(MENAFN- Asia Times)
This story was originally published by ProPublica , a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom..
Reporting highlights
More bombs: Ambassador Jack Lew urged Washington to give thousands more bombs to the Israelis because they have a“decades-long proven track record” of avoiding killing civilians.
A thank-you: After State Department officials spent months working through weekends and after hours on arms sales, the Israelis sent cases of wine to them just before Christmas.
A lobbying push: Defense contractors and lobbyists have also helped push along valuable sales by leaning on State Department officials and lawmakers whenever there's a holdup.
In late January, as the death toll in Gaza climbed to 25,000 and droves of Palestinians fled their razed cities in search of safety, Israel's military asked for 3,000 more bombs from the American government. US Ambassador to Israel Jack Lew, along with other top diplomats in the Jerusalem embassy, sent a cable to Washington urging State Department leaders to approve the sale, saying there was no potential the Israel Defense Forces would misuse the weapons.
The cable did not mention the Biden administration's public concerns over the growing civilian casualties, nor did it address well-documented reports that Israel had dropped 2,000-pound bombs on crowded areas of Gaza weeks earlier, collapsing apartment buildings and killing hundreds of Palestinians, many of whom were children. Lew was aware of the issues. Officials say his own staff had repeatedly highlighted attacks where large numbers of civilians died. Homes of the embassy's own Palestinian employees had been targeted by Israeli airstrikes.
Still, Lew and his senior leadership argued that Israel could be trusted with this new shipment of bombs, known as GBU-39s, which are smaller and more precise. Israel's air force, they asserted, had a“decades-long proven track record” of avoiding killing civilians when using the American-made bomb and had“demonstrated an ability and willingness to employ it in [a] manner that minimizes collateral damage.”
While that request was pending, the Israelis proved those assertions wrong. In the months that followed, the Israeli military repeatedly dropped GBU-39s it already possessed on shelters and refugee camps that it said were being occupied by Hamas soldiers, killing scores of Palestinians. Then, in early August, the IDF bombed a school and mosque where civilians were sheltering. At least 93 died. Children's bodies were so mutilated their parents had trouble identifying them.
Weapons analysts identified shrapnel from GBU-39 bombs among the rubble.
In the months before and since, an array of State Department officials urged that Israel be completely or partially cut off from weapons sales under laws that prohibit arming countries with a pattern or clear risk of violations. Top State Department political appointees repeatedly rejected those appeals. Government experts have for years unsuccessfully tried to withhold or place conditions on arms sales to Israel because of credible allegations that the country had violated Palestinians' human rights using American-made weapons.
On January 31, the day after the embassy delivered its assessment, Secretary of State Antony Blinken hosted an agency-wide town hall at an auditorium at the State Department headquarters where he fielded pointed questions from his subordinates about Gaza. He said the suffering of civilians was“absolutely gut wrenching and heartbreaking,” according to a transcript of the meeting.
“But it is a question of making judgments,” Blinken said of his agency's efforts to minimize harm.“We started with the premise on October 7 that Israel had the right to defend itself, and more than the right to defend itself, the right to try to ensure that October 7 would never happen again.”
The embassy's endorsement and Blinken's statements reflect what many at the State Department have understood to be their mission for nearly a year. As one former official who served at the embassy put it, the unwritten policy was to“protect Israel from scrutiny” and facilitate the arms flow no matter how many human rights abuses are reported.“We can't admit that's a problem,” this former official said.
The embassy has even historically resisted accepting funds from the State Department's Middle East bureau earmarked for investigating human rights issues throughout Israel because embassy leaders didn't want to insinuate that Israel might have such problems, according to Mike Casey, a former U.S. diplomat in Jerusalem.“In most places our goal is to address human rights violations,” Casey added.“We don't have that in Jerusalem.”
Last week, ProPublica detailed how the government's two foremost authorities on humanitarian assistance - the US Agency for International Development and the State Department's refugees bureau - concluded in the spring that Israel had deliberately blocked deliveries of food and medicine into Gaza and that weapons sales should be halted. But Blinken rejected those findings as well and, weeks later, told Congress that the State Department had concluded that Israel was not blocking aid.
The episodes uncovered by ProPublica, which have not been previously detailed, offer an inside look at how and why the highest ranking policymakers in the US government have continued to approve sales of American weapons to Israel in the face of a mounting civilian death toll and evidence of almost daily human rights abuses . This article draws from a trove of internal cables, email threads, memos, meeting minutes and other State Department records, as well as interviews with current and former officials throughout the agency, most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
The records and interviews also show that the pressure to keep the arms pipeline moving also comes from the US military contractors who make the weapons. Lobbyists for those companies have routinely pressed lawmakers and State Department officials behind the scenes to approve shipments both to Israel and other controversial allies in the region, including Saudi Arabia. When one company executive pushed his former subordinate at the department for a valuable sale, the government official reminded him that strategizing over the deal might violate federal lobbying laws, emails show.
The Biden administration's repeated willingness to give the IDF a pass has only emboldened the Israelis, experts told ProPublica. Today, as Israel and Iran trade blows, the risk of a regional war is as great as it has been in decades and the cost of that American failure has become more apparent, critics charge.
“The reaffirmation of impunity has come swiftly and unequivocally,” said Daniel Levy, who served in the Israeli military before holding various prominent positions as a government official and adviser throughout the '90s. He later became one of the founders of the advocacy group J Street and president of the US/Middle East Project.
Levy said there is virtually no threat of accountability for Israel's conduct in Gaza, only“a certainty of carte blanche.” Or, as another State Department official said,“If there's never any consequences for doing it, then why stop doing it?”
The war in Gaza has waged for nearly a year without signs of abating. There are at least 41,000 Palestinians dead, by local estimates. Israel says its actions have been legal and legitimate, unlike those of Hamas, which killed more than 1,100 Israelis, mostly civilians, on October 7 and continues to hold dozens of hostages.
The US has been a stalwart ally of Israel for decades, with presidents of both parties praising the country as a beacon of democracy in a dangerous region filled with threats to American interests.
In response to detailed questions from ProPublica, a State Department spokesperson sent a statement saying that arms transfers to any country, including Israel, are done“in a deliberative manner with appropriate input” from other agencies, State Department bureaus and embassies.“We expect any country that is a recipient of US security articles use them in full compliance with international humanitarian law, and we have several ongoing processes to examine that compliance.”
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