While the Biden administration has been publicly
voicing reservations over the mounting death toll in
Gaza, a Washington Post investigation revealed the administration has quietly approved and delivered more than 100 separate weapons sales to Israel over the last five months, amounting to thousands of precision-guided munitions, small-diameter bombs, bunker busters and other lethal aid. Only two approved foreign military sales to Israel have
been made public since the launch of Israel’s assault on October 7, which the Biden administration approved using
emergency authority to bypass Congress. “It is
actually illegal to provide military assistance to a
country that is restricting U.S.-funded humanitarian assistance, and we know that this is the case with Israel,”
says Josh Paul, a veteran State Department official who
worked on arms deals and resigned in protest of a push
to increase arms sales to Israel amid its assault on Gaza. Paul describes the “production line”-style
sale of weapons to Israel and says increasing internal dissent is putting pressure on Biden to change his “dead-end” policy of unconditional support for Israel. “We have a president and a set of policies … that remain set on this course regardless of the harm it is doing to Israeli security, to American
global interests and, of course, to so many Palestinians.”
