In March, I wrote about eight United States Senate members sending a letter to President Joe Biden declaring that Section 6201 of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 requires the termination of offensive military aid to the Israel government because the Israel government “prohibits or otherwise restricts, directly or indirectly, the transport or delivery of United States humanitarian assistance.” This declaration seemed then and continues to seem now true to observers of the situation where Gazans suffer from the deprivation of daily needs including food and medical supplies as they also suffer from bombs and bullets. Still, the US military aid flow to Israel has continued at a high rate.
To overcome the legal objection presented by these senators and others, the US Department of State asserted in a May 10 report that “We do not currently assess that the Israeli government is prohibiting or otherwise restricting the transport or delivery of U.S. humanitarian assistance.” Ta-da: legality.
That dishonest State Department assertion enabled the Biden administration to take action prohibited under US law. And, because of the die-hard pro-Israel bent of congressional leadership, the ruse was sure not to be met with effective legislative answer.
Important new information concerning the State Department’s assertion is provided in a Tuesday ProPublica article by Brett Murphy. Looking at internal communications in the State Department, Murphy recounted how the State Department’s assertion not only flew in the face of what people could readily observe in regard to Israel’s actions to suppress aid reaching Gazans, it also was outright contradicted by two State Department organizations that were charged with assessing the situation.
Murphy wrote that prior to the State Department issuing its May 10 report, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) had sent Secretary of State Antony Blinken “a detailed 17-page memo on Israel’s conduct” that “described instances of Israeli interference with aid efforts, including killing aid workers, razing agricultural structures, bombing ambulances and hospitals, sitting on supply depots and routinely turning away trucks full of food and medicine.” Also, related Murphy, “Separately, the head of the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration had also determined that Israel was blocking humanitarian aid and that the Foreign Assistance Act should be triggered to freeze almost $830 million in taxpayer dollars earmarked for weapons and bombs to Israel, according to emails obtained by ProPublica.”
Let this serve as an important reminder: Always be skeptical of the declarations of politicians and bureaucrats. This is especially so when those declarations advance intervention abroad.
