SARA CARTER - STAFF - NOV 15, 2022
Cruz stated that Attorney General Merrick Garland’s actions should end with his impeachment and that the FBI must never be used as a tool against our allies.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), warned on Tuesday that weaponizing the Department of Justice against Israel – a staunch allied nation of the United States – is unacceptable in the investigation of the death of a Palestine journalist. Cruz stated that Attorney General Merrick Garland’s actions should end with his impeachment and that the FBI must never be used as a tool against our allies.
Reports surfaced that the U.S. is launching an investigation into the fatal shooting of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh. Israel confirmed the information Monday in multiple media outlets. Israeli officials noted that such an investigation is a “grave mistake.”
A Justice Department spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Gantz’s statement. It was not immediately clear when the investigation might have begun and what it would entail. But a probe by the U.S. into Israeli actions was a rare step that could shake the strong alliance between the two countries.
Palestinian officials, Abu Akleh’s family and Al Jazeera accuse Israel of intentionally targeting and killing the 51-year-old journalist, who was wearing a helmet and a protective vest marked with the word “press” when she was shot last May in the occupied West Bank.
Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz, however, said on Twitter Monday, “that we won’t cooperate with any external investigation” conducted by the FBI.
“We will not allow interference in Israel’s internal affairs,” he added. According to reports Abu Akleh is a Palestinian but also a U.S. citizen.
Cruz, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations and Senate Judiciary Committees, was responding to recent reports that the Biden administration seeks to open an FBI investigation into Israel. He stated, “everyone involved with this debacle should be fired or impeached – all the way up to Attorney General Garland.”
“Joe Biden and his administration view Israel and Prime Minister-elect Benjamin Netanyahu as political enemies, and so they are responding to them the way they respond to all their political enemies: by unleashing the FBI,” Sen. Cruz stated. “Our Israeli allies have, since the very beginning, cooperated closely with the United States in investigating this incident, and the State Department and Defense Departments had already drawn their conclusions.”
He warned “this outrage underscores how corrupt and blatantly politicized the Justice Department has become, and how entirely beholden to the radical left-wing Squad Democrats really are. This administration has spent its time in office weaponizing the DOJ to target their political enemies as a matter of policy, and now they have allowed that tactic to bleed into their obsession with undermining our Israeli allies.”
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