On May 10, Secretary of State Antony Blinken addressed Congress and lied. He said: “We do not currently assess that the Israeli government is prohibiting or otherwise restricting the transport or delivery of U.S. humanitarian assistance.”
This is despite an explosive report given to Blinken in April 2024, from the State Department’s Refugees and Migration Bureau, that Israel was intentionally blocking humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza. Plus a strongly worded 17-page memo from the United States Agency for International Development that described Israel’s interference with aid efforts, including killing aid workers, bombing ambulances and hospitals and routinely turning away trucks loaded with food and medicine.
Details of these warnings and Blinken’s decision to ignore them were leaked by ProPublica.org on Sept. 25 in an article noting that while Israel has its own arms industry, it relies heavily on U.S. jets, bombs and other weapons for its genocidal war in Gaza. “Since October, the U.S. has shipped more that 50,000 tons of weaponry” that Israel calls “crucial for sustaining” the Israel Occupation Forces’ “operational capabilities during the ongoing war.” (tinyurl.com/bdhas46y)
Congress and the executive branch claim to have imposed guidelines on how Israel uses money the U.S. sends, including prohibiting intentional attacks on civilian populations or blocking access to humanitarian aid. Clearly Israel has violated these limits again and again in Gaza and most recently with the dropping of U.S.-supplied 2,000-pound bunker-buster bombs on a residential block in Beirut, Lebanon, killing an estimated 700 civilians and Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah.
So why did Blinken cover up for Israel, and why do Congress and President Joe Biden continue with the charade? As ProPublica points out the Biden administration established the National Security Memorandum in February 2024 requiring the State Department to investigate Israel’s claims it was not blocking aid. If Blinken reported that the Israelis were arbitrarily blocking civilian access to aid, by law Congress is required to halt military assistance.
Money to Israel buys U.S.-made weapons
One problem was that Israel, having already purchased and employed weapons from U.S. manufacturers, had yet to pay for them. Of interest in the ProPublica article is that Israel uses the $3.8 billion the U.S. gives it every year and the significantly increased billions of dollars since Oct. 7, 2023, to “buy American-made bombs and equipment.” ProPublica obtained copies of an email thread between a Department of Defense official on April 17 who contacted Mira Resnick, a deputy assistant secretary of the State Department known as the “driving force behind arms sales to Israel.”…
https://www.workers.org/2024/10/81028/
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After the truth-shower 