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53122
From: akira, [DNS_Address]
Subject: U.S. floods arms into Israel despite mounting alarm over war’s conduct
URL: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/03/06/us-weapons-israel-gaza/
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"Washington has approved more than 100 separate military sales to Israel since its invasion of Gaza, even as officials complain Israeli leaders have not done enough to protect civilians By John Hudson March 6, 2024 The United States has quietly approved and delivered more than 100 separate foreign military sales to Israel since the Gaza war began Oct. 7, amounting to thousands of precision-guided munitions, small diameter bombs, bunker busters, small arms and other lethal aid, U.S. officials told members of Congress in a recent classified briefing. The triple digit figure, which has not been previously reported, is the latest indication of Washington’s extensive involvement in the polarizing five-month conflict even as top U.S. officials and lawmakers increasingly express deep reservations about Israel’s military tactics in a campaign that has killed more than 30,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s health authorities. Only two approved foreign military sales to Israel have been made public since the start of conflict: $106 million worth of tank ammunition and $147.5 million of components needed to make 155 mm shells. Those sales invited public scrutiny because the Biden administration bypassed Congress to approve the packages by invoking an emergency authority. The latest round of talks on a deal that would pause fighting and release hostages for Israeli-held Palestinian prisoners remains underway in Cairo. Hamas said Wednesday that it will continue to negotiate through mediators. For context: Understand what’s behind the Israel-Gaza war. But in the case of the 100 other transactions, known in government-speak as Foreign Military Sales or FMS, the weapons transfers were processed without any public debate because each fell under a specific dollar amount that requires the executive branch to individually notify Congress, according to U.S. officials and lawmakers who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive military matter. Taken together, the weapons packages amount to a massive transfer of firepower at a time when senior U.S. officials have complained that Israeli officials have fallen short on their appeals to limit civilian casualties, allow more aid into Gaza, and refrain from rhetoric calling for the permanent displacement of Palestinians. “That’s an extraordinary number of sales over the course of a pretty short amount of time, which really strongly suggests that the Israeli campaign would not be sustainable without this level of U.S. support,” said Jeremy Konyndyk, a former senior Biden administration official and current president of Refugees International. State Department spokesman Matt Miller said the Biden administration has “followed the procedures Congress itself has specified to keep members well-informed and regularly briefs members even when formal notification is not a legal requirement.” He added that U.S. officials have “engaged Congress” on arms transfers to Israel “more than 200 times” since Hamas launched a cross-border attack into Israel that killed 1,200 people and took more than 240 hostage. When asked about surge of weapons into Israel, some U.S. lawmakers who sit on committees with oversight of national security said the Biden administration must exercise its leverage over the government of Israel. “You ask a lot of Americans about arm transfers to Israel right now, and they look at you like you’re crazy, like, ‘why in the world would we be sending more bombs over there?’” Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Tex.), a member of the House Intelligence and Foreign Affairs committees, said in an interview. ” “These people already fled from the north to the south, and now they’re all huddled in a small piece of Gaza, and you’re going to continue to bombard them?” Castro said, referring to Israel’s planned offensive in Rafah, where more than 1 million displaced Palestinians have sought shelter. U.S. officials have warned the Israeli government against waging an offensive in Rafah without a plan to evacuate civilians. But some Democrats worry that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will disregard Washington’s pleas as he has other U.S. demands to allow more food, water and medicine into the enclosed enclave, and to dial back the intensity of a military campaign that has leveled entire city blocks and destroyed huge numbers of homes across the strip. Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.) said in an interview that the Biden administration should apply “existing standards” stipulating that the United States “shouldn’t transfer arms or equipment to places where it’s reasonably likely that those will be used to inflict civilian casualties, or to harm civilian infrastructure.” Crow, also a member of the House Intelligence and Foreign Affairs committees, recently petitioned Avril Haines, the director of national intelligence, seeking information on “any restrictions” that the administration had put in place to ensure Israel was not using U.S. intelligence to harm civilians or civilian infrastructure. “I am concerned that the widespread use of artillery and air power in Gaza — and the resulting level of civilian casualties — is both a strategic and moral error,” wrote Crow, a former Army Ranger who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. A senior State Department official declined to provide the total number or cost of all U.S. arms transferred to Israel since Oct. 7, but described them as a mix of new sales and “active FMS cases.” “These are items that are typical for any modern military, including one that is as sophisticated as Israel’s,” said the official. The dearth of publicly available information about U.S. arms sales to Israel leaves unclear how many of the most recent transfers amount to the routine supply of U.S. security assistance to Israel as opposed to the rapid replenishing of munitions as a result of its bombardment of Gaza. Israel, like most militaries, does not routinely disclose data about its weapons expenditures, but in the first week of the war, it said it had dropped 6,000 bombs on Gaza. As the conflict drags on, Israel’s reliance on the United States to sustain the campaign has become ever more clear, said Konyndyk, the former Biden administration official. “The U.S. cannot maintain that, on the one hand, Israel is a sovereign state that’s making its own decisions and we’re not going to second guess them, and, on the other hand, transfer this level of armament in such a short time and somehow act as if we are not directly involved,” he said." |
53126
From: akira, [DNS_Address]
Subject: 100 separate weapons deals in 150 days... One every 36 hours
URL: https://twitter.com/JeffreyStClair3/status/1765461041398612067
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Jeffrey St. Clair, CounterPunch: Proof they really want a ceasefire! Yonah Lieberman 🔥" 100 separate weapons deals in 150 days. One every 36 hours. Weapons to a government starving and displacing millions of civilians. Weapons to an army that has killed 25,000 women and children according to US government’s own internal estimates. Shocking policy from Joe Biden. |
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[53127]
53127
From: akira, [DNS_Address]
Subject: & Why Netanyahu is laughing all the way to the bank
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Why Netanyahu is laughing all the way to the bank David Petraeus said recently that US leverage on Israel to do the right thing in Gaza is 'overestimated' — that's just not true. PAUL R. PILLAR MAR 06, 2024 Favors that one country gives to another imply leverage that the former can exert on the latter. Withholding, or even threatening to withhold, such largesse, focuses minds within the recipient country’s government and can influence its policies. The favors that the United States has given to Israel have been enormous, as reflected in $318 billion, adjusted for inflation, in foreign aid through 2022 — far more than the United States has given to any other country since World War II. Thus, the leverage the United States has available to use on Israel is large. But it has used almost none of it. Even when Israeli policies fly in the face of U.S. preferences, the result is nothing more than a verbal slap on the wrist. Examples include the countless times that construction of more Israeli settlements in occupied territory are followed by timid official U.S. statements but no action — such as Secretary of State Antony Blinken saying last month that he was “disappointed” by Israel’s latest announcement of new settlement construction in the West Bank. When the subject of employing the leverage is raised, voices in response usually say something similar to what retired general David Petraeus said recently, which was that the United States is “committed” to Israeli security, that we tend to “overestimate the leverage,” and that Israel is currently in a “life and death situation.” In fact, the days of Israel being a beleaguered, vulnerable state surrounded by strong, hostile neighbors are long gone. Israel has the most potent military in the Middle East — even just at the conventional level, let alone when considering nuclear weapons. Israel’s military offsets any numerical inferiority in raw numbers of troops with advanced technology that far surpasses what any other state in the region enjoys. Despite frequently heard rhetoric that attributes to some regime or group a supposed dedication to “destroying” Israel, no enemy of Israel has anything close to the capability of doing so. One might argue that this secure Israeli position is thanks in part to all that U.S. assistance, and thus is a reason to continue the aid. But Israel is a wealthy country. It is in the richest 20 percent or even 10 percent of nations in the world, depending on how one measures GDP per capita. Israel can pay by itself for that potent military. The voluminous U.S. aid is a subsidy by American taxpayers to Israeli taxpayers. Therefore, reduction or termination of the aid would not endanger Israeli security, no matter how much the United States considers itself committed to that security. Israel would spend what it must to meet its own conception of security. But interruption of the voluminous no-strings-attached American subsidy would certainly get the attention of Israeli politicians and thus can have considerable influence on Israeli policy. In many respects, spending on, and use of, the Israel Defense Forces does not enhance Israeli security and may even detract from it. In recent years, the IDF has been largely occupied with keeping down a subjugated and thus discontented Palestinian population in the occupied territories and protecting Israeli settlements there. This is not a matter of securing Israel but instead of incurring the costs of choosing to cling to conquered territory and sustaining an illegal occupation. The full range of costs of this use of the IDF was underscored by the lethal Hamas attack on southern Israel last October. One reason Hamas was able to perpetrate its atrocity so easily was that Israel had moved forces from the area in question to the West Bank. Today, any munitions that the United States provides to Israel or finances are most likely to be used in further devastation of the Gaza Strip. That raises important issues, in addition to questions of leverage and influence, about possible U.S. complicity in war crimes. But for present purposes, one point to note is that because the Israeli assault has gone far beyond what can be construed as defense, any U.S. curtailment of the means for continuing the assault would be reducing devastation in Gaza, not Israeli security. In fact, continuation of the assault, and any logistical or financial facilitation of the assault, is likely to decrease rather than increase the future security of Israelis. The suffering of the Palestinians in Gaza is breeding an entire angry generation that will be determined to strike back against Israel, including with terrorist violence. As journalist Peter Beinart observes, even if Israel could achieve the probably unachievable objective of “destroying Hamas,” we should expect that “Palestinians will create another organization based on trying to fight back, indeed using violence, given the extreme unimaginable violence that Palestinians have now suffered.” Another relevant point about the current carnage in Gaza is that the U.S. has leverage that can curb the worst aspects of Israeli policies not only by influencing Israeli policymakers but also by directly inhibiting the execution of those policies. Although Israel will eventually make or obtain elsewhere the munitions it wants to use, at least in the short run the fewer bombs the U.S. provides that can flatten civilian neighborhoods, the fewer neighborhoods are likely to be flattened. U.S. largesse toward Israel and the leverage that goes along with it extend far beyond military aid. The diplomatic cover that the United States has routinely provided Israel, shielding it from consequences of Israel’s own actions, are unquestionably of high importance to Israeli policymakers. Of the 89 vetoes the United States has cast in the history of the United Nations Security Council, more than half have been on resolutions criticizing Israel, mostly for its occupation of Palestinian territory and treatment of the Palestinians. The Biden administration has continued this pattern, vetoing multiple resolutions calling for a cease-fire in Gaza. Even just abstentions on such resolutions would jolt Israeli decisionmakers into having to think more seriously about changing their most damaging policies. Votes in favor would have even more of an effect, underscoring for Israel that it could no longer count on its superpower patron standing in the way of worldwide outrage over Israeli actions. The Biden administration could take other non-military measures to exercise its considerable political and diplomatic leverage with Israel. It could reverse some of the all-in-with-Israel actions of the Trump administration, such as by re-establishing the consulate in East Jerusalem that had served as a principal channel of communications with the Palestinians. It could even join the 139 nations that have formally recognized the State of Palestine. None of these diplomatic measures would jeopardize in the slightest the security of Israel or any U.S. commitment to that security. Nor would they entail international political or diplomatic costs to the United States. To the contrary, they would improve the U.S. global standing by making the United States less of an outlier from an international consensus. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu projects, at least as much as other Israeli leaders, the image of someone determined to go his own way regardless of what the United States wants or says. But that self-assurance is based on the now decades-old pattern of the United States not using its leverage with Israel. “I know what America is,” Netanyahu once said. “America is a thing you can move very easily, move it in the right direction. They won’t get in the way.” If America were to stop being moved so easily and started getting in the way of objectionable Israeli conduct, Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders would change their tune. The default U.S. policy toward Israel through multiple administrations has been to lavish unqualified support and hope that the United States can gain some influence through the very closeness of the relationship. The Biden administration has continued this approach with its influence-through- hugging notion. Clearly, the approach has not worked. It is past time to exercise the leverage the United States has had all along." Paul R. Pillar is Non-resident Senior Fellow at the Center for Security Studies of Georgetown University and a non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. He is also an Associate Fellow of the Geneva Center for Security Policy. |
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