Congress must keep weapons out of Israel if Trump likes it or not
A former State Department advisor warns that the Trump administration is displaying âeven less regard for human rightsâ in Gaza than Biden did
by Stacy Gilbert, reposted from The Hill, April 1, 2025
On March 17, Israel resumed large-scale attacks on Gaza, with local hospitals reporting that over 400 Palestinians were killed in a single night, including at least 174 children. The death toll has since risen to more than 1,000 from the daily airstrikes on Gaza, according to local hospitals.
Those attacks almost certainly utilized U.S.-supplied weapons. A Senate vote this week to block $8.8 billion in weapons to Israel marks a new test of how our representatives on Capitol Hill will hold the Trump administration accountable to U.S. and international law governing the use of those weapons.
The laws around the use of weapons in conflict zones and the safeguards to protect civilians took our nation and world decades to achieve. Now, with most not even realizing it, we are seeing that achievement slip away.
A significant blow came courtesy of President Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who in late February â with little public attention or pushback in our nationâs capital â rescinded the Biden administrationâs NSM-20 directive, significantly rolling back safeguards on who receives U.S. weapons and how they are used.
Our governmentâs retreat from upholding its human rights obligations is accelerating under Trump, but it began before his inauguration in January. When I joined the State Department more than 20 years ago, I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution. I was motivated to take that oath because I wanted to represent American values of freedom, justice, equality and the dignity of human rights around the world.
Last May, I found that the only way to uphold that oath was to resign.
As an adviser in the departmentâs Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration, I had seen numerous reports that showed that the government of Israel was deliberately blocking life-saving aid into Gaza â a violation of U.S. and international law â in addition to the very real access challenges posed by Hamas, destroyed infrastructure and looting by desperate people. As a result, starvation, disease and death had begun to spread among the 2 million Palestinians in Gaza as they faced daily bombardment and displacement by the Israeli military.
I contributed to collecting those findings into a report that would be presented to Congress, the NSM-20 â a directive created by the Biden administration meant to safeguard U.S. law by determining whether recipients of U.S. weapons were abiding by international humanitarian law in their use of U.S. weapons and not blocking humanitarian assistance.
However, the data and reporting from aid organizations never reached Congress. Instead, State Department leadership egregiously edited the report to conclude, falsely, that Israel was not blocking humanitarian assistance. Because of that astoundingly mendacious conclusion, the State Department ensured that weapons would continue to flow. In my resignation letter I said that report would haunt us. It has.
The Trump administration is now signaling that the current White House plans to show even less regard for human rights than its predecessor. A few days after the rescission of NSM-20, it was announcedthat the Department of Defense would terminate positions that focus on mitigating harm to civilians in conflict zones. And an upcoming executive order would reduce congressional oversight of foreign weapons deals by stripping down the Arms Export Control Act.
The repercussions of those decisions canât be overstated.
War crimes committed by U.S. weapons will further damage our nationâs reputation around the world, and send a message to other actors that the rules of international law no longer apply. The rules-based order that so many have struggled to create over the last century will be reduced to the law of the jungle, and millions of innocent people will suffer for it. Americans and American interests at home and abroad will not be safe.
Our best hope is for Congress, which has oversight power over U.S. weapons transfers, to step up and fight for adherence to U.S. law.
The president can rescind NSM-20, but he canât change the law. The Foreign Assistance Act states that no U.S. weapons can be given to a nation that engages in a âconsistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rightsâ or which ârestricts, directly or indirectly, the delivery of U.S. humanitarian assistance.â
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, already facing an arrest warrant issued last fall by the International Criminal Court for allegedly using starvation as a weapon of war and other war crimes in Gaza, has again cut off all food and other aid into Gaza and shut off Gazaâs supply of electricity. Congress must enforce the law.
The opportunity to uphold our own law is already in motion. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) announced Thursday that he will force a vote in the Senate on joint resolutions of disapproval to block $8.8 billion of Trumpâs weapons deliveries to Israel. Many of those weapons, including 2,000-pound bombs, 500-pound bombs and GBU-39 small diameter bombs, have been found to have been used in apparent war crimes in Gaza.
The opportunity to salvage our nationâs rule of law and commitment to human rights is there for every U.S. senator to take. For the good of our country and world, we must hope â and demand â that they do.
Stacy Gilbert is a former senior civil-military adviser in the State Departmentâs Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration. She resigned in May 2024 after more than 20 years working in humanitarian crises in protest of a State Department report that said Israel was not blocking humanitarian assistance in Gaza.
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