Days before an attempted Hezbollah terrorist attack against Israel, Democrats in the US House of Representatives last week gutted legislation that would have halted US funding to the Lebanese military, which is almost entirely controlled by the Iran-backed Hezbollah, The Washington Free Beacon news site reported on Tuesday.
Republican lawmakers in both the House and Senate have been pushing to cut this funding for some time, arguing that US aid should not be sent to an institution known to conduct attacks against Israel on Iran's behalf.
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The original bill, called the Countering Hezbollah in Lebanon's Military Act of 2019, had bipartisan support in both chambers, but House Democrats recently added an amendment to their version of the legislation that negated the funding cut to the Lebanese Armed Forces.
According to the Free Beacon, other Republican-sponsored amendments that would have bolstered the legislation and pushed the LAF to isolate Hezbollah from its forces were also struck down by the Democrat-led House.
Outgoing representative Eliot Engel (D, NY), the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, voted to nix segments including one demanding that the LAF "directly confront terrorism and Hezbollah's influence."
The final version of the bill now requires the State Department to issue a report detailing ways in which the United States can stop Hezbollah's smuggling of arms along its border with Israel.
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"It's not the same draft as it was. We would love to see that draft as it is passed over in the Senate," Rep. Lee Zeldin (R, NY), a main sponsor of the legislation, told the Free Beacon.
A Republican source told the Free Beacon that Engel and his staff "bear personal responsibility for emboldening Hezbollah, just as it escalated attacks against Israel and sought to murder Israeli Jews. They chose this exact moment to signal that Democrats will keep money flowing no matter what happens."
A version of this article was originally published by i24NEWS.
