US Muslim group slams US defense chief for denying Israeli genocide in Gaza

By Diyar Guldogan

WASHINGTON (AA) - The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) slammed US defense chief Lloyd Austin on Tuesday for rejecting accusations that Israel has committed genocide in the Gaza Strip.

"We strongly condemn @SecDef Austin for his dishonest and delusional genocide denial, which ignores the fact that the Israeli govt made openly genocidal threats at the start of the war and has spent six months acting on those threats by sparking a famine, destroying civilian infrastructure, ethnically cleansing entire cities & massacring 33,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children," CAIR wrote on X.

The condemnation came shortly after Austin said the US has seen no evidence that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza.

"We don't have evidence of that," Austin told the Senate Armed Services Committee during a Pentagon budget hearing, where he was interrupted several times by protesters.

Austin reiterated that the US is committed to assisting Israel in defending its territory and people by providing security assistance.

Israel has waged a deadly military offensive on the Palestinian territory since an Oct. 7 cross-border attack by the Palestinian resistance group, Hamas, which killed nearly 1,200 people.

More than 33,200 Palestinians have since been killed and nearly 76,000 injured amid mass destruction and shortages of necessities.

Israel is accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which in January issued an interim ruling that ordered Tel Aviv to stop genocidal acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza.