Brad Sherman Asks Blinken To Give Humanitarian Aid Based On ‘Greatest Need’ Not ‘Most Publicity’

4 months ago

During a House Foreign Relations Committee hearing last week, Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) questioned Secretary of State Antony Blinken about distributing humanitarian aid around the world.

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00:00expired I now recognize Mr. Sherman. Mr. Secretary, thank you for being here and

00:12presenting your budget request which I strongly support. Dr. Freedie did more

00:19for America than any other foreigner in the last 200 years. Yet he remains in

00:26jail in Pakistan. All Americans are dedicated to his release, but some not

00:33dedicated enough to agree with Pakistan for a Freedie Siddiqui trade. And I would

00:40hope that you would urge the administration to make such a trade. I'm

00:45confident the Pakistanis would accept it. Obviously the Pakistanis should release

00:48him without conditions, but it's very hard to ask any other non-American to

00:55cooperate with the United States when the person who did the most for us

01:00remains in jail. I hope you would also direct the US ambassador to Albania to

01:08visit Camp Ashraf and demonstrate our continued concern for those

01:15who fled Iran and then fled Iraq. This is particularly relevant because

01:23President Raisi of Iran died, and while some mourn his passing, he was

01:29personally responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Iranians, including

01:34many who are the family members of those who are in Camp Ashraf. 30,000 people

01:41apparently have died in Gaza. Perhaps half or more are civilians. Congress has

01:48provided you with 9.1 billion dollars in humanitarian aid. But there's other

01:55things going on around the world. 300,000 died in Darfur two decades ago, and now

02:01we see a new genocide in Darfur, where tens of thousands have been killed.

02:07Looking at the rest of Sudan, 18 million people face acute food

02:13insecurity. 600,000 Tigrians have died just in the last few years, and now

02:19millions of people face food insecurity in Ethiopia. In eastern Congo, we see 7.1

02:26million people displaced. 1.2 million Rohingya are in camps in Bangladesh,

02:33where countries have not contributed enough for their food, and therefore the

02:37World Food Program has reduced rations by 30%. The entire population of the

02:43Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh, or Artsakh, has been ethnically cleansed and now

02:47lives as refugees in Armenia. Can you commit that, and hopefully this is a

02:53just a yes-no answer, can you commit that when you allocate that 9.1 billion

03:00dollars of humanitarian aid, you will do so on the basis of where is the greatest

03:05need, rather than which conflicts get the most publicity? Yes. Thank you. People

03:11have think that the Middle East is as bad as it can possibly be. That's not

03:15true. Iran has a nuclear weapons program, I'm sure my colleagues will ask you

03:20about. I want to focus on Saudi Arabia. Some think Ben Salman is

03:25going to be a good friend of the United States, but even they must take the

03:29examples from the 1970s, where the Shah was a friend of the United States

03:34and every weapon system that he had was in the hands of the Ayatollahs by the

03:38end of that decade. Saudi Arabia will want a nuclear cooperation agreement

03:45with the United States. Can you commit to us that you will not send up to Congress

03:49a nuclear agreement with Saudi Arabia that does not include the additional

03:55protocol and does not meet the gold standard that we saw in the

04:04UAE nuclear cooperation agreement? Any nuclear cooperation agreement that we

04:10reach will have to address all of our non-proliferation goals and we want to

04:15make sure that, of course, we have gold standard agreements with whomever we

04:18reach these agreements. Thank you. Hamas had allied organizations. The

04:27Palestinian Islamic Jihad is the better known, but there is also the Popular

04:33Resistance Committees, the third biggest terrorist organization based in Gaza,

04:38which has not been designated a foreign terrorist organization, and I wonder if

04:43you can commit to either designating them as either an FTO or

04:50otherwise as a terrorist organization, such as a specially designated global

04:55terrorist, or at least come back to this committee in 30 days and tell us why you

05:00haven't done so. Happy to come back to you. We're always looking to see

05:03appropriate designations to use whatever tools we can against terrorist

05:07organizations. They are proud participants in the killing of 1,200

05:11Israelis on October 7th and they've killed Americans. They meet more than

05:19all the standards.

Brad Sherman Asks Blinken To Give Humanitarian Aid Based On ‘Greatest Need’ Not ‘Most Publicity’

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