Tens of thousands of bombs that Israeli forces have used in its genocidal assault of Gaza were provided directly by the U.S., newly reported intelligence figures reveal.
In just the first month and a half after the October 7 attack by Hamas forces, Israel deployed over 22,000 U.S.-produced bombs on Gaza, according to intelligence figures provided to Congress and reported by The Washington Post on Saturday. In that time, the U.S. transferred 15,000 bombs to Israel, including 2,000-pound “bunker busters” that experts say are not normally for use in densely populated residential areas like the Gaza strip, and over 50,000 artillery shells.
If these numbers are accurate, it means Israel dropped roughly one U.S.-supplied bomb on Gaza for every 100 people living there in just six weeks — an astonishing show of force in such a short period of time.
Though there are no public estimates of how many bombs Israel has dropped in total so far, figures that have been revealed suggest that the U.S.-provided weapons represent a huge proportion of the bombs used by Israel in its assault on Gaza so far, perhaps adding evidence to support the U.S.’s culpability in the massacre.
The Israeli Air Force has said that it had dropped about 6,000 bombs on Gaza in just the first six days of the assault. Then, around three-and-a-half weeks into the massacre, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said that Israeli forces have dropped 10,000 bombs and missiles on Gaza City alone, while Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor data showed that Israel had dropped 25,000 metric tons of explosives on Gaza between October 7 and November 2 — more than the explosive power of the nuclear bomb that the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945.
Twenty-two thousand bombs is a staggering amount of explosives. As The Washington Post pointed out last month, in 2019, the most brutal year for aerial bombings carried out by the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan, about 7,300 bombs were dropped on the region. Israel, meanwhile, is dropping these weapons on one of the most densely populated places on Earth.
With extensive help from the U.S., Israel’s assault has killed at least 18,000 Palestinians in Gaza so far since October 7, including at least 7,729 children, and has injured at least 49,000 while also systematically dismantling the health system in Gaza.
Israel has bombed refugee camps, schools, ambulances and hospitals; it has killed more children than in any other conflict in modern times, wiped out entire families, taken the lives of 63 journalists — 56 Palestinian, four Israeli, and three Lebanese — and is massacring civilians at an unprecedented rate in this century.
The Friday Washington Post article also found that U.S. officials have admitted that they are not conducting real-time assessments of whether or not Israeli attacks are in compliance with international humanitarian law — even as human rights organizations and staff within the Biden administration are saying that Israel has committed numerous war crimes in its assault on Gaza.
Israel is already the single largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid, and Biden administration officials are seeking to send yet more weapons to Israel amid its assault. Over the weekend, the State Department sent Congress an emergency declaration allowing it to circumvent congressional approval to send $106 million in weapons to Israel. This amounts to over 13,000 tank shells for Israeli forces as they expand their invasion into southern Gaza.
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