{"id":32329,"date":"2024-03-15T11:42:53","date_gmt":"2024-03-15T18:42:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=32329"},"modified":"2024-03-15T11:42:54","modified_gmt":"2024-03-15T18:42:54","slug":"joe-biden-is-shipping-weapons-to-israel-every-36-hours","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2024\/03\/15\/joe-biden-is-shipping-weapons-to-israel-every-36-hours\/","title":{"rendered":"Joe Biden Is Shipping Weapons to Israel Every 36 Hours"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Stephen Semler\/Jacobin<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"JoePresident Joe Biden speaks during a meeting in the East Room of the White House on March 12, 2024, in Washington, DC. (photo: AFP)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

14 march 24<\/strong> (RSN.org)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ALSO SEE: <\/strong>Should Us Keep Arming Israel? Poll Finds Most Americans Want Weapon Shipments to Stop<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Biden administration has been able to maintain a low profile by spreading arms provision to Israel across more than 100 smaller munitions sales \u2014 allowing the president to posture as a peacekeeper while US weapons wipe Gaza off the map.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

In the one hundred fifty days after October 7, Israel killed thirty-one thousand Palestinians, injured seventy-two thousand, displaced 1.7 million, and razed or damaged more than half<\/a> of Gaza\u2019s buildings. Joe Biden sent over one hundred weapons shipments to Israel during the same stretch. In a recent classified briefing, US officials told members of Congress that the Biden administration approved and delivered more than one hundred separate weapons sales to Israel in the one hundred fifty days after October 7, \u201camounting to thousands of precision-guided munitions, small diameter bombs, bunker busters, small arms and other lethal aid,\u201d the Washington Post<\/em> reported<\/a> on Wednesday. That works out to one new arms deal every thirty-six hours, on average.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These transfers are classified as sales, but very few of them meet that definition in the conventional sense. The vast majority are funded through State Department grants. Biden made just two of these publicly funded sales to Israel public, and the only reason he did is because he had to. Section 36 of the Arms Export Control Act (AECA) requires the president to notify Congress when a proposed arms sale exceeds a certain value. The notification threshold depends on the type of mat\u00e9riel (for \u201csignificant military equipment<\/a>\u201d it\u2019s $14 million; for other military articles and services, $50 million; for military construction services, $200 million), but also the recipient. For NATO countries and South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and Israel, the notification thresholds for these three categories are considerably higher ($25 million, $100 million, and $300 million, respectively).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Biden is loud and proud about arming Ukraine, he prefers to arm Israel in secret. The quantity of sales since October 7 is case in point. By spreading his military support for Israel across more than one hundred sales, Biden kept pretty much all of them \u201cunder threshold<\/a>\u201d per the AECA, thereby avoiding congressional and public scrutiny. Biden might have picked up this trick from his predecessor. Donald Trump exploited the same loophole to dodge oversight on arms deals<\/a> with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, whose intense and indiscriminate bombing of Yemen<\/a> at the time had created a dire<\/a> humanitarian crisis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Keeping these transfers out of public view makes it easier for Biden to cast himself as Humanitarian of the Year in Gaza while going great lengths to help Israel destroy it. Biden\u2019s series of food airdrops suggests he\u2019s bravely trying to fix a catastrophe beyond his control. Administration officials perpetuate this narrative by insisting the president has no leverage over Israel. \u201cThere is a mistaken belief that the United States is able to dictate to other countries\u2019 sovereign decisions,\u201d State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller recently said<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is wrong. The catastrophe in Gaza is the result of a deliberate policy choice Biden made. Israel\u2019s military offensive would not be possible without him fast-tracking<\/a> such vast quantities of weapons to its arsenal over the last several months. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has admitted that Israel\u2019s assault on Gaza relies on a steady stream (a torrent, in fact) of US weapons, once telling<\/a> a group of local government officials, \u201cWe need three things from the US: munitions, munitions, and munitions.\u201d From October 7 to mid-February, Biden had delivered twenty-one thousand bombs to Israel, and Israel had already dropped half of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Netanyahu structured an urgent plea to US lawmakers in November in a similar way: \u201cI need ammo, ammo, and ammo \u2014 yesterday,\u201d he said<\/a> and specifically requested 155 mm artillery shells. More than thirty aid and advocacy groups had urged<\/a> the Biden administration not to supply this ammunition because the shells are unguided, highly explosive (with a casualty radius of 100 to 300 meters) and have been used by Israel in the past to hit hospitals, schools, shelters, and safe zones. Biden transferred<\/a> 57,021 of them to Israel a few weeks later. The Israeli army announced<\/a> in early December that it had fired more than one hundred thousand shells since its ground invasion of Gaza began on October 27, adding that artillery plays a \u201ccentral role\u201d by providing \u201cintense fire cover\u201d for its troops.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Israel lacks<\/a> the production capacity to prosecute one of the deadliest, most intense bombing campaigns<\/a> in history relying only on its own munitions. Israel\u2019s assault on Gaza continues because Biden thinks it should continue. If he thought otherwise, he would shut down the weapons pipeline he constructed to enable it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a recent poll<\/a>, 52 percent of Americans said the United States should halt weapons transfers to Israel, while only 27 percent said they should continue. Among 2020 Biden voters, the margin was 62 to 14 percent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Stephen Semler\/Jacobin President Joe Biden speaks during a meeting in the East Room of the White House on March 12, 2024, in Washington, DC. (photo: AFP) 14 march 24 (RSN.org) ALSO SEE: Should Us Keep Arming Israel? Poll Finds Most Americans Want Weapon Shipments to Stop The Biden administration has been… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1869],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32329"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32329"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32329\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32330,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32329\/revisions\/32330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}