The US has approved the delivery of almost two shipments of weapons on average per day since Israel launched its genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza. That’s 607 shipments over nearly 11 months, of arms weighing over 50,000 tons.
The Israeli military released the information and said:
The equipment procured and transported includes armored vehicles, munitions, ammunition, personal protection gear, and medical equipment
Josh Ruebner, policy director at IMEU Policy Project, which seeks to advance Palestinian freedom through US policymaking, said:
Let’s be clear: the US is deeply complicit in Israel’s genocide
US bombs used in Israel’s war crimes
The US approved a further $20bn in arms sales to Israel earlier in August. These sales are made up predominantly of F-15 fighter jets, which Israel can use to bomb Palestine.
Indeed, Israel has repeatedly used US-made arms to commit apparent war crimes. Amnesty International found fragments of US-made Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAM bombs) in the rubble following two strikes on civilian homes in Gaza in October 2023. Both strikes were in Deir al-Balah city and south of Wadi Gaza, an area that Israel had designated as a ‘safe zone’. The strikes killed 43 civilians, the vast majority women and children.
Amnesty further noted:
Amnesty International did not find any indication that there were any military objectives at the sites of the two strikes or that people in the buildings were legitimate military targets, raising concerns that these strikes were direct attacks on civilians.
And its secretary general Agnès Callamard said in December:
The fact that US-made munitions are being used by Israeli military in unlawful attacks with deadly consequences for civilians should be an urgent wake-up call to the Biden administration. The US-made weapons facilitated the mass killings of extended families
Weapons manufacturers are making huge sums from Israel’s genocidal onslaught on Gaza and the corresponding geopolitical tensions in the Middle East. Analysis from Vertical Research Partners found major arms companies are seeing their profits increase by 40%. The profiteering is also increasing because of the Ukraine war.
The US already sends $3.8bn in military aid to Israel every year, a figure that, in April, increased by another $15bn for this year. That’s after Congress passed the additional aid package.
“Obvious step” is arms embargo
A group of doctors that recently returned from Gaza have joined calls for a US arms embargo on Israel. Trauma surgeon Dr Feroze Sidhwa said:
I saw children’s heads smashed to pieces by the bullets that we paid for, not once, not twice, but quite literally, every single day
The doctors made the call on a panel conference held on the sidelines of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Dr Tammy Abughanim, a paediatric intensive-care surgeon said:
When we press the Biden administration for an arms embargo as physicians, what we are saying is we cannot do our jobs as bombs are falling. We cannot do our jobs, because Israel has made our jobs impossible, and Israel has made our jobs impossible with the direct support of the United States. We all know the obvious step is to stop supplying Israel with the arms that it is using, the weaponry that it is using to target and kill civilians.
Donald Trump, meanwhile, would potentially be worse than the Democratic leadership with his support for Israel’s onslaught. During his previous presidency, Trump recognised the Syrian Golan Heights as part of Israel and Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Most of the international community views the Golan Heights as Israeli-occupied Syrian territory, because Israel took it from Syria in 1967. And East Jerusalem is supposed to be part of Palestine.
Featured image via Sky News – YouTube
