Former officials speak out against Biden’s Israel support after aid worker killings: ‘No one can change his mind’
Investigations into potential Israeli war crimes and violations of international law are being undermined by President Joe Biden’s insistence on providing his close ally with billions of dollars in unconditional military support, several former State Department and Pentagon officials told The Independent.
Speaking out after the killing of seven international aid workers by Israel in Gaza, among them an American citizen, one former Pentagon attorney said that any US investigations into Israel’s actions were “perfunctory” and “performative” due to pressure from the White House.
The former officials say the president’s decades-long and deeply held personal connection to Israel renders US laws and regulations concerning US arms sales essentially toothless.
“There’s no incentive to investigate if the president and the White House themselves have announced that aid is unconditional,” said Brian Finucane, who worked for a decade in the Office of the Legal Adviser at the State Department advising on arms transfers and the laws of war.
“That means they don’t want to hear inconvenient legal conclusions,” he told The Independent.
Mr Finucane said senior administration officials he had spoken to had been met with a “shrug” by the US intelligence community when they quizzed them about mass civilian casualty incidents caused by Israeli bombing, “because it’s no one’s job in the US intelligence community, apparently, to actually investigate these things.”
His assessment was corroborated by two former State Department officials and a former Pentagon attorney — all of whom worked on the issue of US arms transfers — in interviews with The Independent.
Charles Blaha, former director of the State Department’s Office of Security and Human Rights, which regulates weapons transfers, said investigations into breaches of humanitarian law in the Gaza conflict — if they are taking place at all — are likely not being taken seriously.
“My sense is that people get patted on the head and say, ‘this is all very interesting,’ But I think the president is the decider here,” he said.
President Biden is under increasing pressure from within his own party and from international allies over his refusal to consider suspending arms sales to Israel. The war in Gaza has killed more than 32,000 Palestinians, mainly women and children, since October.
The US provides some $4bn in military support each year to Israel and is weighing sending another $18bn more imminently. But the president has stubbornly refused to consider such a measure despite a steady stream of atrocities being broadcast to the world.
The killing of seven aid workers with the World Central Kitchen (WCK) — a non-profit humanitarian aid organisation founded by celebrity chef José Andrés — by three precision strikes from an Israeli drone made with British components, drew swift condemnation from the president, who said he was “outraged and heartbroken” over the deaths.
The workers had been returning from delivering food aid to northern Gaza, which is on the brink of famine, when the drone struck their three vehicles, which were clearly marked with the WCK logo.
Among the victims was Jacob Flickinger, 33, a US-Canadian dual citizen. That strike pushed the death toll for aid workers in the conflict to over 200.
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