[Salon] Slaughter of Civilians In Gaza and Lebanon Is Violating Both U.S. and International Law by Allan Brownfeld Guest Post

Slaughter of Civilians In Gaza and Lebanon Is Violating Both U.S. and International Law By Allan C.Brownfeld ———————————————————————————————————————— 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.