US Aid and Israel-Palestine Conflict

My question has to, starts off with,

in April 2024,

USAID concluded that Israel was blocking aid

to Palestinians in Gaza.

But despite this, the next month in May,

you told Congress, quote,

we do not currently assess that

the Israeli government is prohibiting or otherwise restricting aid,

which allowed continued weapons supply to Israel,

which was overriding your own experts.

You had opportunities to distance yourself and

your administration from arming Israel,

which has committed what leading Holocaust scholars and

human rights agencies call a genocide.

You rejected them and continued arming Israel.

This is your legacy.

How do you justify to the countless Palestinians,

including thousands of children that died,

you know, from your decisions?

Yes, of course.

You couldn't be and I wouldn't be human

if I didn't ask myself every day,

could we have done things differently?

On the Israeli side,

the trauma was such that I believe

the determination across that society

to take the actions that they took

in Gaza was such that

irrespective of what we did,

they would have continued to do what

they did and cutting off arms.

Sure, that was an option,

but I don't actually believe that

at least in the near term,

it would have changed things.

And I also believe it would have led

to an even wider war.

I do remain with a question

in my mind about why

barely a word was spoken in all those months about Hamas,

which was an actor too and

is responsible for so much of what happened.

But yes, we all look at it.

I certainly look at it and say,

maybe we could have done differently.

Maybe we could have done better by the people.

I wish we could have.