Slaughter of Civilians In Gaza and Lebanon Is Violating Both U.S. and International Law
By
Allan C.Brownfeld
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As
of the end of October, the Biden administration has received nearly 500
reports alleging that Israel used U.S.-supplied weapons for attacks
that caused unnecessary harm to civilians in Gaza, but it has failed to
comply with its own policies requiring swift investigations of such
claims. Some of these cases are said to be violations of both U.S. and
international law.
Despite
the State Department’s Internal Civilian Harm Incident Response
Guidance, which directs officials to complete an investigation and
recommend action within two months of launching an inquiry, no single
case has reached the “action” stage, U.S. officials told the Washington
Post.
Critics of the
Biden administration’s provision of massive armaments to Israel, which
has led to the death of at least 43,000 people, mostly civilians, say
that the administration has been unwilling to hold Israel accountable
for the staggering casualty toll.
“They’re
ignoring evidence of widespread civilian harm and atrocities to
maintain a policy of virtually unconditional weapons transfers to the
Netanyahu government,” said John Ramming Chappell of the Center for
Civilians in Conflict.
In October, after an Israeli
strike on an apartment building killed more than 90 people, including
25 children, the State Department said it was seeking a “full
explanation” from Israel. In the past, Israel explained attacks on
schools, hospitals, churches and mosques by claiming that terrorists
were hiding in these locations. The majority of the dead have been
women and children.
An
increasing number of U.S. officials have resigned to protest U.S.
involvement in Israel’s assault on civilians. Mike Casey, who worked on
Gaza issues at the State Department’s Office of Palestinian Affairs in
Jerusalem, said that senior officials routinely gave the impression that
their goal in discussing any alleged abuse by Israel was to figure out
how to frame it in a less negative light. Casey said: “There’s this
sense of, “How do we make this okay? There’s not, ‘How do we get to the
real truth of what’s going on here?’”
The
first State Department official to resign in protest of U.S.policy
toward Israel’s assault on civilians in Gaza was Josh Paul. he worked
for the State Department for more than 11 years and was a director in
the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, which is responsible for U.S.
military assistance and arms transfers. In a talk before the Committee
for the Republic in Washington, D.C., he said that the U.S. Government
ignores two amendments to the 1961 Foreign Aid Act, known as the
Symington and Glenn amendments, which ban aid to clandestine nuclear
powers. Israel has a secret nuclear weapons arsenal that is ignored,
through a policy of nuclear ambiguity, by the U.S. Government to allow
military support to Israel to continue.
There
is also, Paul noted, the Leahy Law which requires a careful examination
of how and when U.S. provided weapons are used “in gross violations of
human rights.” When that is the case, the sale or transfer of weapons
is supposed to be denied. In Paul’s view, Israel, which is committing
war crimes out in the open, is uniquely exempt in practice from such
examination. President Biden, Paul points out, has deployed in Israel a
$1.15 billion Terminal High Altitude Area Defense System (THAAD)
missile defense system to be manned by roughly 100 American soldiers on
the ground. This, said Paul, creates a potential tripwire situation
leading to an escalation and a larger war if American soldiers are
killed in an Iranian attack.
In
his resignation letter, Josh Paul wrote: “We cannot be both against
occupation and for it, we cannot be both for freedom and against it.
And we cannot be for a better world, while contributing to one that is
materially worse.”
Israel
is the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. military aid since World
War 11, and the Biden administration has provided it with at least $17.9
billion in military aid in the past year alone, according to a recent
study by Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and
Public Affairs. But despite growing alarm by U.S. officials about
Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza and Lebanon, apart from one delayed
shipment of 2,000 pound bombs, aid has continued to flow without
interruption.
William T.
Hartung, an expert on the arms industry at the Quincy Institute, said
“it’s almost impossible” that Israel is not violating U.S. law, “given
the level of slaughter that’s going on and the preponderance of U.S.
weapons.” Sarah Yager, the Washington director of Human Rights Watch,
says, “It’s a year in. When is the United States going to put its foot
down?”
Writing in The New
York Times, Peter Beinart, an editor of Jewish Currents, provides this
assessment of the Biden administration’s policy toward Israel: “Through
his unwavering backing of Israel, President Biden has effectively
supported its unequal treatment and oppression of
Palestinians—-especially in Gaza—and undermined the ethical rationale of
his presidency…Israel’s political system is explicitly based on
religion and ethnicity…Most of the Palestinians under Israeli
control—-those in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip—-can’t become
citizens of the state that dominates their lives.”
When
it comes to Israel, declares Beinart, “Mr. Biden hasn’t supported
equality under the law. The war in Gaza has made that contradiction
impossible to ignore. It is most glaring when Biden expresses deep
empathy for Israeli suffering but relative indifference to the far
larger number of dead Palestinians, or when his administration seems to
distinguish even between American citizens, showing more concern for
those murdered by Hamas than those killed by Israel’s military.”
The
Biden administration says it believes in a two-state solution and the
creation of a Palestinian state. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu says
there will never be a Palestinian state and members of his Cabinet call
for annexing the West Bank and expelling it’s indigenous population.
Still, massive U.S.aid flows and Israeli violations of U.S. and
international law are ignored. This irrational policy does not serve
the interests of Israelis, Palestinians or Americans.
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Allan
C. Brownfeld is a nationally syndicated columnist and is editor of
ISSUES,the quarterly journal of the American Council for Judaism.