American complicity in Gaza

Zahid Hussain 

Published October 9, 2024 

DAWN

“NO administration has helped Israel more than I have. None, none, none,” remarked US President Joe Biden recently as Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza entered its second year, marking a death toll of tens of thousands of Palestinian lives, most of the victims being women and children. The first US president to publicly declare himself a ‘Zionist’, he is not wrong.

It may be true that previous US administrations, too, were fully committed to supporting the Zionist state, but the outgoing president went much further in backing Tel Aviv’s war crimes in Gaza. The massive military aid provided by America has not only helped the Benjamin Netanyahu government sustain its longest and deadliest war but has also extended the conflict to other regional countries.

One year of devastating air strikes and ground invasions by the Zionist forces has turned the enclave into a death trap, displacing the entire population of Gaza. Meanwhile, hundreds of Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s military operation in the occupied West Bank.

A similar horror has not been witnessed in recent history. Support from the US and some other Western countries has given Israel complete impunity. Given the Biden administration’s unconditional support for Israel, many observers accuse it of being complicit in what amounts to war crimes. In fact, it has now also become an American war. A record $17.9 billion has been spent by the Biden administration on military aid to Tel Aviv since the war erupted a year ago, leading to heightened tensions and conflict in the Middle East, according to Brown University’s Costs of War project released this week.

There has never been any effort on the part of the US to stop Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

It is by far the largest military aid sent to Israel in one year. In fact, the report indicates that details of some shipments to Israel are hard to come by. The exact amount of military aid then is apparently much higher. The report cited the American administration’s “efforts to hide the full amounts of aid and types of systems through bureaucratic manoeuvring”.

Additionally, America has spent $4.86bn on enhanced military operations in the region, which includes the costs of its campaign against the Houthis in Yemen, who, siding with the Palestinian population, are carrying out strikes against Israel.

For the past one year, American aid to Israel has been a combination of military financing and arms sales and transfers from the US stockpile, according to the report. A large part of the arsenal contains artillery shells and the 2,000-pound bombs that Israel has used with devastating effect on the Palestinians of Gaza, turning their homes into rubble.

Notwithstanding its hollow calls for a ceasefire, there has never been any serious intention or effort on part of the Biden administration to stop Israel’s ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip, where officially more than 41,000 people have been killed in the last one year.

While occasionally raising concerns over Israel’s indiscriminate killings of civilians and briefly pausing the flow of some heavy bombs, Washington has refused to stipulate conditions for US military aid, despite growing international protests. It has remained silent over the wanton butchery currently going on in Lebanon, where more than 1,000 people have died in devastating Israeli air strikes that have used US-supplied bombs.

Being the most critical US ally in the Middle East, Israel is the biggest recipient of US military aid in history since 1959. Apart from the current administration’s massive military aid, there is overwhelming bipartisan support for the Zionist regime in the US Congress. No US administration can afford to defy the powerful Israeli lobby that virtually controls Congress.

At the height of this genocidal war, the Israeli prime minister, whose arrest warrant as a war criminal was requested by the International Criminal Court prosecutor some months ago, was invited to address the joint session of Congress in July, where he received repeated standing ovations by legislators from both sides of the aisle as he justified his genocidal war calling it a “clash between barbarism and civilisation”.

He rejected the two-state solution making it clear that Israel was not seeking to resettle Gaza. Only a handful of progressive legislators abstained in protest. The growing sentiment among the younger generation of Americans against the war is not likely to have any effect on Washington’s unqualified support for Israel’s genocidal war.

Many analysts agree that it is Israel that effectively runs American foreign policy. Israel’s powerful influence on US policy is well described in The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy, a seminal book authored by two eminent US university professors and originally published in 2007.

“It is difficult to talk about the lobby’s influence on American foreign policy, at least in the mainstream media in the United States without being accused of anti-Semitism… .” the book says. “… Not only does it [the lobby] exert significant influence over the policy process in Democratic and Republican administrations alike, but it is even more powerful on Capitol Hill.”

Writing in the New Yorker in 2005, journalist Jeffrey Goldberg recounted a meeting with an official of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, who putting a napkin in front of him, said, “You see this napkin? In 24 hours, we could have the signatures of 70 senators on this napkin.” The unanimous support for aid to Israel in the Congress is a testimony of the influence and power of AIPAC on Congress, irrespective of whichever party wins the presidential election.

With just a few weeks left for the next election, there is no possibility of any change in Washington’s unqualified backing for Israel. It’s not surprising that both contenders for the office, Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, have pledged support for Israel’s expanding war in the Middle East, where the war in Gaza has effectively imprisoned over a million people in a small strip of land which Israel has converted into a killing field.

With active support from Washington, the Zionist regime has now turned the conflict into a regional conflagration. The fear of an Israeli attack targeting Iranian nuclear and oil facilities could directly involve the US in a war with disastrous consequences.

The writer is an author and journalist.

zhussain100@yahoo.com

X: @hidhussain

Published in Dawn, October 9th, 2024