Far from ‘standing alone’ Israel is fully supplied with military hardware from various Western and non-Western countries, writes RAMZY BAROUD
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Though many of Israel’s traditional allies in the West are openly disowning its behaviour in Gaza, weapons from various Western and non-Western countries continue to flow, feeding the war machine as it, in turn, continues to harvest more Palestinian lives.
This compels the question: does Israel truly stand alone when its airports and seaports are busier than ever receiving massive shipments of weapons coming from all directions? Not in the least.
Almost every time a Western country announces that it has suspended arms exports to Israel, a news headline appears shortly afterwards, indicating the opposite. Indeed, this has happened repeatedly.
Last year, Rome had declared that it was blocking all arms sales to Israel, giving false hope that some Western countries were finally experiencing some kind of moral awakening.
Alas, on March 14, Reuters quoted the Italian Defence Minister Guido Crosetto as saying that shipments of weapons to Israel are continuing, based on the flimsy logic that previously signed deals would have to be “honoured.”
Another country that is also “honouring” its previous commitments is Canada, which announced on May 19, following a parliamentary motion, that it had suspended arms exports.
The celebration among those advocating an end to the genocide in Gaza were just getting started when, a day later, Ottawa practically reversed the decision by announcing that it, too, will honour previous commitments.
This illustrates that some Western countries, which continue to impart their unsolicited wisdom about human rights, women’s rights and democracy on the rest of the world, have no genuine respect for any of these values.
Canada and Italy are not the largest military supporters of Israel. The US and Germany are.
Hundreds of demonstrators demanding an immediate cease-fire in the Gaza Strip march in Washington D.C. on March 7, 2024. (Photo: Celal Gunes/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“Given these numbers,” said one progressive campaigner, “I don’t know how President Biden can reconcile his stalwart support for Israel with the clear preference that his core constituents have for an end to this war.”
A Gallup survey released Wednesday shows that U.S. public support for Israel’s military assault on Gaza has plummeted since November, with the decline particularly sharp among Democratic voters whom President Joe Biden will need to turn out to win reelection against presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump.
Just 18% of Democratic voters currently approve of “the military action Israel has taken in Gaza” and 75% disapprove, according to the new poll, which was conducted between March 1-20. In November, 36% of Democratic respondents expressed approval of Israel’s war and 63% disapproved.
“The crosstabs are even more striking—nearly two-thirds of people under 54, people of color, and women disapprove of the military action in Gaza,” Sam Rosenthal, political director of the progressive advocacy group RootsAction, told Common Dreams in response to the new poll. “That is effectively the Democratic Party’s base.”
“Given these numbers,” Rosenthal added, “I don’t know how President Biden can reconcile his stalwart support for Israel with the clear preference that his core constituents have for an end to this war.”
Overall, Gallup found that 55% of the American public—including 60% of Independents and 30% of Republicans—disapproves of Israel’s military campaign in the Gaza Strip, up from 45% in November. Just 36% of the U.S. public approves, down from 50% four months ago.
“Biden is risking his second term and our democracy by continuing to support the kind of violence and cruelty that is being perpetrated in Gaza right now.”
Observers noted that Gallup’s new poll was conducted after the Israeli military’s February 29 massacre of Palestinians seeking food aid. Since October, according to one human rights monitor, Israeli forces have killed more than 560 people waiting for humanitarian aid, the delivery of which Israel’s government has intentionally hindered—fueling the spread of famine across the territory.
The Biden administration has backed Israel’s assault from the beginning, providing the Netanyahu government with billions of dollars worth of weapons and diplomatic cover despite widespread and growing protests at home and abroad. Gallup’s survey found that 74% of U.S. adults say they are following developments in Gaza “closely.”
Political analyst Yousef Munayyer wrote on social media that “Biden’s policy of continued support for Israel’s war on Gaza is in line with the views of the right-wing Republicans,” noting that 64% of GOP voters still approve of the Israeli assault—down slightly from 71% in November.
“Just to emphasize how extreme his position is and out of line with his voters,” he added, “more Republicans disapprove of the war than Democrats who approve.”
Growing Democratic opposition to Israel’s military action in Gaza has fueled grassroots campaigns across the country urging voters to mark “uncommitted” on their Democratic primary ballots to pressure Biden to change course ahead of the general election against Trump, who has voiced support for Israel’s devastating assault on Gaza.
“Uncommitted” campaigns won 11 Democratic National Convention (DNC) delegates in Minnesota and two in both Michigan and Washington state.
“Biden is risking his second term and our democracy by continuing to support the kind of violence and cruelty that is being perpetrated in Gaza right now,” Faheem Khan, president of the American Muslim Advancement Council and a lead organizer of Uncommitted WA, said earlier this week.
Rosenthal of RootsAction told Common Dreams on Wednesday that the U.S. decision to abstain and allow the U.N. Security Council to pass a cease-fire resolution earlier this week was “a step in the right direction, and a clear indication that domestic pressure from campaigns like Listen to Michigan and other uncommitted voting efforts is working.”
“However, actual policy towards Israel has changed very little,” said Rosenthal. “Biden is still clamoring for more military aid to be sent, and the U.S. still largely supports Israel’s line, i.e., that military operations in Gaza are solely aimed at rooting out Hamas. What is manifestly obvious to the rest of the world, that Israel is committed to the wanton destruction of the Gaza Strip, is somehow escaping the administration’s notice.”
“President Biden should decide quickly whether he wants to continue to uphold policy that is increasingly associated with the opposition party,” Rosenthal added.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken (L) and U.S. President Joe Biden (top C) listen as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (R) reads a statements before their meeting in Tel Aviv on October 18, 2023. (Photo: Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)
“I wasn’t able to really do my job anymore,” said Annelle Sheline. “Trying to advocate for human rights just became impossible.”
Saying her job at a State Department office that advocates for human rights in the Middle East has become “impossible” as the Biden administration continues to back Israel’s assault on civilians in Gaza, foreign affairs officer Annelle Sheline resigned from her position on Wednesday in protest of President Joe Biden’s policy in the region.
Sheline noted in an interview with The Washington Post that quitting her job in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor was not something she took lightly, with “a daughter and a mortgage”—but said her day-to-day work on human rights had become ineffectual “as long as the U.S. continues to send a steady stream of weapons to Israel.”
Despite the fact that U.S. law prohibits the government from arming countries that violate human rights—as Israel has long been accused by the United Nations of doing in its policy toward the occupied Palestinian territories—the Biden administration has approved the transfer of bombs and other weapons to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) since the military began its relentless bombardment of Gaza and blockade on nearly all humanitarian aid.
Sheline told the Post that as the news out of Gaza has grown more dire since October—with at least 32,490 Palestinians killed, at least 74,889 wounded, and parts of northern Gaza now facing famine conditions due to Israel’s blocking of aid—some of her bureau’s partners in the Middle East have stopped engaging with the State Department.
“If they are willing to engage, they mostly want to talk about Gaza rather than the fact that they are also dealing with extreme repression or threats of imprisonment,” Sheline told the Post of the activists and civil society groups her office routinely worked with to further human rights in the region before Israel’s assault began. “The first point they bring up is: How is this happening?”
“I wasn’t able to really do my job anymore,” Sheline added. “Trying to advocate for human rights just became impossible.”
Sheline is just the latest official to resign in protest of Biden’s approach to Israel and Gaza.
In October Josh Paul resigned from his position as director of congressional and public affairs for the State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, where he oversaw weapons transfers to U.S. allies.
Paul told the Post that Sheline’s decision “speaks volumes about the Biden administration’s disregard for the laws, policies and basic humanity of American foreign policy that the bureau exists to advance.”
A policy adviser in the Education Department, Tariq Habash, also stepped down from his role in January, saying he could no longer be “quietly complicit” in the killing of tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians.
The State Department’s internal dissent channel has also been used by numerous officials to voice outrage over the Biden administration’s continued defense of Israel’s actions.
Stephen Walt, professor of international affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School, called Sheline’s resignation “courageous.”
A sign that some people in Washington value conscience over career; another courageous State Department official resigns over US Gaza policy. https://t.co/s3vaTIaLGH
Feds United for Peace, a group of government workers across nearly two dozen federal agencies which organized a daylong fast in January to protest the U.S.-backed slaughter of Palestinians, expressed solidarity with Sheline.
“That decision comes at a personal and real cost to her, and is a loss of a patriotic and deeply qualified employee for the Department of State,” said the group in a statement. “Every arms shipment to Israel by the Biden administration and every one of the three vetoes of U.N. cease-fire resolutions has enabled Israeli impunity in its rampage across Gaza… Thousands of innocent lives are in President Biden’s hands; the time has come to translate gentle requests for the protection of civilians into concrete action to stop the killing.”
U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller speaks to reporters during a press briefing on March 25, 2024. (Photo: Mostafa Bassim/Anadolu via Getty Images)
One expert accused the U.S. of working to “undermine and sabotage the U.N. Security Council, the ‘rules-based order,’ and international law.”
Biden administration officials attempted Monday to downplay the significance of a newly passed United Nations Security Council resolution, drawing ire from human rights advocates who said the U.S. is undercutting international law and stonewalling attempts to bring Israel’s devastating military assault on Gaza to an end.
The resolution “demands an immediate cease-fire for the month of Ramadan respected by all parties, leading to a lasting sustainable cease-fire.” The U.S., which previously vetoed several cease-fire resolutions, opted to abstain on Monday, allowing the measure to pass.
Shortly after the resolution’s approval, several administration officials—including State Department spokesman Matthew Miller, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby, and U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield—falsely characterized the measure as “nonbinding.”
“It’s a nonbinding resolution,” Kirby told reporters. “So, there’s no impact at all on Israel and Israel’s ability to continue to go after Hamas.”
Watch Matt Lee ask StateSpox about the passing of the UN ceasefire resolution. Basically the US position is it makes no difference and Miller calls 🇷🇺/🇨🇳 veto cynical.
Lee: Do you expect Israel is going to announce a ceasefire?
Josh Ruebner, an adjunct lecturer at Georgetown University and former policy director of the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights, wrote in response that “there is no such thing as a ‘nonbinding’ Security Council resolution.”
“Israel’s failure to abide by this resolution must open the door to the immediate imposition of Chapter VII sanctions,” Ruebner wrote.
Beatrice Fihn, the director of Lex International and former executive director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, condemned what she called the Biden administration’s “appalling behavior” in the wake of the resolution’s passage. Fihn said the administration’s downplaying of the resolution shows how the U.S. works to “openly undermine and sabotage the U.N. Security Council, the ‘rules-based order,’ and international law.”
In a Monday op-ed for Common Dreams, Phyllis Bennis, a senior fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, warned that administration officials’ claim that the resolution was “nonbinding” should be seen as “setting the stage for the U.S. government to violate the U.N. Charter by refusing to be bound by the resolution’s terms.”
While all U.N. Security Council resolutions are legally binding, they’re difficult to enforce and regularly ignored by the Israeli government, which responded with outrage to the latest resolution and canceled an Israeli delegation’s planned visit to the U.S.
Israel Katz, Israel’s foreign minister, wrote on social media Monday that “Israel will not cease fire.”
The resolution passed amid growing global alarm over the humanitarian crisis that Israel has inflicted on the Gaza Strip, where most of the population of around 2.2 million is displaced and at increasingly dire risk of starvation.
Amnesty International secretary-general Agnes Callamard said Monday that it was “just plain irresponsible” of U.S. officials to “suggest that a resolution meant to save lives and address massive devastation and suffering can be disregarded.”
In addition to demanding an immediate cease-fire, the Security Council resolution calls for the unconditional release of all remaining hostages and “emphasizes the urgent need to expand the flow of humanitarian assistance.”
Farhan Haq, deputy spokesman for the U.N. secretary-general, stressed during a briefing Monday that “all the resolutions of the Security Council are international law.”
“They are as binding as international laws,” Haq said.
Children in Rafah, Gaza gather to receive food distributed by aid organizations on March 15, 2024. (Photo: Jehad Alshrafi/Anadolu via Getty Images
“The State Department’s position makes a mockery of U.S. law and assurances provided to Congress,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Sen. Bernie Sanders on Monday said the U.S. State Department’s determination that Israel is not violating international law with its assault on the Gaza Strip is “absurd on its face,” pointing to the mass death, destruction, and starvation that Israeli forces have inflicted on the territory’s population over the past six months.
“Thirty-two thousand Palestinians in Gaza have been killed and almost 75,000 injured, two-thirds of whom are women and children,” Sanders (I-Vt.) said in a statement. “Some 60% of the housing units have been damaged or destroyed, and almost all medical facilities have been made inoperable. Today, hundreds of thousands of Palestinian children are facing starvation because [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu won’t let in sufficient humanitarian aid, while thousands of trucks are waiting to get into Gaza.”
“The State Department’s position,” said Sanders, “makes a mockery of U.S. law and assurances provided to Congress.”
The senator’s statement came after State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told reporters during a press briefing earlier Monday that the Biden administration has not found Israel “to be in violation of international humanitarian law, either when it comes to the conduct of the war or when it comes to the provision of humanitarian assistance.”
Miller was responding to a question about assurances the administration has received from the Israeli government that its use of American weaponry has complied with international law and that it has permitted U.S. humanitarian aid to enter Gaza, where the entire population is facing acute hunger.
Under a new Biden administration policy known as NSM-20, recipients of American military aid are required to provide the U.S. government with “credible and reliable” written assurances that they are using such assistance “in a manner consistent with all applicable international and domestic law and policy.”
Late last week, a group of U.S. senators—including Sanders—warned the Biden administration that deeming Israeli assurances credible would “be inconsistent with the letter and spirit of NSM-20” and “establish an unacceptable precedent” for the application of the policy “in other situations around the world.”
“Until Biden is ready to impose real policy consequences on Netanyahu’s government, the famine will continue.”
It is a violation of U.S. law to continue sending military assistance to a country that is obstructing the delivery of American humanitarian aid. Last month, far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich blocked a U.S.-funded flour shipment from entering the Gaza Strip, and Israeli forces have repeatedly fired on convoys attempting to deliver aid to desperate Gazans.
But the Biden administration has refused to even apply concrete restrictions on American military aid. Over the weekend, U.S. President Joe Biden signed into law a measure that approves $3.8 billion in unconditional military assistance for the Israeli government and imposes a one-year ban on funding for the primary humanitarian aid organization in Gaza.
Jeremy Konyndyk, the president of Refugees International and a former USAID official, said Monday that Israel’s assurances to the U.S. are “not remotely credible” and argued the Biden administration is undermining efforts to combat the worsening humanitarian crisis in Gaza by accepting the Israeli government’s claims.
The U.S., he said, is “talking a big game about fighting the famine that its bombs and diplomatic cover have helped create.” Resorting to “gimmicky” efforts such as airdrops and temporary ports while a U.S. ally obstructs humanitarian aid “is not how you fight a famine,” Konyndyk argued.
“Fundamentally Biden must choose: between continuing to enable Netanyahu, or ending the famine. There’s no way to split the difference,” said Konyndyk. “Until Biden is ready to impose real policy consequences on Netanyahu’s government, the famine will continue.”
