Rep. Rosa DeLauro removes her endorsement of anti-Israel HR 2407

In a blow to anti-Israel activists, Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn has removed her sponsorship of Betty McCollum's HR 2407.

In a statement to the "Intercept", DeLauro stated “I was inadvertently added as a cosponsor to this legislation without my approval... After being made aware of this error, I removed my name as a cosponsor of the legislation.”

Rep. Betty McCollum, D-Minn. first introduced this bill in 2017.  It received little traction.  An amended version was reintroduced earlier this year, which, as of today,  has only 21 co-signers. 

The bill is based on spurious accusations by the Defense for Children International-Palestine, an organization closely tied to the   Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terror group.  Anti-Israeli groups including   Jewish Voice for Peace and Code Pink has been lobbying heavily for it.

For more information on HR 2407, read NGO Monitor's analysis

Evaluation of the ‘‘Promoting Human Rights for Palestinian Children Living Under Israeli Military Occupation Act’’ (HR 2407)

• The bill is based largely on the lobbying efforts and accusations of Defense for Children International-Palestine (DCI-P). DCI-P is closely tied to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), designated as a terrorist organization by the US, EU, Canada, and Israel.
  • Citibank, Arab Bank and Global Giving have closed DCI-P accounts due to these PFLP connections.
  • Many of the citations to UN and other reports in turn simply copy lines from DCI-P publications.
• The new legislation includes several inaccurate factual claims and distortions of international law.
• The bill applies standards to Israel that are not applied in the US in general, or in McCollum’s state of Minnesota in particular.
• The bill misquotes a number of State Department reports.
• Several of the claims are based on outdated publications and information. Positive reforms made by Israel and more favorable assessments of the Israeli military justice system made in more recent publications, such as the 2017 State Department human rights report, are ignored.
• The bill ignores the context of the involvement of Palestinian minors in terrorism and acts of violence against Israeli civilians. It similarly makes no mention of mitigating the threat of recruitment and use of Palestinian minors by terrorist organizations – itself a grave violation of international law.
• The bill demands, as a result of DCI-P’s self-serving lobbying, an astounding $19 million US taxpayer funding to be allocated to DCI-P and its NGO allies