Biden Lets Israel Off the Hook Again

The Biden administration finally released their report on Israeli compliance with international humanitarian law on Friday. Predictably, the administration ignored the mountain of evidence showing Israeli violations of international law in their conduct of the war and their ongoing efforts to impede the delivery of humanitarian aid. Akbar Shahid Ahmed reported:

President Joe Biden’s administration on Friday concluded its assessment of whether Israel is breaking international and American laws in its U.S.-backed military campaign in Gaza and did not conclude that Israel’s conduct requires Washington to cut off aid for the offensive, according to a copy of the assessment reviewed by HuffPost.

Leading humanitarian agencies poured scorn on the administration’s conclusions. The head of Doctors Without Borders (MSF) USA, Avril Benoit, said, “The Biden administration’s analysis of Israel’s war in Gaza has not proceeded as a good faith effort to uphold US law.” Abby Maxman, CEO of Oxfam America, condemned the report as “a slap in the face to the Palestinian and international human rights and humanitarian organizations that provided firsthand accounts and evidence ― backed by experts within the administration ― on the assumption that their input would be evaluated in good faith.” The Vice President of Advocacy for the International Rescue Committee, Flora Alexander, criticized the administration for ignoring the accounts of humanitarian aid workers:

The Biden Administration National Security Memorandum 20 assessment fails to acknowledge what humanitarians on the ground in Gaza are telling them: that aid is still being consistently impeded by the Israeli authorities. If humanitarian aid was flowing unhindered and at scale, one million people would not be in famine conditions and the U.S. government would not be engaging in last resort options like air drops or expensive maritime routes.

Oxfam’s Scott Paul summed up the findings of the report, “Firm legal requirements to respect IHL & not block aid are being swatted away by a president who campaigned on restoring the rule of law.” Jeremy Konyndyk, president of Refugees International, commented, “Lots of documentation of apparent violations; yet concludes Israel's assurances on IHL compliance are credible. It's like they're staring at all of these trees and arguing there's no forest.”

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) wasn’t buying the administration’s line, either:

Today’s report also indicates a continuation of a disturbing pattern where the expertise and analyses of those working most closely on these issues at the State Department and at USAID have been swept aside to facilitate a predetermined policy outcome based on political convenience.

It was clear from earlier leaked reports from the State Department and USAID that the people working in these agencies know very well what the Israeli government has been doing and continues to do. The administration knows that Israel has repeatedly violated international law, and they know that these violations continue. The White House and State Department leadership simply ignore everything that would force them to cut off weapons deliveries as U.S. law requires. As Van Hollen said to Shahid last week, “The administration ducked all the hard questions.”

The administration’s initial response to Israeli assurances strongly suggested that this would be the case. We can see that the entire review exercise was a sham. While Biden threatened to withhold some weapons in the event of a “major” invasion of Rafah, he let Israel off the hook for its myriad violations that would have required a halt to all arms transfers. The president feigned getting tough with Netanyahu only to give him a free pass a few days later.

The administration report is a disgraceful evasion of the requirements of U.S. law and the president’s own stated policy. The U.S. is taking Israeli assurances at face value when the evidence is overwhelming that these assurances are false, and it is doing so against the best advice of its own professional experts. The Biden administration is once again making a mockery of both U.S. and international law, and it does this so it can keep funneling weapons into an atrocious war that it ought to be ending.