Last Thursday, Congress approved a massive spending package that was a mixed blessing for lovers of Zion. Supported by a majority of 68 to 31, the $1.5 trillion omnibus spending package included more than $4.8 million in aid for Israel and $1 billion in additional funding for the Iron Dome missile defense system. 

The bill included the Israel Normalization Act that required the State Department to expand the Abraham Accords, normalizing relations between Israel and more Arab states.

The package includes $219 million for the Economic Security Fund, which supports humanitarian projects for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. This is the most significant amount since 2015. The Palestinian Authority security forces will also receive $40 million in US aid from the bill.

In addition to that, the bill affirms US support for a “two-state solution” and the formation of a “viable democratic Palestinian state.”

The “two-state solution” would create an unprecedented Arab state inside the boundaries of Israel in Judea and Samaria that is ethnically cleansed of Jews with its capital in an exclusively Muslim Jerusalem. The Palestinian Authority in power is based on the same idea that established Gaza, which quickly became ruled by Hamas. 

Texas Republican Ted Cruz opposed the act and blocked the bill for months in part over the act’s endorsement of the two-state solution.

The bill will now go to the White House to be signed by President Biden.

The bill comes as the Biden administration offers nearly $1 million for groups to investigate alleged human rights abuses in Israel. The Washington Free Beacon reported last week that the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL) is soliciting nonprofit groups to apply for grant money up to $987,654 to “strengthen accountability and human rights in Israel and the West Bank and Gaza,” according to a grant notice first posted online in mid-February.

“This is disgraceful,” Sen. Cruz told the Free Beacon. “The Biden administration wants to use American taxpayer money to subsidize the international NGO campaign to demonize and isolate Israel, which then serves as a basis for anti-Semitic efforts to boycott and wage economic warfare against Israeli Jews. Congress did not appropriate funds for this purpose and has repeatedly condemned such campaigns.”

There is no comparable program to investigate human rights abuses perpetrated by the Palestinian Authority or Hamas