The Bombs Raining Down on Gaza? They’re American
Israel’s devastating assault on Gaza, with its unconscionable numbers of civilian casualties, is proof of a bankrupt U.S. policy that’s been a massive failure on two fronts: military aid, and political impunity.
For decades, abettors-in-chief in the White House and Congress have supplied Israel, a nuclear power, with tens of billions of dollars in superior weaponry, including F-35 stealth aircraft, F-16 fighter jets, Apache attack helicopters, one-ton bombs, and an assortment of grenades, torpedoes, rocket launchers, guided missiles, howitzers, mortars and machine guns.
Much of this now rains down on women and children in Gaza.
Israel’s disproportionate response in 2021, which has killed more than 200 Palestinians, echoes its onslaught on Gaza seven years ago.
The firepower Israel’s military launched in the 2014 war exceeded that of Hamas by an estimate of 440-to-1.
It’s no wonder Palestinian civilian casualties outnumbered Israel’s by nearly 350-to-1.
By one estimate, all of Hamas’s rockets, measured in explosive power, were equal to 12 of the one-ton bombs Israel dropped on Gaza.
“Holy bejeezus,” a retired American general remarked at the time.
Still, when Israel’s ammunition supply began to run low, the U.S. resupplied it—hours after condemning the Israeli bombing of a United Nations girls’ elementary school in Gaza.
Seven years later, another echo: President Biden approved $735 million in precision-guided weapons to Israel.
These include Boeing Joint Direct Attack Munitions, from the same family as the missile that destroyed the AP and Al-Jazeera offices in Gaza last week.
To be clear: None of this justifies Hamas launching barrages of deadly rockets toward Israel.
Those rockets kill, too, even if far less frequently.
So far 10 Israelis have died in the latest burst of violence.
It’s essential for both sides to stand down and agree on a ceasefire.
But the context of power—political and explosive—cannot be ignored.
The U.S. facilitation of Israeli might, and its repeated disproportionate attacks on Gaza, is part of America’s military commitment to “always stand with Israel” (Donald Trump); to “stand steadfast with Israel” (Barack Obama), to proclaim its “unbreakable alliance” (George W. Bush) and its “allegiance to shared values” (Bill Clinton).
Israel has the right to defend itself — President Biden
No matter how many bombs fall, no matter how many Gazans perish or lose their homes, no matter how many thousands of Israeli settlers seize Palestinian lands in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, U.S. politicians are there to forgive, forget, and veto U.N. resolutions condemning the deaths of children in Gaza.
Biden’s support for Israel seems to know no bounds.
As vice president in 2010, he came to Israel to declare America’s “absolute, total, unvarnished commitment to Israel’s security.” Hours later the Netanyahu government announced the construction of 1,600 new apartments in East Jerusalem.
The U.S.’s “unvarnished commitment,” the prime minister knew, meant he need not fear any consequences.
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