To say that the Biden administration’s position on the issue of how Israel is using U.S.-supplied weapons in its brutal killing spree in Gaza has been hypocritical is a vast understatement.
The Netanyahu government has killed over 34,000 people, many of them children; dropped 2,000 pound “dumb” bombs on civilian apartment complexes; blocked the delivery of food, water and medical supplies; and possibly buried victims of its murderous violence in mass graves.
The International Court of Justice has said that it is plausible that Israel is perpetrating a genocide in Gaza. The truth is that whether one calls it genocide, or war crimes, or a disproportionate response to the horrific Hamas attacks of October 7th, 2023, the conduct of the Israeli Defense Forces in Gaza is unconscionable and must be stopped.
In the midst of all of this, Biden administration officials continue to reassure us that they are doing everything in their power to get Israel to observe U.S. law on the use of U.S.-supplied weapons, as well as to limit civilian casualties. Meanwhile, they continue to send billions of dollars in weapons to an outlaw state that has shown a chilling indifference to human life.
Can the hypocrisy get any worse? Yes it can. One locus of further lies and distortions surrounds the administration’s release of National Security Memorandum-20 (NSM-20), which calls upon U.S. arms recipients to sign a piece of paper committing them to follow U.S. law in their use of U.S. weapons. It also has a provision for the State Department to investigate whether a recipient is in fact following U.S. law on issues like human rights and allowing the free flow of humanitarian aid.
NSM-20 is a strange document for several reasons. First, it appears that it was not issued primarily to strengthen the application of U.S. law on U.S. arms clients, but rather to preempt Congress from debating an amendment by Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) that would have covered much of the same ground. The release of NSM-20 appeared to be more of a tactical political move than a genuine attempt to hold Israel or any other nation accountable for using U.S. arms to commit extreme human rights abuses. If the president wanted to condition or stop arms transfers to Israel because of its crimes in Gaza, he could do so tomorrow, without the need to justify it under the terms of NSM-20.
The administration’s report on Israel’s use of U.S. weapons in Gaza is due on May 8th, but don’t hold your breath waiting for an objective assessment that would set the stage from conditioning or cutting off U.S. military aid to Israel.
Into this breach has come an independent task force, a sort of shadow State Department, that has done a detailed analysis of Israel’s use of U.S.arms since the start of the latest war in Gaza.
If they had their way, staffers at the Biden State Department would have been glad to do this job themselves, but their desires to align U.S. actions with U.S.and international law have been firmly rebuffed by the Biden administration’s leadership team. And my former colleague Annelle Sheline, who resigned from the department’s human rights bureau over continued U.S. support for Israel’s attacks on Gaza, has pointed out that many of her former colleagues share her views but are reluctant to resign given economic and family support issues.
One of the members of the independent task force is Josh Paul, who resigned from State after determining that the administration had no intention of holding Israel to the…
This article was originally published by a www.forbes.com . Read the Original article here. .