[Salon] Growing Slaughter of Civilians in Gaza and Lebanon Is Tied To U.S.Arms - Guest Post by Allan Brownfeld

Growing Slaughter of Civilians in Gaza and Lebanon Is Tied To U.S.Arms By Allan C.Brownfeld ————————————————————————————————————————— 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. ## ——————————————————— Allan C. Brownfeld is a nationally syndicated columnist and is editor of ISSUES, the quarterly journal of the American Council,for Judaism.