Growing Slaughter of Civilians in Gaza and Lebanon Is Tied To U.S.Arms
By
Allan C.Brownfeld
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As
of the beginning of November, the Biden administration has received
about 500 reports alleging that Israel used U.S.-supplied weapons for
attacks that caused unnecessary harm to civilians in Gaza and
Lebanon——but it has failed to comply with its own policies requiring
swift investigations of such claims, according to U.S. officials
involved in this process.
These
officials note that many of the cases appear to violate both U.S. and
international law. Critics of the Biden administration’s consistent
provision of arms to Israel, now about 14 months into a war that has
killed more than 43,000 people, the majority,of whom are said to be
women and children, say that the Biden administration is unwilling to
hold Israel accountable for the staggering toll.
According
to John Ramming Chappell, a legal and policy adviser at the Center for
Civilians in Conflict, “When it comes to the Biden administration’s arms
policies, everything looks good on paper but has turned out to be
meaningless in practice when it comes to Israel.” Mike Casey, who
worked on Gaza issues at the State Department’s Office of Palestinian
Affairs in Jerusalem, said 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. 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.’” Casey resigned in July.
Israel
is the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. military aid since the end
of World War 11. The Biden administration has provided it with at least
$17.9 billion in U.S. military assistance in the last year alone,
according to a recent study by Brown University’s Watson Institute for
International and Public Affairs. No one in Gaza or Lebanon seem immune
from attack. At least 178 paramedics and other first responders have
been killed and 279 injured in Israeli air strikes and artillery attacks
since Israel and Hezbollah began exchanging fire, according to
Lebanon’s health ministry, accounting for about 6 per cent of the total
death toll. Civil drfense crews say the attacks, including strikes at
or near ambulances, fire trucks, paramedic stations and hospitals—-have
hampered search and rescue efforts. Deliberate strikes on rescue
workers and medical personnel is a war crime under international law.
In October, Israeli strikes hit or wounded Red Cross teams on at least
five different days, according to the organization.
Washington
Post columnist David Ignatius, who recently visited the area, notes
that, “Gaza’s suffering might become even worse as the last shreds of
the U.N.safety net collapse. The Israeli parliament…passed a law
blocking United Nations Relief Works Agency (UNRWA) operations across
Israel and East Jerusalem. That could effectively halt the
U.N.agency’s
role in supplying food, medicine, water and schooling for Palestinian
civilians. The Knesset’s action was a direct repudiation of a Biden
administration request.”
The
Biden administration’s role in the Middle East may have had an
important impact on the presidential election. Writing in The York
Times, Peter Beinart, an editor of Jewish Currents, provides this
assessment: “In this new era, in which supporting Palestinian freedom
has become central to what it means to be progressive, the Palestinian
exception is not just immoral,it is politically disastrous…In the
heavily Arab American city of Dearborn, Michigan, Donald Trump defeated
Kamala Harris by six percentage points…Over the past year, Israel’s
slaughter and starvation of Palestinians—-funded by U.S. taxpayers and
live-streamed on social media—-has triggered one of the greatest surges
of progressive activism in a generation. Many Americans roused to
action by their nation’s complicity in Gaza’s destruction have no
personal connection to Palestine or Israel, like many Americans who
protested apartheid or the Vietnam War.”
In
Beinart’s view, “Despite overwhelming evidence that the Democratic
Party’s most devoted constituents wanted to end sales of weapons to
Israel, the Biden administration kept sending them, even after Prime
Minister Netanyahu expanded the war to Lebanon. Kamala Harris rebuffed a
plan to have a Palestinian speak to the Democratic National
Convention…Democrats who claim to respect human equality and
international law must begin to align their policies on Israel and
Palestine with their broader principles. The Palestinian exception is
not just immoral, it’s politically disastrous.”
Republicans
and Democrats have traditionally called for the creation of a
Palestinian state on the West Bank, which Israel has occupied in
violation of international law for more then 50 years. Israel’s current
government rejects U.S. policy, while eagerly receiving U.S. arms and
aid. In early November, Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich
said “the time has come for Israel to exert full Israeli sovereignty
over parts of the West Bank” The Netanyahu government has been busy
building Jewish settlements in the very area the U.S. supports as a
future Palestinian state. The Netanyahu government welcomes U.S. aid,
but rejects U.S. policy.
In
the past two years, the Netanyahu government has dramatically expanded
Israel’s footprint in the West Bank,where an estimated 3 million
Palestinians live alongside more than 500,000 settlers. His government
has approved strategic land seizures and major settlement construction,
escalated demolition of Palestinian property , and increased state
support for Jewish settler outposts built in violation of of Israeli and
international law. Settler violence against Palestinian residents has
grown commonplace.
Now,
Smotrich has advocated the starvation of 2 million Palestinians in Gaza
and for Israelis to occupy the land there. Why should the dollars of
American taxpayers be used to finance Israeli expansion at the expense
of the indigenous Palestinian population? That is not the path to a
Middle East peace which Americans of both parties have advocated.
Instead, it will produce constant turmoil and may well involve our
country in a war.
There
is a path to peace which Donald Trump helped to promote in his first
term. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and other Gulf Arab states
agreed to recognize Israel as soon as Israel agreed to the creation of a
Palestinian state. Promoting this policy now would be a way to move
the region toward peace. It is something the Biden administration could
have done but, sadly, did not.
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