An Israeli soldier holds a weapon atop an armoured personnel carrier [File: Baz Ratner/Reuters]
Thirty out of 350 licences to be suspended, citing ‘clear risk’ they could be used in breach of international humanitarian law.
The United Kingdom says it would suspend 30 out of 350 arms exports licences to Israel, citing a “clear risk” they could be used in a serious breach of international humanitarian law.
Foreign Secretary David Lammy told parliament on Monday the partial ban covered items “which could be used in the current conflict in Gaza” against Hamas but did not include parts for the F-35 fighter jets.
He said the decision to suspend the licences did not amount to a blanket ban or an arms embargo, adding that the UK continues to support Israel’s right to self defence in accordance with international law.
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“It is with regret that I inform the House [of Commons, lower house of parliament] today the assessment I have received leaves me unable to conclude anything other than that for certain UK arms exports to Israel, there does exist a clear risk that they might be used to commit or facilitate a serious violation of international humanitarian law,” Lammy said.
UK Labour Party Shadow Foreign Secretary repeatedly heckled at a speech to the Fabian Society over his and the Labour Party’s support for and complicity in Israel’s genocide of Gaza.
Bodies of Palestinians, including babies, who were killed in the Israeli army’s attack on the Nuseirat Refugee Camp are brought to the Aqsa Martyrs Hospital morgue in Deir al-Balah, Gaza on August 30, 2024. (Photo: Ali Jadallah/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“Harris is saying she will reject 77% of Democrats, 61% of Americans, international law, domestic U.S. law, and basic humanity to continue the flow of weapons to Israel while it stands accused of genocide,” said one analyst.
Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris said in a CNN interview that aired late Thursday that, if elected in November, she would not change the Biden administration’s policy of steadfast military support for Israel, rejecting widespread calls for an arms embargo to help bring about an end to the devastating assault on Gaza.
“I’m unequivocal and unwavering in my commitment to Israel’s defense and its ability to defend itself, and that’s not gonna change,” said Harris, recounting the horrors of the Hamas-led October 7 attack. “Israel had a right, has a right to defend itself.”
Acknowledging that “far too many innocent Palestinians have been killed,” the vice president responded “no” when CNN‘s Dana Bash asked whether a Harris administration would implement a “change in policy in terms of arms” and withhold even “some” weapons shipments to Israel.
Watch:
HORRIFIC. It's extremely clear that Kamala Harris would do the same as what Biden is doing on Gaza: "Would you do anything differently? For example, would you withhold some U.S. weapons shipments to Israel?" Kamala Harris: "I'm unequivocal and unwavering in my commitment to… pic.twitter.com/EQ0gV6vcFP
The CNN appearance marked Harris’ first major television interview since becoming the Democratic nominee, a change at the top of the party’s 2024 ticket that Palestinian rights advocates hoped would open the door to a fundamental shift away from the Biden administration’s Gaza policy—which has been to arm Israel to the teeth while tepidly pressuring the country’s far-right government to protect civilians and agree to a cease-fire deal.
“The vice president’s statement was morally indefensible and politically shortsighted as the lack of American consequences for Netanyahu’s horrific assault on Palestinian civilians in Gaza has emboldened Israel to now invade the West Bank,” Layla Elabed and Abbas Alawieh, co-founders of the Uncommitted National Movement, said in a statement Friday. “Vice President Harris must turn the page from one of the most glaring foreign policy failures of our time by aligning with the American majority that opposes sending weapons to Israel’s assault on Gaza.”
Despite Bash’s characterization of calls for an arms embargo against Israel as a demand from the “progressive left,” survey data has shown that a majority of U.S. voters oppose sending weapons to Israel as it commits appalling war crimes in Gaza and the West Bank. Since October, the U.S. has sent Israel over 50,000 tons of weaponry.
“Harris is saying she will reject 77% of Democrats, 61% of Americans, international law, domestic U.S. law, and basic humanity to continue the flow of weapons to Israel while it stands accused of genocide,” Middle East scholar Assal Rad said late Thursday, citing the results of a recent CBS News/YouGov poll.
A separate poll commissioned by the IMEU Policy Project suggested that voters in key U.S. battleground states would be more likely to vote for a Democratic nominee who pledged to withhold weapons from Israel.
The CNN interview aired as Israel continued its multi-day assault on the West Bank, a deadly military campaign that the head of the United Nations and others warned could become an extension of the nearly 11-month war on Gaza, during which Israel has killed more than 40,600 people, displaced 90% of the enclave’s population, and sparked famine across the territory.
On Thursday, Israel’s military killed five Palestinians in an airstrike on a vehicle convoy of the Washington, D.C.-based American Near East Refugee Aid (ANERA) agency. It is a violation of U.S. law to provide weaponry to a country obstructing the delivery of American humanitarian aid.
Note: In May, the Biden-Harris State Department admitted it’s “reasonable to assess” that Israeli forces have used US weapons in ways “inconsistent” with international law.
Still, Harris — after months of failed attempts to secure a ceasefire — says she wouldn’t change policy: https://t.co/cyXw7Hoqk7
The attack on the ANERA convoy came a day after Israeli forces opened fire on a World Food Program vehicle, forcing the U.N. agency to suspend employee movement in Gaza.
Harris’ refusal to express openness to an arms embargo against a military that has repeatedly targeted aid and healthcare workers, journalists, and other civilians sparked immediate backlash from Palestinian rights advocates, including at least one member of Congress.
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), the only Palestinian American in the U.S. Congress, said Harris’ answer signaled that “war crimes and genocide will continue.”
Yonah Lieberman, co-founder of IfNotNow, called the Democratic nominee’s answer on Gaza “terrible” and “out of touch with voters, especially those in key battleground states who Harris needs to feel motivated to go to the polls.”
“Poll after poll after poll tells us that a majority of Americans and even more key Democratic constituencies want the US to stop giving arms to Israel that it’s using to kill and displace Palestinian families,” Lieberman added. “Not sending bombs to Israel is politically expedient and—quite obviously!—the morally correct thing to do for anyone reading the daily headlines of Israeli massacres being done with U.S. weapons.”
In an op-ed for Common Dreams on Friday, RootsAction national director Norman Solomon warned that “time is running out for Kamala Harris to distance herself from U.S. policies that enable Israel to continue with mass murder and genocide in Gaza.”
“Polling shows that a pivot toward moral decency would improve her chances of defeating Donald Trump,” Solomon wrote. “But during her CNN interview Thursday night, Harris remained in lockstep with President Biden’s unconditional arming of Israel.”
This story has been updated to include a statement from the Uncommitted National Movement.
PALESTINE ACTION activists who occupied a weapons factory to disrupt weapon productions for Israel in Shipley are set to go on trial on Monday.
The four activists were charged with criminal damage after they were seen scaling and taking a sledgehammer to the roof of the US-owned Teledyne Defence and Space factory on April 2.
The factory manufactures components for missiles, electronics, gunsights and munitions for the Israeli military.
Operations were ground to a halt as a result of the action.
Two out of four activists were remanded to prison afterwards.
One was held for approximately one month, while the other was held for three months.
Palestine Action says the firm “boasts of its involvement with missile products procured by Israel, including the AGM-Harpoon, AIM-120 AMRAAM and AGM-114 Hellfire missiles deployed by Israel against Gaza — the latter reportedly being used to strike al-Shifa hospital.”
It also produces parts, including filters and multifunction assemblies for drones and aircraft, along with radar systems such as the type fitted in F-35 Fighter jets used by Israel.
Palestine solidarity protesters on August 2 in New York City (Photo: Wyatt Souers)
The US shows no signs of implementing an arms embargo or even conditioning aid as Palestinian death toll continues to mount
On August 26, the Israeli Defense Ministry announced that it had received over 50,000 tons in shipments of arms and military equipment from the US since October 7. Israel has used these shipments in carrying out a war that has been labeled by international bodies and nations as a genocide against the people of Gaza, with over 40,000 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces thus far. The weapons deliveries are “crucial for sustaining the IDF’s operational capabilities during the ongoing war,” claim Israeli forces.
It appears that the US is no closer to an arms embargo against Israel or even to conditioning aid, despite pressure from within the country itself to do so. Only weeks ago, the Pentagon announced an arms sale of USD 20 billion to Israel.
Last month, shortly before the US Congress gave visiting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a standing ovation in a special joint session of Congress, seven major labor unions, representing almost half of the combined unionized workforce, penned a letter demanding that the US end US aid to Israel.
This demand was reiterated by “uncommitted” delegates at the Democratic National Convention last week, as well as the thousands of protesters outside of the Convention in Chicago. Vice President Kamala Harris, formally chosen as the Democratic Party nominee in the 2024 presidential election, only firmly doubled down on her Party’s support for Israel in her acceptance speech.
“I will always stand up for Israel’s right to defend itself, and I will always ensure Israel has the ability to defend itself, because the people of Israel must never again face the horror that a terrorist organization called Hamas caused on Oct. 7, including unspeakable sexual violence and the massacre of young people at a music festival,” Harris stated.
The conditions of genocide are only becoming more dire in Gaza. On August 16, the Palestinian Ministry of Health confirmed that a 10-month-old baby in Gaza had been infected with polio, Gaza’s first case of polio in 25 years. This announcement raised alarms about the effects of war on conditions of disease and starvation, which could lead to upwards of 186,000 deaths, as estimated by a letter published in The Lancet last month. Organizations such as the WHO have emphasized that a humanitarian pause in the war are essential to carrying out an effective polio vaccination campaign.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaks to reporters on a tarmac in Doha, Qatar on August 20, 2024. (Photo: Kevin Mohatt/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)
“You are currently arming, funding, and defending a genocide in Gaza. That is how history will remember you.”
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was accused of stark hypocrisy on Saturday after he condemned the Myanmar military’s genocide against the Rohingya people while simultaneously aiding Israel’s genocidal assault on the Gaza Strip.
Marking the seventh anniversary of Myanmar’s vicious ethnic cleansing of the stateless Rohingya, Blinken wrote on social media that “the United States continues to honor the victims and stand with the survivors as they seek justice and accountability for these atrocities.”
Blinken also issued a statement highlighting the U.S. State Department’s “extensive documentation of the atrocities and abuses committed against Rohingya and all civilians”—a sharp contrast with the Biden administration’s reluctance to assess Israeli atrocities against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
“You are currently arming, funding, and defending a genocide in Gaza,” Middle East researcher and analyst Assal Rad wrote in response to Blinken’s statement. “That is how history will remember you, not your empty words.”
U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) also weighed in, telling Blinken to “just stop trying to act like you care about genocide or human rights.”
Under Blinken’s leadership, the U.S. State Department has approved massive arms transfers to Israel—including a recent $20 billion sale—and provided diplomatic cover for the country’s far-right government on the world stage, dismissing as “meritless” the South Africa-led genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice.
Israel has killed more than 40,400 people in Gaza since the October 7 Hamas-led attack. Most of those killed in Israel’s assault have been women and children—including thousands of infants and toddlers.
“According to documents and sources who spoke with Haaretz,” the Israeli newspaper reported last September, “the government-owned Israel Aerospace Industries and the Israeli arms maker Elbit Systems maintained their trade with Myanmar despite an international arms embargo on the country, and despite a 2017 ruling by Israel’s High Court of Justice and the Israeli government’s own 2018 statement saying it stopped such sales.”
“Israel’s longstanding relations with the different regimes controlling Myanmar have involved arms trade since the mid-20th century,” Haaretz continued. “Even in the years in which the country was openly ruled by its military junta, Israel refused to stop the trade. The trade was maintained through the Rohingya genocide of 2016-17.”
