U.S. officials have secretly sent Israel over 100 shipments of weapons, amounting to thousands of bombs and arms, just since October 7, arresting new reporting finds as the Biden administration scrambles in public to contain a splintering of his Democratic base amid its support of Israel’s genocide of Gaza.
The Washington Post reported on Wednesday that members of Congress were informed of the sales, which were all separate, by U.S. officials in a recent classified meeting. This is far more weapons sales than previously made public by officials; before this, only two arms transfers to Israel were publicly reported, both having been approved by President Joe Biden invoking emergency powers to bypass Congress and both garnering strong opposition by pro-Palestine advocates.
The cache of weapons includes precision-guided munitions, small diameter bombs, bunker busters, small arms (like firearms), and more, The Post reported. They have been sent as experts have repeatedly said that Israel is committing war crimes in its indiscriminate bombing campaign in Gaza, and despite U.S. laws prohibiting military assistance being sent to countries committing human rights violations.
This is a staggering cache of weapons sent to assist in the genocide over such a short period of time, amounting to about one weapons deal every 1.5 days of Israel’s assault. U.S. officials were able to avoid reporting the sales publicly because they fell under certain value thresholds that would require them to be brought to the attention of Congress, sources told The Post.
These weapons are almost certainly being used to decimate Gaza, where Israel has already killed over 31,000 Palestinians over just the course of five months with its brutal bombing, disease and starvation campaign. Previous reports have found that, just in the first six weeks of Israel’s current assault, it dropped 22,000 bombs provided by the U.S. on Gaza.
The sheer number of arms sales suggests that the U.S. is nearly single handedly making the genocide possible, one expert said.
“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,” Jeremy Konyndyk, president of Refugees International and former senior Biden official, told The Washington Post.
Konyndyk added that the amount of arms transfers shows that U.S. officials can no longer dodge accountability for enabling the genocide.
“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,” Konyndyk went on.
The U.S. has long been one of the largest sponsors of Israel’s military as it has enforced a violent system of apartheid on Palestinians. Since the current siege began, White House officials and lawmakers have sought to send yet more military assistance to Israel, even as a torrent of experts and humanitarian aid groups have said that Israel’s assault is unequivocally a genocide, one of unprecedented speed in the modern age.
The covert arms transfers have been done even as Biden has urged Congress to pass a package sending at least $14 billion in military assistance to Israel and has sent a request for Congress to waive requirements for the administration to report arms transfers to Israel that are worth up to $3.5 billion to Congress or the public, seeking to send a massive amount of arms to Israel without any oversight.
“The arms transfer process lacks transparency by design,” former State Department official Josh Paul told the Washington Post.
Defying Trump’s right-wing agenda from Day One
Inauguration Day is here, and at Truthout, we plan to defy Trump’s right-wing agenda from Day One.
Looking to the first year of Trump’s presidency, we know that the most vulnerable among us will be harmed. Militarized policing in U.S. cities and at the borders will intensify. The climate crisis will deteriorate further. The erosion of free speech has already begun, and we anticipate more attacks on journalism.
It will be a terrifying four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. But we’re not falling to despair, because we know there are reasons to believe in our collective power.
The stories we publish at Truthout are part of the antidote to creeping authoritarianism. And this year, we promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation, vitriol, hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please show your support for Truthout with a tax-deductible donation (either once today or on a monthly basis).