Although President Joe Biden claims to be against the mass killing of Gazans, his administration has provided Israel with most of the weapons that are being used in the war there.
According to the
Washington Post, the Biden administration has “quietly approved and delivered more than 100 separate foreign military sales to Israel” since the beginning of the conflict that was spurred by the October 7 attacks on Israel by Hamas. Among the shipments were thousands of small arms, small-diameter bombs, precision-guided munitions, bunker busters and other lethal weapons.
However, just two of those sales have been publicly reported: $147.5 million worth of components used for making 155mm shells and $106 million in tank ammunition. The others slipped under the radar because their amounts were below the minimum required for the White House to notify Congress.
Meanwhile, the U.S. just gave the green light for the transfer of a $2.5 billion weapons package for Israel that includes fighter jets and bombs, according to the
Washington Post. The 2,000-pound bombs included in the package have been linked to past mass-casualty events in Gaza and can cause damage from up to 1,000 feet away. On top of that, the U.S. gives Israel $3.8 billion in military assistance each year.
Refugees International President Jeremy Konyndyk, a former senior official with the White House, stated: “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.”
In fact,
the supplies have only slowed down recently because the U.S. can’t keep up with Israel’s demands. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Charles Q. Brown, Jr., said: “Although we’ve been supporting them with capability, they’ve not received everything they’ve asked for. Some of that is because they’ve asked for stuff that we either don’t have the capacity to provide or are not willing to provide, not right now.”
He added that this is because the U.S. does not want to compromise its own readiness and not because America has changed its policy toward Israel. In other words,
the weapons will continue to flow to Israel, even as the body count of civilians in Gaza piles up.
“There is no change in US policy. The United States continues to provide security assistance to our ally Israel as they defend themselves from Hamas,” he said.
Biden is publicly criticizing Israel while continuing to send them lethal weapons
Even though Biden has been more critical of Israel’s actions in public lately as the war continues – and election day draws nearer – and he has threatened not to back them if they go ahead with their planned invasion of the Gazan city of Rafah, the administration is still providing them with weapons behind the scenes. Biden himself said earlier this month the U.S. won’t be pulling supplies of Iron Dome air defense missiles and similar defensive arms.
The generous weapon supplies Israel gets from the U.S. are being used to further their
genocidal campaign, with more than 31,000 Palestinians dead so far. This includes more than 13,000 children.
In a post on X, Senator Bernie Sanders wrote: “The US cannot beg Netanyahu to stop bombing civilians one day and the next send him thousands more 2,000-pound bombs that can level entire city blocks. We must end our complicity: No more bombs to Israel.”
The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs took a similar stance on the platform, condemning the latest round of aid from the U.S. and pointing out that “demanding Netanyahu to stop
killing civilians and supplying him with weapons is an unprecedented principled and moral contradiction.”
Sources for this article include:
TheCradle.co
TimesOfIsrael.com
AlJazeera.com