Each President Trump and his press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, have claimed that the management has stopped a plan to spend $50 million on condoms for Gaza as a part of the brand new management’s reevaluation of federal investment.
“We known and stopped $50 million being despatched to Gaza to shop for condoms for Hamas,” he stated Wednesday. “They have got used them as one way of creating bombs.”
The U.S. Division of State said in 2021 that Hamas and different militant teams have a historical past of launching incendiary balloons towards Israel. Earlier footage taken via The Related Press in 2020 display masked males attaching incendiary gadgets to gas-filled condoms and balloons.
On the other hand, neither Trump nor officers in his management have equipped proof of this system they’re regarding or whether or not Hamas has used condoms as a weapon in its struggle with Israel. The Administrative center of Control and Funds and the U.S. Company of Global Construction (USAID) have now not answered to questions from CBS Information. To be had figures from the State Division display that earlier shipments for birth control, together with condoms, to the Heart East value some distance lower than $50 million.
With out specifying whether or not she used to be regarding a program that integrated the $50 million determine, State Division spokesperson Tammy Bruce said {that a} federal pause in international help integrated fighting $102 million in “unjustified investment” to a contractor in Gaza, “together with cash for birth control.”
In an e mail to journalists, Bruce added that the management stopped $102 million in investment to the Global Clinical Corps for Gaza.
In a news release, the Global Clinical Corps, a world assist group based totally in Los Angeles, answered that it has gained about $68 million from USAID since Oct. 7, 2023, and has used the investment to perform two box hospitals in Gaza.
“No US govt investment used to be used to obtain or distribute condoms,” the group’s remark stated.
The newest to be had record on-line on contraceptives and condom shipments from USAID, from fiscal year 2023, states that the company’s most effective cargo of contraceptives to the Heart East since fiscal yr 2019 used to be made to Jordan and price $45,680. The cargo contained injectable and oral contraceptives, now not condoms.
In keeping with USAID reviews, shipments of contraceptives to the Heart East don’t occur every year. Within the decade earlier than fiscal yr 2023, there have been most effective two shipments, together with one in fiscal yr 2019 and one in fiscal yr 2013. In fiscal year 2019, USAID spent a complete of $1.1 million on contraceptives for Yemen, with condoms comprising 4% of the full price.
It’s unclear whether or not there have been any deliberate contraceptive shipments to Gaza for fiscal yr 2025. However the overall price of all contraceptives shipped from the U.S. from USAID used to be $60 million in fiscal yr 2023, which integrated shipments to 23 nations.
contributed to this record.
