOP faces ominous signs in effort to avoid January shutdown

Sanders has said the U.S.’s “blank check approach must end” and that U.S. officials “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,” Sanders wrote in The New York Times.

Murphy said on CNN’s “State of the Union” that the high number of civilian casualties in Gaza are “unacceptable” and “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 warned.