A total of eleven senators from the opposition announce that they have signed a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio in which they want to see urgent investigations.
They refer to a report from the department's own so-called control and direction unit, which flags a plethora of suspected war crimes by Israeli forces that would take several years for department employees to review.
The report in question was leaked a few weeks ago. It states that Israeli soldiers have committed “many hundreds” of suspected crimes in the Gaza war, as reported by The Washington Post .
There is US law that prevents military support for foreign forces if they are deemed likely to have committed serious human rights violations. This means that Israel's actions could be subject to such an investigation, which has not happened before.
If the laws cannot be enforced, they become completely meaningless, the senators write in their letter.
Ten of the eleven signatories to the letter represent Democrats. One, Bernie Sanders of Vermont, was elected as a Democrat but describes himself as an independent. The Senate has 100 seats and Republicans hold a majority of 53 of them.
