Much of the Gaza Strip has been destroyed in the conflict. Credit: UNRWA
By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 13 2024 – As the devastating 11-month-old conflict in Gaza keeps escalating, with over 41,000 mostly civilian killings, and more than 92,000 Palestinians injured –in retaliation for the 1,200 killings inside Israel last October– the Israelis continue to defy the United States which maintains its uninterrupted flow of heavy weapons to Tel Aviv.
There are two hardcore lessons in this conflict. Perhaps Israel should realize that you cannot continue biting the hand that feeds you while the Biden administration should realize that you cannot continue to feed the mouth that bites you.
The world’s weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) are categorized mostly as nuclear, chemical, biological and radiological weapons. But the US-supplied missiles and 2,000-pound bombs dropped on Gaza are best described as weapons of civilian destruction (WCDs) which have also reduced cities to rubble.
On September 11, the New York Times ran a story on the latest killings of civilians, titled “Israel Kills Gazans as its Air Power Hits a Humanitarian Zone”
The Times quoted Trevor Ball, a former US army explosive ordnance-disposal technician, as identifying a fragment found at the most recent bombing in Gaza as “the tail section of a SPICE-2000 kit, a precision guided kit used with 2,000-pound bombs.
If Israel is accused of genocide and war crimes, where does the US fit in as the major supplier of arms that are killing all these civilians?
And, on August 13, as the civilian killings continued unabated, the Biden Administration formally notified Congress of its plan to authorize the sale of a staggering list of arms to Israel including:
An $18.8 billion sale of 50 F-15 fighter jets and related equipment;
A $774 million sale of up to 32,739 120mm tank cartridges and related equipment;
A $583 million sale of Family of Medium Tactical Vehicles (FMTV)s and related equipment;
A $102 million sale of 30 Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missiles (AMRAAM) and related equipment; and, A $61 million sale of 50,000 M933A1 120mm High Explosive mortar cartridges and related equipment.
In June 2024, Reuters reported that the Administration had transferred at least 14,000 MK-84 2,000-pound bombs, 6,500 500-pound bombs, 3,000 Hellfire precision-guided air-to-ground missiles, 1,000 bunker-buster bombs, 2,600 air-dropped small-diameter bombs, and other munitions.
Dr Ramzy Baroud, a journalist and Editor of The Palestine Chronicle, told IPS “for Israel to commit its genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, it requires a large and steady supply of weapons. Most of these weapons come from the United States.”
“In fact, over 11 months of Israeli genocide and following numerous reports by international organizations, we know precisely how US bunker busters and other weapons and munitions intended for mass killings have been used,” he pointed out.
Yet, despite all of this, the US continues to give Israel all the bombs and rockets necessary to inflict most deadly violence against Palestinians, including those sheltered in displacement camps, at UN schools, at hospitals, and other areas that are intended to be ‘safe zones’.
But American support for Israel cannot be confined to that of weapon supplies, Dr Baroud said, because Washington remains Israel’s strongest backer and defender at international institutions, including the UN Security Council. This blind and unconditional support has emboldened Israel to carry on with the most despicable genocide against an innocent and besieged nation.
Even Biden’s so-called ‘ceasefire proposal’ last May was supposedly communicated on behalf of Israel, then, oddly rejected also on behalf of Israel.
There can be no other interpretation of this: the genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza is carried out jointly by Israel and the United States, said Dr Baroud, a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA). www.ramzybaroud.net
According to a Cable News Network (CNN) report early this week US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has called for “fundamental changes” to the way Israeli forces operate in the occupied West Bank after the killing of American activist Aysenur Ezgi Eygi at a protest last week.
US President Joe Biden condemned Eygi’s killing on Wednesday. ““I am outraged and deeply saddened by the death of Aysenur Eygi,” Biden said in a statement, adding that the shooting “is totally unacceptable.”
Biden called for “full accountability” for her death after Israel “has acknowledged its responsibility.” Israel, he added, “must do more to ensure that incidents like this never happen again.”
As an old Middle East saying goes: The dogs bark but the caravan moves on.
Is this a reflection of the unrestrained power of the Israeli lobby in the US Congress, which one-time Republican US presidential candidate Pat Buchanan, called “Israeli-occupied territory”? Does this now include the White House?
Unfortunately, there will be no accountability for the killing of the American-Turkish activist, Dr Baroud pointed out. “We know this for a fact because there has never been a precedent in history in which the US has held Israel accountable for anything”.
The family of American activist Rachel Corrie, who was deliberately run over by an Israeli army bulldozer, knows exactly how frivolous the US use of language in this kind of situation can be.
The US speaks of “accountability”, “responsibility”, “full investigations”, yet ultimately accepts the Israeli narrative as the truth. More recently, the US has used similar language following the murder of Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, before circling back to accepting the Israeli story that her killing was not deliberate and was not part of a larger policy to target civilians.
Infuriatingly, but still unsurprisingly, the US is using the above language at a time when over 41,000 Palestinians have been confirmed killed in Gaza, with thousands more missing and tens of thousands wounded, he said.
Not only no such accountability has been achieved or even called for, but the US continues to give Israel the very murder weapon so that it may continue its genocide against Palestinian civilians, said Dr Baroud.
Meanwhile, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemned the death of at least 18 people, including children, women, and six UNRWA staff, in Israeli airstrikes that hit a school serving as a shelter in Nuseirat on 11 September.
This incident raises the number of UNRWA staff killed in this conflict to 220. The IDF stated that they had targeted a command-and-control center in the compound. This incident must be independently and thoroughly investigated to ensure accountability.
The continued lack of effective protection for civilians in Gaza is unconscionable. Civilians and the infrastructure they rely on must be protected and the essential needs of civilians met. The Secretary-General calls upon all parties to refrain from using schools, shelters, or the areas around them for military purposes. All parties to the conflict have the obligation to comply with international humanitarian law at all times.
The Secretary-General also reiterated his call for an immediate ceasefire and the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages. This horrific violence must stop, he declared.
According to an October 2023 report from the US State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, steadfast support for Israel’s security has been a cornerstone of American foreign policy for every U.S. Administration since the presidency of Harry S. Truman.
Since its founding in 1948, the United States has provided Israel with over $130 billion in bilateral assistance focused on addressing new and complex security threats, bridging Israel’s capability gaps through security assistance and cooperation, increasing interoperability through joint exercises, and helping Israel maintain its Qualitative Military Edge (QME).
This assistance has helped transform the Israel Defense Forces into “one of the world’s most capable, effective militaries and turned the Israeli military industry and technology sector into one of the largest exporters of military capabilities worldwide”.
Israel has also been designated as a U.S. Major Non-NATO Ally under U.S. law. This status provides foreign partners with certain benefits in the areas of defense trade and security cooperation and is a powerful symbol of their close relationship with the United States.
Thalif Deen, Senior Editor, UN Bureau, Inter Press Service (IPS) news agency, is a former Director, Foreign Military Markets at Defense Marketing Services; Senior Defense Analyst at Forecast International; military editor Middle East/Africa at Jane’s Information Group, USA; and one-time UN correspondent for Jane’s Defense Weekly, London.
IPS UN Bureau Report
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