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War & Peace
'Our Country Is Obsessed With War,' Tlaib Says as House Approves $832 Billion Military Bill
"Every year, Congress votes to invest in death and destruction instead of healthcare, housing, clean air and water, or ending child poverty here at home," said Rep. Rashida Tlaib.
Jul 18, 2025
The U.S. House passed legislation early Friday that would provide roughly $832 billion in funding for military programs for the coming fiscal year, a vote that came shortly after the chamber approved a $9 billion rescissions package that takes an axe to public media and foreign aid.
Five House Democrats—Reps. Don Davis of North Carolina, Jared Golden of Maine, Vicente Gonzalez of Texas, Adam Gray of California, and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington—joined most Republicans in voting for the military appropriations bill for fiscal year 2026. Just three Republicans voted no.
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), who opposed the legislation along with other members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, wrote on social media following the vote that "our country is obsessed with war."
"Every year, Congress votes to invest in death and destruction instead of healthcare, housing, clean air and water, or ending child poverty here at home," Tlaib continued. "I will not vote to send another $831.5 billion to the Pentagon."
Republican supporters of the legislation touted provisions that boost investments in the immensely wasteful F-35 and other aircraft, support "modernization of the nuclear triad," and allocate "approximately $13 billion for missile defense and space programs to augment and integrate in support of the Golden Dome effort."
"In the middle of the night, House Republicans just passed a bill that will dump billions into the Pentagon, the only agency that has NEVER passed an audit," wrote Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), who voted against the legislation. "If we want to actually cut spending—this is a good spot to start. Not by kicking 17 million Americans off their healthcare."
The measure's passage came as the House also worked on an authorization bill that would allow the U.S. military to spend the funds appropriated by lawmakers.
During a House Armed Services Committee hearing on the authorization bill earlier this week, the panel's Republican chairman—who has received millions of dollars in campaign cash from military contractors that benefit from an ever-increasing Pentagon budget—mocked Reps. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.) for being the lone opponents of advancing the measure out of committee.
"I am used to the good-natured ribbing from my colleagues," Khanna wrote. "But I do not believe we need a $1 trillion budget to have a strong, modern defense. And I want to see more investment in good jobs at home than billions spent on more wars abroad."
WATCH: Armed Services members mock @RoKhanna for voting against the largest military budget in US history
All other @HASCDemocrats (except @RepSaraJacobs) voted to spend 1 TRILLION on war — even as working families continue to struggle across the country#NDAA @HASCRepublicans https://t.co/uKC9dB7m2J pic.twitter.com/d41N1KYJSO
— Just Foreign Policy (@justfp) July 16, 2025
The House's passage of the military funding bill came minutes after the chamber approved a White House-backed rescissions package that aims to claw back $9 billion in previously approved spending on public broadcasting and foreign assistance.
The rescissions bill now heads to President Donald Trump's desk for his signature.
Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.), the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee, said in a statement that "Republicans once again handed over the congressional power of the purse to Donald Trump and Russell Vought," the director of the Office of Management and Budget.
"This was never about exercising fiscal responsibility," said Boyle. "If it were, Republicans would never have passed their Big Ugly Law that adds trillions to the national debt with massive tax breaks for billionaires. This was about caving to Trump."
The budget law Boyle referenced also included more than $150 billion for the Pentagon, pushing U.S. military spending above $1 trillion.
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'No State Is Above the Law': Hague Group Issues Plan to Counter Israeli Genocide in Gaza
"These measures show that we will no longer allow international law to be treated as optional, or Palestinian life as disposable," said Colombian President Gustavo Petro.
Jul 16, 2025
The Hague Group—a coalition of Global South nations launched earlier this year by Progressive International to hold Israel legally accountable for its annihilation of Gaza—on Wednesday released a joint action plan aimed at bringing an end to the 21-month U.S.-backed genocidal assault on the Palestinian enclave.
On the second and final day of an emergency summit in Bogotá, Colombia—which co-chairs the Hague Group with South Africa—the coalition announced a six-point plan for "coordinated diplomatic, legal, and economic measures to restrain Israel's assault on the occupied Palestinian territories and defend international law at large."
Hague Group executive secretary Varsha Gandikota-Nellutla said in a statement that "this conference marks a turning point—not just for Palestine, but for the future of the international system."
"For decades, states—particularly in the Global South—have borne the cost of a broken international system," Gandikota-Nellutla added. "In Bogotá, they came together to reclaim it—not with words, but with actions."
Twelve summit participants—Bolivia, Colombia, Cuba, Indonesia, Iraq, Libya, Malaysia, Namibia, Nicaragua, Oman, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and South Africa—committed to the following measures:
- Preventing the provision or transfer of arms, munitions, military fuel, related military equipment, and dual-use items to Israel;
- Preventing the transit, docking, and servicing of ships at any port where there is a clear risk of the vessel being used to carry the aforementioned items to Israel;
- Preventing the transportation of such items aboard vessels flagged in participating nations;
- Launching an urgent review of all public contracts to prevent public institutions and funds from supporting Israel's illegal occupation of Palestine and entrenching its unlawful presence;
- Complying with obligations to ensure accountability for the most serious Israeli crimes under international law; and
- Supporting universal jurisdiction mandates in national legal frameworks and judiciaries to ensure justice for victims of international crimes committed in Palestine.
"These 12 states have taken a momentous step forward," United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese, a prominent participant in the summit, said in a statement. "The clock is now ticking for states—from Europe to the Arab world and beyond—to join them."
Earlier this month, the Trump administration sanctioned Albanese, who recently said that "Israel is responsible for one of the cruelest genocides in modern history." The U.S. administration also imposed sanctions on judges from the International Criminal Court (ICC) after the tribunal issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza, including murder and forced starvation.
In addition to the 12 nations, delegates from Algeria, Bangladesh, Botswana, Brazil, Chile, China, Djibouti, Honduras, Ireland, Lebanon, Mexico, Norway, Pakistan, Palestine, Portugal, Qatar, Senegal, Slovenia, Spain, Turkey, Uruguay, and Venezuela attended the Bogotá summit.
Many of the participating nations are supporting the ongoing genocide case against Israel filed in December 2023 by South Africa at the International Court of Justice in The Hague. The ICJ has ordered Israel to prevent genocidal acts and allow humanitarian aid into Gaza. Israel has ignored the orders.
"What we have achieved here is a collective affirmation that no state is above the law," South African Minister of International Relations and Cooperation Ronald Lamola said Wednesday. "The Hague Group was born to advance international law in an era of impunity. The measures adopted in Bogotá show that we are serious—and that coordinated state action is possible."
Colombian President Gustavo Petro, whose government last year severed diplomatic relations with Israel, said, "We came to Bogotá to make history—and we did."
"Together, we have begun the work of ending the era of impunity," he added. "These measures show that we will no longer allow international law to be treated as optional, or Palestinian life as disposable."
According to the Gaza Health Ministry, at least 58,386 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces since October 2023—most of them women and children. Multiple peer-reviewed studies have concluded that this figure is likely a vast undercount.
More than 139,000 Palestinians have been wounded, and at least 14,000 others are missing and presumed dead and buried beneath the rubble of bombed buildings. Most of Gaza's more than 2 million people have also been forcibly displaced, often multiple times, as Israel pursues an official policy of ethnic cleansing under the guise of humanitarian relocation.
Ultimately, it is up to Israel to end its obliteration of Gaza. However, neither Israel—which claims it is acting in self-defense in response to the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023—nor its unconditional U.S. benefactor recognize the authority of the ICJ or ICC, and both nations vehemently deny that any genocide is occurring in Gaza, despite growing international consensus.
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Lawyer Linked to Netanyahu Gov't Warned ICC Prosecutor Israel Would 'Destroy' Him Over Arrest Warrants
A British-Israeli lawyer told ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan he'd spoken to a top Israeli legal adviser and warned he should have gone after "lower-level suspects."
Jul 16, 2025
One international human rights expert said Tuesday that a new report of alleged threats made against the International Criminal Court's prosecutor regarding his arrest warrants for Israeli officials were "extremely worrying," noting that the reported threats were just the latest show of intimidation against authorities who aim to hold Israel to account for its abuses of humanitarian law.
"The Commission of Inquiry on the [occupied Palestinian territories] quit, Francesca Albanese was sanctioned, and now we have reports of threats against Karim Khan," said London School of Economics human rights fellow Alonso Gurmendi, referring to the mass resignation of three United Nations human rights experts, U.S. sanctions targeting the U.N. special rapporteur on the OPT, and the news about the ICC prosecutor.
The Middle East Eye (MEE) reported that a British-Israeli defense lawyer linked to Israel's government, Nicholas Kaufman, delivered a warning to Khan at a meeting in May, as Khan was facing pressure over the arrest warrants he'd issued for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. Along with Hamas leader Mohammed Deif—since confirmed dead—Netanyahu and Gallant were accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Netanyahu's government began a military assault on Gaza in October 2023 that has been called a genocide by top human rights experts and groups.
Days before the meeting in May, Kaufman reportedly told Khan that he'd spoken to Roy Schondorf, a legal adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
When they met at a hotel in The Hague, Kaufman told Khan to apply to the ICC to have the warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant reclassified as "confidential" and submit them as part of a "noncriminal, noninvestigative process," allowing Israel to access the details of the allegations and privately challenge them without the outcome of the case being made public.
"This looks like a coordinated attack on international accountability on a scale never before seen."
Kaufman also told Khan that issuing more arrest warrants for Israeli officials including Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir over their support for illegal settlements in the West Bank, as the ICC was considering at the time, could result in more U.S. sanctions against the ICC; the Trump administration imposed travel and economic sanctions against Khan earlier this year. More sanctions would "risk destroying the court," said Kaufman, MEE reported.
"All options would be off the table" for Khan if he issued the new arrest warrants, warned Kaufman. "They will destroy you, and they will destroy the court."
Kaufman told MEE that he requested a meeting with Khan in early May "because as an Israeli ICC lawyer, who had experienced the shock of October 7, 2023, I was well placed to understand the matter" and because Khan was "under fire" over his investigation into alleged war crimes committed by Netanyahu's government in Gaza.
At the time of the meeting, Khan was also facing an investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct; he has denied the allegations.
He also told Khan that he should have gone after "lower-level suspects" and that his indictments of Netanyahu and Gallant had "basically indicted Israel."
Kaufman told the outlet that he had simply "told Mr. Khan that he should be looking for a way to extricate himself from his errors" but denied that he'd made a proposal to amend Khan's case against the Israeli officials on behalf of the government—despite his contact days earlier with Netanyahu's legal adviser.
Khan and his wife, lawyer Shyamala Alagendra, who also attended the meeting, told Kaufman his warning that Israel would "destroy" Khan over more warrants "was a clear threat."
Gurmendi said that if MEE's report is true, "this looks like a coordinated attack on international accountability on a scale never before seen."
Khan has faced other threats from officials allied with Israel since investigating Israel's assault on Gaza. In April 2024, the United Kingdom's then-foreign secretary, former Prime Minister David Cameron, had a tense phone call with Khan in which he threatened to defund the ICC and withdraw the U.K. from the court if it issued warrants for any Israeli leaders.
In May 2024, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) threatened sanctions against ICC officials is Khan applied for more warrants.
Graham "was screaming at us," ICC lawyer Andrew Cayley, who oversaw the court's investigation into Palestine, told The Observer.
After Khan announced later that month that's he'd requested warrants for the Israeli and Hamas leaders, Cayley "began receiving anonymous, threatening phone calls saying, 'You're in a very dangerous position.'"
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Death, Lost Limbs, and Starvation: Gaza Children Suffer Unimaginably as World Continues to 'Look Away'
More than 17,000 children have been reported killed over the past 20 months of bombardment by Israel. But that figure only scratches the surface of the suffering being inflicted.
Jul 16, 2025
Several new reports from the United Nations have once again highlighted the horrific toll Israel's genocidal military onslaught has taken on the children of Gaza.
More than 17,000 children have been reported killed over the past 20 months. But that figure only scratches the surface of the suffering being inflicted.
Reports released this week detailed overwhelming malnourishment among children due to Israel's blockade of food entering the strip. Meanwhile, children losing limbs from war wounds is a daily occurrence.
As The Guardian's editorial board wrote yesterday, "a classroom-worth of children have been killed each day since the war began." Over just the past week, there have been multiple horrific massacres in which children were killed.
On Sunday, six children were killed by an Israeli drone strike while waiting to collect water, deaths Israel attributed to a "technical error." The Thursday before that, another 10 children were killed by an airstrike as they lined up outside a hospital waiting for nutritional supplements and treatment.
As The Guardian noted, these children were in such positions as a result of Israel's deliberate strangulation of their access to the resources needed to live:
Those six thirsty children should not have needed to queue for water due to what the UN calls a human-made drought. Human Rights Watch believes that thousands of Palestinians have died due to Israel's deliberate pattern of actions to deprive them of water, which it alleges amounts to the crime against humanity of extermination as well as acts of genocide.
Those 10 hungry children should not have required nutritional supplements, but Israel continues to choke off aid and civilians are starving.
On Tuesday, UNRWA reported that 1 in 10 of the children screened in its clinics suffer from acute malnutrition.
"Our health teams are confirming that malnutrition rates are increasing in Gaza, especially since the siege was tightened more than four months ago on the second of March," UNRWA's director of communications, Juliette Touma, told reporters in Geneva via a video link from Amman, Jordan.
"One nurse that we spoke to told us that in the past, he only saw these cases of malnutrition in textbooks and documentaries," Touma said. "Medicine, nutrition supplies, hygiene material, fuel are all rapidly running out."
In a post on UNRWA's blog, Touma wrote:
There are very little therapeutic supplies to treat children with malnutrition as basics are scarce in Gaza. The Israeli authorities have imposed a tight siege blocking the entry of food, medicines, medical and nutritional supplies and hygiene material includ[ing] soap. While the siege is sometimes eased, UNRWA (the largest humanitarian organisation in Gaza) has not been allowed to bring in humanitarian assistance since 2 March.
She said that UNRWA has more than 6,000 aid trucks waiting for the "green light" from Israeli authorities, who continue to block them.
"Why should babies die of malnutrition in the 21st century, especially when it's totally preventable?" she asked.
Another report from the U.N.-sponsored Global Protection Cluster found that in addition to the 17,000 children reported dead, more than 40,000 have war-related disabilities. A quarter of those require acute or ongoing rehabilitation.
It found that on average, "10 children per day lose one or both of their legs" as a result of ongoing attacks by Israeli forces.
In December, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres reported that "Gaza now has the highest number of child amputees per capita anywhere in the world—many losing limbs and undergoing surgeries without even anesthesia."
This is due in part to the war's effects on Gaza's hospitals, just 47% of which remain partially functional due to destruction by the Israeli military and supply shortages caused by the blockade.
"Gaza’s shattered health system is overwhelmed—and aid is being blocked by the government of Israel. The world cannot continue to look away," said UNRWA in a post Tuesday.
With the backing of the United States, Israel has banned UNRWA staff from entering the Gaza Strip since March, citing uncorroborated accusations that 19 out of UNRWA's approximately 13,000 staff in Gaza took part in Hamas' October 7 attack on Israel.
Since then, aid infrastructure in the strip has been largely demolished, with most of it now directed by the U.S.-Israeli-administered Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. More than 870 people have been killed in massacres at these aid sites.
"The U.N., including UNRWA and partners, must be allowed to do their work and bring in humanitarian assistance at scale, including for children, said Philippe Lazzarini, the UNRWA commissioner-general. "Any additional delay to a cease-fire now will cause more deaths."
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