Decades of US Arms Deals With Israel Paved the Way to Genocide in Gaza

Part of the Series

Struggle and Solidarity: Writing Toward Palestinian Liberation

On June 8, Israel rescued four hostages held by Hamas at the Nuseirat refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. Yet the operation left a trail of destruction, killing at least 274 Palestinians and injuring 698, according to local authorities. Corpses lined the pavement because the morgues were full, while film footage captured civilians rushing children caked with blood through hospital corridors.

The massacre dramatized the devastating effects of United States military aid. One United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) teacher recalled watching an Apache helicopter descend before shredding refugee tents with bullets. “We started running,” she wrote, “as if it were the Day of Judgment.” Boeing bombs had already gutted the local UN school that week, killing at least 40 people. U.S. authorities boasted that they provided Israel with intelligence for the disastrous rescue operation.

Their military cooperation reflects a disturbing historical trend. Although posing as a mediator, the U.S. has long assisted Israeli forces in their ruthless war against Palestinian self-determination. For the past half-century, successive U.S. presidents have frozen the balance of forces in Israel’s favor with military aid, eliminating incentives to negotiate while fostering aggression. State Department telegrams, White House memos and other archival sources demonstrate that the U.S. has repeatedly covered-up Israeli war crimes, while turning the “peace process” into a screen for weapons deals.

Dreaming at Gunpoint

After World War I, Great Britain seized control of Palestine from the Ottoman Empire, while opening up the land to settlers from the Zionist movement – which sought to form a Jewish state as a bulwark against antisemitism. As colonial secretary, Winston Churchill championed Jewish immigration to the region, suggesting that “a higher race” was replacing Palestinians.

Ultimately, the U.S. played a major role in Palestinian dispossession. Following the Holocaust, President Harry Truman spearheaded the passage of UN Resolution 181 in November 1947, which promoted Palestine’s partition into separate Jewish and Palestinian states. U.S. diplomats warned that the partition would engender geopolitical chaos for generations. Yet Truman rejected their advice, explaining that Zionism was “a burning issue” in domestic politics — causing him “more trouble than almost any other question.”

Prime Minister Golda Meir famously declared that Palestinians “did not exist.” Privately, she compared the Zionist offensive to Russian pogroms in Jewish villages.

Emboldened by Resolution 181, Zionist leaders rallied to maximize the territory under their control. On March 10, 1948, they launched Plan Dalet, a meticulously planned military operation against civilian population centers. The Israeli historian Ilan Pappé concludes that the offensive accelerated the Nakba (“Catastrophe”), which destroyed 531 villages and uprooted 800,000 Palestinians.

The consequences of such assistance were shattering. At Deir Yassin, the Irgun — a paramilitary group led by the future Prime Minister Menachem Begin — killed 107 civilians without provocation, spraying houses with machine guns, raping women and burning corpses. Afterward, Begin claimed that the massacre made Israel’s creation possible, allowing Zionist forces to “advance like a hot knife through butter.”

Future Prime Minister Golda Meir famously declared that Palestinians “did not exist.” But at the time, Meir suppressed a sickening sense of recognition and horror while touring abandoned homes in Haifa with food still on the table and toys scattered across the floor. Privately, she compared the Zionist offensive to Russian pogroms in Jewish villages.

U.S. assistance proved essential. During the Nakba, the U.S. aerospace engineer Al Schwimmer oversaw a globe-straddling arms network to outfit Zionist forces. A sympathetic biographer called the network one of the “biggest military smuggling operations” in U.S. history. “With or without me there would have been the State of Israel,” observed Gen. Moshe Dayan, the sinewy icon of Zionist masculinity, “But not without Al Schwimmer.”

After the Nakba, Schwimmer founded Israel Aircraft Industries, laying the foundation of the country’s military-industrial complex. Meanwhile, U.S. Zionists formed a well-oiled lobby promoting military aid. In his memoir, Isaiah Kenen writes that the Israeli diplomat Abba Eban asked him to assist lobbying efforts, while Kenen was still an employee of Israel. Eventually, Kenen established the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which aggressively promotes weapons sales.

Defending Aggression

In June 1967, Israel invaded its neighbors, seizing the Sinai Peninsula, Gaza Strip, West Bank and Golan Heights. After the war, U.S. policy makers posed as neutral mediators, even as they shipped F-4 Phantom fighters and other cutting-edge weaponry to Israel. In the process, they froze the balance of forces in its favor, eliminating pressure to negotiate with Arab governments, mainly Egypt, Jordan and Syria. Privately, President Richard Nixon dismissed the concerns of Israel’s neighbors with racist arrogance, suggesting they deserved a “half-assed settlement.”

“The combination of American planes and Israeli pilots,” the prime minister waxed, “is an excellent commercial symbol.”

Ultimately, President Jimmy Carter solidified this trend in the 1970s by bending to Prime Minister Menachem Begin’s hardline demands. At the time, Carter sought Begin’s support for the Camp David Accords, a peace initiative with Egypt and the cornerstone of his foreign policy. But in March 1978, Begin invaded Lebanon, attempting to purge the south of Palestinian guerrillas and displacing over 200,000 civilians with U.S. weapons.

In response, the Carter administration scrambled to shield Israel from the Arms Export Control Act (AECA). National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski observed that Israeli forces sowed Lebanon with cluster bombs in “contradiction to previous assurances.” Nonetheless, policy makers opposed enforcing export law, arguing that a weapons freeze would scuttle Israeli support for the Camp David Accords with Egypt. To secure Begin’s signature, Carter even bundled a $3 billion aid package for Israel, turning the peace agreement into an arms deal.

Immediately, Israeli forces used their equipment against Lebanon, initiating an unending series of air raids. From the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv, Ambassador Samuel Lewis griped that their arms law violations were unceasing. “Not a week has gone by in over two years when … [we] have not pressed the Israelis on this,” he confided in August 1980. At times, “all substantive levels of this embassy” addressed AECA violations “for days at a time.”

Dismembering Lebanon

Over the following years, President Ronald Reagan cemented a culture of impunity. A committed cold warrior, Reagan regarded the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) — a coalition of Palestinian factions that the UN deemed Palestine’s legitimate representative — as a Soviet proxy, while asserting that Israeli settlements were “not illegal.” Privately, his secretary of state, Alexander Haig, joked that Palestinian self-determination was an “airbag,” explaining that “the more you punch it, the less there is.”

In 1982, Haig greenlit a full-scale invasion of Lebanon, hoping to exterminate the PLO. AIPAC claimed that Israel debuted over one hundred arms in combat, proving the “superiority of American weaponry” and enhancing the “prestige of the United States.” When Begin met Reagan that June, he called the siege of Beirut an economic stimulus. “The combination of American planes and Israeli pilots,” the prime minister waxed, “is an excellent commercial symbol.”

Eventually, the Nobel laureate and Irish statesman Seán MacBride led an independent commission that concluded that Israel’s “main objective” was to “push the Palestinian people … out of Lebanon,” directing attacks “mainly at Palestinian civilians and ‘protected’ targets such as schools, hospitals, and refugee camps.” Israeli soldiers “intensively tested” weapons, while immersing the country in cluster bombs and white phosphorus.

The Sabra-Shatila massacre was the logical culmination of over a decade of U.S. policy.

In August, Reagan convinced the PLO to leave Beirut, while guaranteeing the safety of civilians. Yet three weeks later, he broke the agreement by withdrawing peacekeeping forces. On September 16, Israeli forces and their Lebanese allies entered West Beirut before slaughtering Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps.

During the massacre, U.S. officials met with Israeli leaders, including the future Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Defense Minister Ariel Sharon bragged that he masterminded it. “We were helping … [local forces] since the beginning of their movement forward,” he exclaimed. “Without it, they would not have moved even one yard forward.” Sharon claimed that Israelis guided Lebanese fighters “like taking a child…. We were begging, asking, proposing, taking them, you know, by their hands, moving them.”

A U.S. diplomat warned that critics might blame Israel for the deaths of Palestinian civilians. “So, we’ll kill them,” Sharon shot back. “They will not be left there. You are not going to save them.”

The Israeli journalist Amnon Kapeliouk reported that invaders dashed babies against walls, butchered families with hatchets, and raped women before cutting off their breasts. Under the eerie glow of observation flares, officers monitored the massacre from the rooftops of surrounding buildings. One compared it to “watching from the front row of a theater.” Over 1,300 civilians were killed under their indifferent gaze.

Evidence of arms law violations was overwhelming. The MacBride Report found the refugee camps “littered with spent cartridges.” Yet Reagan refused to cut shipments. During the war, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Clement Zablocki suggested scrapping the AECA altogether. “If we’re not going to enforce the [AECA], then let’s repeal it,” Zablocki asserted, eliciting uncomfortable laughter from colleagues. The following year, they awarded Israel a record $2.6 billion in aid, while allowing Israeli leaders to use military credits to develop their own fighter jet.

U.S. military aid turned the Nakba into an inescapable cycle — an existential condition for Palestinians imposed by force of U.S. arms.

Liberal critics portrayed the Lebanon War as a betrayal of Zionist ideals, while suggesting that Reagan was an irresponsible enabler. But in reality, the Sabra-Shatila massacre was the logical culmination of over a decade of U.S. policy. Throughout the 1970s, successive presidents turned Israel into the largest foreign aid recipient, allowing it to become an unrivalled regional power immune to diplomatic pressure. By arming Begin and neutralizing Egypt, the Camp David Accords partially facilitated the invasion of Lebanon, while setting a precedent for Reagan. Ultimately, U.S. military aid turned the Nakba into an inescapable cycle — an existential condition for Palestinians imposed by force of U.S. arms.

Punishing Gaza

During the 1990s, Netanyahu continued Begin’s legacy as an unflinching opponent of Palestinian self-determination. By then, Israeli leaders allowed Fatah — historically, the PLO’s leading party — to run the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the Gaza Strip and West Bank. Yet the PA lacked real sovereignty, relying on Israel’s consent while lending its military occupation a Palestinian face. Meanwhile, U.S. aid allowed the settler population in the Occupied Territories to double in just one decade. Settler leaders fostered a militant and religiously infused brand of Zionism — proclaiming “The Command of Genocide in the Bible” and openly promoting the extermination of Palestinians.

In 2000, the tightening noose of settlement expansion ignited a popular uprising that became known as the Second Intifada. As resistance mounted, the Bush administration encouraged the PA to convene elections in order to relegitimize the colonial order. Yet voters surprised U.S. officials, punishing Fatah at the polls for accepting the occupation. In 2006, the U.S. embassy reported a “political earthquake,” conceding that Hamas swept the elections for the Palestinian Legislative Council. Meeting with U.S. diplomats, one Fatah candidate confided that his party — the U.S.’s preferred partner — was a “piece of s–t” mired in corruption.

Yet the Bush administration refused to accept the results. Secretly, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice pressured Fatah leaders to declare “a state of emergency” and oust Hamas, while Sen. Joe Biden called for cutting off funds to the PA. In 2007, Israel isolated Hamas in the Gaza Strip by imposing a suffocating blockade.

Then, in December 2008, Israeli forces launched Operation Cast Lead, a three-week rampage that devastated the strip. Again, the U.S. embassy compiled chilling evidence of arms law violations. In one cable, a U.S. diplomat noted accounts of “casualties with skin ‘baked’” by what sources “claimed was white phosphorus,” as well as “patients whose insides had been liquified.” U.S. contractors in Gaza painted a scene of total desolation, describing Israeli drone strikes during a “humanitarian pause,” traumatized children screaming themselves awake, and the mangled bodies flooding al-Shifa hospital.

Privately, Israeli officers conceded the violence was indiscriminate. Gen. Ido Nehushtan told U.S. authorities that he had “no solutions to firing back on those firing from within a civilian population.” According to meeting notes, Gen. Yoav Gallant — Israel’s defense minister since 2022 — commented that “white phosphorus was no longer politically tenable in Gaza” because of international backlash.

Instead of suspending arms shipments, U.S. policy makers conspired to undermine the UN report on Israeli war crimes. Ambassador James Cunningham encouraged Israel to “dilute the [document’s] poisonous effects,” suggesting officials publish propaganda on YouTube. The State Department wanted countries to “endorse the Israeli narrative.”

U.S. arms not only undermined Palestinian self-determination but enforced an explosive status quo — making another war inevitable.

Following the operation, President Barack Obama’s advisors pursued a strategy that an insider called “pre-emptive capitulation,” repeatedly caving to Prime Minister Netanyahu’s intransigence and weapons requests. At one point, Obama even tried to buy a three-month freeze in settlement construction by promising to sell 20 F-35 fighter jets. In 2012 and 2014, policy makers again sidestepped Israeli war crimes in Gaza, before signing a historic $38 billion military aid agreement in 2016.

Increasingly, Israel’s offensives turned Gaza into a weapons laboratory. Israeli newspaper Haaretz called it “a classroom” for the military “to test its equipment,” while the Israeli defense experts Yaakov Katz and Amir Bohbot dubbed the strip “ground zero for Israel’s drone revolution.” Once more, U.S. military aid defined the parameters of the conflict, turning Gaza into a hermetically sealed death trap. U.S. arms not only undermined Palestinian self-determination but enforced an explosive status quo — making another war inevitable.

Another Nakba

On October 7, 2023, Hamas struck Israel to disrupt this equilibrium. Over 1,100 people died that day, and Palestinian fighters took another 240 hostage. In response, Netanyahu set in motion a system of industrial slaughter, selecting targets with technology powered by artificial intelligence. “We were told: now we have to fuck up Hamas, no matter what the cost,” one soldier recalls. “Whatever you can, you bomb.” To assassinate one Hamas commander, officers authorized the killing of 300 civilians. Israeli operatives admit to bombing “hundreds” of private homes and exterminating entire families.

Defense Minister Gallant justifies the violence by claiming they fight “human animals,” and government sources refer to Palestinians as “roaches” and “rats.” Meanwhile, Israelis have organized parties — complete with a bouncy house — to block aid shipments and sacked humanitarian convoys.

UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese concludes that the offensive follows an “Israeli state policy of genocidal violence” against Palestinians. By late March, Israel had damaged over 60 percent of houses in the strip, displaced 80 percent of the population, and tightened the blockade — compelling residents to eat grass.

Nowhere is safe. Since the June massacre in Nuseirat, Israeli forces have repeatedly attacked the refugee camp, pounding UN schools and the local mosque. Recently, doctors rescued a child from the womb of his pregnant mother, Ola Adnan Harb al-Kurd, after Israeli forces killed her in another airstrike — turning his birth into a metaphor for Palestinian resistance amid the pageant of death.

Following a worn-out script, President Joe Biden continues to send arms, even though shipments have fractured the Democratic Party. The State Department emphasizes that it has “surged billions of dollars in security assistance to Israel,” and former members of the Biden administration have denounced their government’s “undeniable complicity in the killings and forced starvation.”

Appearing before Congress this July, Netanyahu exhorted U.S. legislators to expedite weapons shipments. “Give us the tools faster, and we’ll finish the job faster,” he emphasized, receiving a standing ovation as a new study estimated the death toll at 186,000 Palestinians.

In short, history is not only repeating, but collapsing into itself. The direct heir of Begin and Sharon, Netanyahu is unleashing the violence of the Deir Yassin and Sabra-Shatila massacres on a cosmic scale. For, in a colonial discourse premised on their absence, the very existence of Palestinians undermines the moral and historical claims of Zionism. They are the unavoidable mirror that reminds Zionists of their cataclysmic origins — the Nakba that Israel is now replaying with U.S. arms.

As before, Palestinians confront the violence of the U.S. empire: a “mediator” that advertises peace while supplying the instruments of their extermination.