The Shift: Biden ignored 500 reports of Israel attacking civilians with U.S. weapons

We don’t know what will happen next Tuesday but either way Joe Biden will be leaving the White House next year.

Barring a sudden, unexpected shift the country’s 46th president will leave his successor with an ongoing genocide in Gaza, facilitated by the United States government.

“I suspect that, similar to Vietnam, the moral clarity around the genocide in Gaza and Biden’s facilitation of it will only become more stark in the years and decades ahead,” author Branko Marcetic told me earlier this month. “At that point, I can imagine a debate among future historians and commentators over whether we should think of Biden as akin to LBJ – a deeply flawed and weak man who did something evil out of political insecurity – or as simply a frail, increasingly unfit old man taken advantage of by unscrupulous advisors and Israeli leadership.”

“I suspect the latter will become more of an attractive narrative for his defenders once he leaves office and we have a better understanding of the scale of what Israel has done to Gaza, and we’re already seeing signs that Biden might prefer this narrative, too,” he added.

Many details tend to slip through the cracks with the passage of time, but one hopes that future historians will examine a piece that appeared in the Washington Post yesterday.

Journalists Abigail Hauslohner and Michael Birnbaum reveal that the Biden administration has received nearly 500 notices from human rights organizations and eyewitnesses claiming the Israeli army has used U.S. weaponry on civilians.

In other words, proof that Israel is committing war crimes with the military aid supplied to them by the United States.

The authors note that some of these include reports include “photo documentation of U.S.-made bomb fragments at sites where scores of children were killed.”

The State Department’s Civilian Harm Incident Response Guidance directs officials to complete “an investigation and recommend action within two months of launching an inquiry, but not a single one of these cases has reached the “action” stage.

“They’re ignoring evidence of widespread civilian harm and atrocities to maintain a policy of virtually unconditional weapons transfers to the Netanyahu government,” Center for Civilians in Conflict policy adviser John Ramming Chappell told the paper. “When it comes to the Biden administration’s arms policies, everything looks good on paper but has turned out meaningless in practice when it comes to Israel.”

The State Department’s Matthew Miller was asked about the Washington Post story this week and responded with the standard reply: the government is looking into it.

Here’s some of that exchange:

MR MILLER: So a few things about that. Number one, I think it’s always important to reiterate that we have consistently made clear to the Government of Israel our serious concerns about this issue and their need to do more to minimize civilian deaths, and it continues to be something that we engage with them on that we make quite clear. Second thing I want to make clear is that, yes, we are reviewing a number of incidents through the CHIRG and other processes and procedures that we have set up, and I’m not going to get into those ongoing reviews. But as you’ve heard us say, these are complicated issues. They’re complicated factual issues; they’re complicated legal issues.

And so we have not yet gotten to the point with any of them that we have been able to make final determinations, but there are a number of incidents, and that is part of the issue. We have a number of different incidents that we have to look at just based on the nature of this conflict and the scope and extent of this conflict, and the extent of civilian harm. As you heard us say before – you’ve heard us when we released the NSM-20 report. If you just look at the overall scope of the damage and the number of civilian lives that have been lost, we do believe it’s reasonable to assess there are incidents in which Israel did not meet all of its international humanitarian law obligations. But when it comes to specific incidents, those reviews are still ongoing.

QUESTION: But I mean, I’m actually surprised that you, unprompted, flag the NSM-20 report, which exactly, yes, says that. So it’s a – isn’t it a little bit inconceivable that more than a year now – some of these incidents go way back to last October – it’s been more than a year and you guys are still yet to definitively assess that any one single incident violates international humanitarian law?

MR MILLER: So let me just first say the reason I flagged the NSM-20 report specifically is because one of the stories to which you referred had sourced to officials as if it were a revelation that we believe that there very well could be violations of international humanitarian law when that is something that a report ordered by the President, overseen by the Secretary had concluded several months ago. So we have been quite clear – we’ve been quite clear about the fact, and that’s why I – that’s why I thought it was important to mention it.

But no, the – when it comes to these determinations, these are incredibly difficult. It takes gathering facts, it takes gathering information, and it takes, ultimately, making legal judgments about those facts. And oftentimes you have conflicting accounts of what happened, and it is our job to try to sort through that the best we can. And it is a very difficult process where we’re looking at a number of incidents. I can tell you we want to finish that work as soon as possible. We have a number of people working on it, but it’s very difficult work.

QUESTION: Is the – would you say the United States Government is committed to investigating any possible misuse of its weapons by any foreign forces, including Israel?

MR MILLER: Yes, absolutely.

QUESTION: But then how do you square that commitment with your inability to find anything in a year?

MR MILLER: We are – no, we are conducting those investigations, and we are conducting them thoroughly, and we are conducting them aggressively, but we want to get to the right answer. And it’s important that we not jump to a preordained result and that we not skip any of the work that we do, all of the important fact finding that we need to do, before making what is a pretty significant determination, and that’s what we’re doing.

The Washington Post article comes just a month after the ProPublica story that revealed Secretary of State Antony Blinken rejected reports from multiple government agencies detailing how Israel purposely blocked humanitarian aid from entering Gaza.

As Marcetic mentions, there’s a recurring mainstream narrative that frames Biden as a well-intentioned leader who is continually conned by the crafty Netanyahu.

In this interpretation Israel’s brutality is a tragic consequence of Biden’s naivety, not a reality that the president has repeatedly co-signed.

“The metaphor that always arises in diplomatic conversations is of Joe Biden as Charlie Brown trying to kick the football, and each time Netanyahu pulls it away (sometimes, Hamas pulls it away as well),” wrote Nicholas Kristof in a recent New York Times column.

500 times?

AIPAC big in Cali race

Here’s a Democrat vs. Democrat race you may not being paying close attention to.

In California’s 34th Congressional District AIPAC is spending heavily to protect Rep. Jimmy Gomez from getting ousted by progressive David Kim. This is the third time Kim has tried to unseat Gomez. In 2020 he came within six points and in 2022 he came within 2. He’s backed by LA’s IfNotNow chapter, LA’s Sunrise Movement chapter, and Emgage Action.

Gomez isn’t exactly a stereotypical AIPAC candidate. He’s criticized Netanyahu and has called for a “cessation of hostilities” in the region, but Kim represents something truly terrifying for the pro-Israel. He wants military aid to Israel cut off, a permanent ceasefire, supports the BDS movement, and wants a criminal court to prosecute illegal settlers.

 “This massive infusion of outside money is proof of exactly what’s wrong with politics today. Since day one, we’ve been clear that Jimmy Gomez has refused to support a ceasefire, an arms embargo, or any meaningful action to bring peace in Gaza. It seems that AIPAC believes in his approach too—one that ignores the voices calling for justice and humanity,” Kim recently told Sludge.

Last week Politico reported that AIPAC’s Super PAC the United Democracy Project (UDP) had spent more than $500,000 on television ads in the race. They’re also running digital ads and have sent out more than $300,000 worth of flyers.

The pro-Israel Jewish Insider runs down Kim’s other foreign policy positions, which it classifies as “far-left”:

He additionally said he supports an end to U.S. arms sales to the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Turkey; rejected any defense treaty with Saudi Arabia; called for a travel ban and sanctions on Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman; said all U.S. forces should be removed from Iraq; and supported restoring diplomatic ties with Syria contingent on free and fair elections. Kim also said the U.S. should join the International Criminal Court.

Kim’s unorthodox foreign policy views aren’t limited to the Middle East.

He accused the U.S. of being a “driving force” of a geopolitics that imposes “potentially oppressive political and economic regimes” of the “Global South,” called for substantial defense budget cuts, repealing the Patriot Act and ending “exploitative or neo-colonial policies” of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank.

Imagine that.

If the third time proves to be a charm for Kim, it will be a notable blow to the Israel Lobby, especially having just helped to oust Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush.

Odds & Ends

⚕️ ‘Thousands of people will die’: Gaza doctors describe impact of Israel barring medical NGOs

📚 Thousands of authors and publishers are calling for a boycott of complicit Israeli publishing institutions

🗳️ Trump seeks to capitalize on voter frustration with Harris over Gaza

🏫 Truthout: Academics Have a Responsibility to Speak Out Against Palestine Repression

🇮🇱 Electronic Intifada: Netanyahu allies push to recolonize Gaza as US election nears

🪧 Portland Press Herald: Bowdoin students protest college’s response to Gaza

📺 Haaretz: Netflix Faces Calls for Boycott After Removing Palestinian Film Collection

🚫 Brown Daily Herald: Brown University suspends Students for Justice in Palestine pending investigation

🚢 Waging Nonviolence: This activist group chat has been blocking a weapons shipment to Israel for weeks

💻 AP: Microsoft fires employees who organized vigil for Palestinians killed in Gaza

🐘 Drop Site News: Project 2025 Creators Have a Plan to ‘Dismantle’ Pro-Palestine Movement

🇺🇸 Zeteo: Jewish Voter at Harris-Walz Event Asks: ‘Why Doesn’t the Arab Vote Matter?’

🇨🇺 Common Dreams: ‘Two Genocidaires v. the World’: US, Israel Oppose Lifting Cuba Blockade

🌎 Counterpunch: The Gaza Catastrophe — Checking Israeli and Western Elites

🇱🇧 NBC News: Senior Biden officials head to Israel as optimism over Lebanon cease-fire grows

🎓 KVUE: ‘There to stifle student speech’ | Demonstrators stopped from delivering demands by UT response team

⚖️ CAIR: CAIR Obtains Federal Court Ruling Against Texas’ Unconstitutional Crackdown on Student Criticism of Israel

📜 Pal Legal: Palestine Legal and the Center for Constitutional Rights Condemn US Designation of Palestine Advocacy Group as Genocide Escalates

🤖 BBC: Radiohead singer confronts Gaza protester at Australian gig