Ann Arbor – Barak Ravid at Axios got the scoop. He was leaked a letter from U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin to Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant accusing them of reneging on undertakings of last April to pursue their war on Hamas in a manner consistent with the protection of innocent civilians as required by US law and by International Humanitarian Law. The two American leaders only obliquely referred to IHL, of course, since the U.S. only approves of international law when it can be used against enemies such as Vladimir Putin.
The letter is a frank admission that the extremist Israeli government now in power has been endangering civilian lives in a manner inconsistent with the Leahy Act, which requires the State Department to certify that US weaponry sold to other countries is used in a manner that, to the extent possible in war, preserves the lives of innocent civilians. ProPublica revealed in late September that US AID had concluded that Israel had deliberately blocked deliveries of food and medicine into Gaza. This finding should have provoked a cut-off of US arms to Israel under the provisions of the Leahy Act. Blinken, however, buried the conclusions and lied about them to Congress so that he could keep the arms pipeline to Israel going.
Ironically, Blinken uses language similar to that of US AID in this week’s letter, and holds these Israeli harms to civilians over Netanyahu’s head, threatening a weapons cut-off if the Israelis don’t stop starving Palestinians and impeding medical and other humanitarian aid.
The obvious question is if Blinken has known about these violations of US law all along, why is he only detailing them in public (his office surely leaked the letter to Ravid) now? And why, if Israel is in violation of the Leahy Act, weren’t weapons supplies cut off way before now? Why give the Israelis another 30 days to commit further atrocities?
The obvious conclusion is that the letter is an intervention in the presidential race, with Election Day only 20 days away as I write.
The letter seems calculated to help Kamala Harris, who takes a lot of flack for her association with Joe Biden’s de facto complicity in genocide from the left and from minority voters, including, but not limited to, Muslim and Arab American voters. The enthusiasm gap for Harris as a result of the Democratic Party’s complicity with Netanyahu’s atrocities, it is alleged by some observers, could cost her the key swing state of Michigan. Michigan has sizeable Arab and Muslim American communities, but they aren’t the only ones with concerns. Only 17% of Black voters in a recent poll saw Harris’s Gaza policy as a reason to vote for her.
So, for prominent cabinet members of the Biden-Harris administration to lash out at Netanyahu on treatment of civilians might be good for her.
On the other hand, Biden and Harris have to be careful not to lose the campaign donations and votes of the Jewish community, some two thirds of whom in polling say Israel is important to them. Only a third of American Jews in a recent Pew Research Center poll thought Israel was going too far in Gaza, and 24% say it hasn’t gone far enough.
But a mere letter with a threat that won’t even be implemented for 30 days — and of course will actually never be implemented — might not make enough Jewish Americans angry enough to affect the election.
I am only speculating here. But the letter may also be a warning to Netanyahu that once the election is over, Biden will still be president and Harris may well be his successor, and he should stop trying to get Donald Trump elected. Netanyahu has many reasons for bruiting an ethnic cleansing and starvation campaign in northern Gaza and for invading Lebanon and for bombing Iran. But surely these actions are dual use, and he is aware that they make it look as though Biden is not a strong leader in control of events. That is an implicit argument for Trump.
Blinken and Austin demand some pretty robust measures by Netanyahu. No food aid has gotten into northern Gaza in October, and September saw the fewest aid trucks allowed to enter this year. They want 350 food and aid trucks to be allowed into Gaza from five checkpoints (and demand that the fifth checkpoint, now closed, be opened right back up).
Before the war, 500 food trucks went into Gaza daily from Israel. Even 350 is far less than what is needed. Because of Israel’s long economic blockade of Gaza, it was a basket case even before the current war. Netanyahu kept people there just on the verge of hunger, limiting calories, but avoiding starvation. He has more recently apparently decided that starvation is a legitimate tool of war. It isn’t.
They even want Netanyahu to let aid organizations repair roads and restore some infrastructure that he has carefully reduced to rubble. They want an end to the current attempt to isolate (read starve) northern Gaza. They want more medical supplies allowed in. The Israelis exclude medical scissors and scalpels on the specious grounds that Hamas might stab someone with them. Operations have to be done without anesthesia or proper knives.
I have given the full text (available via the online version of this story) so you can read the letter for yourself.
Sadly, its provisions aren’t likely to be implemented, or only slightly, and Biden will go on bear-hugging Netanyahu right until he vacates the White House in January.
And Palestinian civilians, who don’t exist according to Israel’s president, will go on dying at astonishing rates.
Juan Cole is the founder and chief editor of Informed Comment. He is Richard P. Mitchell Professor of History at the University of Michigan He is author of, among many other books, “Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires” and “Engaging the Muslim World.” He blogs at juancole.com, follow him at @jricole or the Informed Comment Facebook Page. See a longer version of this column.
From The Progressive Populist, November 15, 2024
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