Biden administration officials are sweeping aside hundreds of reports of Israeli forces using U.S.-provided weapons to slaughter civilians in Gaza, new reporting finds, flouting the administration’s own policies regarding weapons to give Israel a pass.
According to a new report by The Washington Post published Wednesday, the State Department has received nearly 500 reports of U.S. weapons being used in attacks that caused “unnecessary harm” to civilians amid Israel’s genocide. But, despite policies requiring these reports to be urgently investigated, hundreds of the cases are still unresolved, former and current officials cited by the Post said.
In August of last year, the Biden administration established a process for responding to incidents of U.S.-made weapons killing civilians. Under the system, known as the Civilian Harm Incident Response Guidance, officials must recommend actions like a suspension of arms transfers if U.S. weapons are found to have been used to kill civilians by U.S. allies. At the time, the initiative was lauded as a step toward reducing civilian harm and boosting the U.S. commitment to human rights.
The State Department receives the reports from within the government, as well as humanitarian aid groups, media reports and eyewitness accounts. As media reports have demonstrated numerous times over the past year of the genocide, many reports are accompanied by photographic evidence of fragments of U.S. weapons at sites of attacks.
However, as the U.S. has done countless times over the last year of the genocide (and in the decades of Israeli apartheid preceding it), officials are ignoring their own regulations in order to continue fueling Israel’s atrocities in Gaza, the occupied West Bank, Lebanon, and beyond.
Even though the guidance requires investigations to be done within two months, over two-thirds of the cases are unresolved, “with many pending response from the Israeli government, which the State Department consults to verify each case’s circumstances,” the Post writes.
Officials have not taken a single case to the final stage, where action is recommended, officials said, despite the deadlines.
One of the cases reportedly concerns the Israeli military’s killing of 6-year-old Hind Rajab and the paramedics who came to save her — despite U.S officials’ public insistence that they are relying only on Israel’s own investigation into the killing. Another regards a horrific Israeli strike in July on the Gaza “humanitarian safe zone” in al-Mawasi, in which Israeli forces dropped eight 2,000-pound bombs on civilian areas and killed at least 90 Palestinians.
Humanitarian groups, Gaza officials and weapons experts — including ones within the State Department — have repeatedly said that Israel is making extensive use of U.S. weapons to commit war crimes against Palestinians in Gaza. In fact, experts have said that it would be impossible for Israel to carry out the level of destruction it has in Gaza without U.S. help.
The Washington Post report is the latest evidence that the Biden administration is purposefully sidestepping domestic law in its support of Israel.
In a bombshell finding last month, ProPublica found that, this spring, two U.S. agencies had recommended a suspension of weapons transfers to Israel, citing Israel’s humanitarian aid blockade and attacks on aid efforts.
But Secretary of State Antony Blinken lied to Congress about the findings, saying that the government did not assess that Israel has been blocking humanitarian aid just as Israel embarked on its Rafah invasion that would mark the beginning of an even harsher Israeli aid blockade. Now, months later, aid entry into Gaza has hit record lows, as disease and famine plague the population.
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
Last week, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and 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 dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment. We are presently looking for 182 new monthly donors in the next 24 hours.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy