Current Events > US approves 1,800 2k-pound bombs to Israel as Rafah invasion looms

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The Biden administration in recent days quietly authorized the transfer of billions of dollars in bombs and fighter jets to Israel despite Washingtons concerns about an anticipated military offensive in southern Gaza that could threaten the lives of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians.

The new arms packages include more than 1,800 MK84 2,000-pound bombs and 500 MK82 500-pound bombs, according to Pentagon and State Department officials familiar with the matter. The 2,000-pound bombs have been linked to previous mass-casualty events throughout Israels military campaign in Gaza. These officials, like some others, spoke to The Washington Post on the condition of anonymity because recent authorizations have not been disclosed publicly.

The development underscores that while rifts have emerged between the United States and Israel over the wars conduct, the Biden administration views weapons transfers as off-limits when considering how to influence the actions of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

We have continued to support Israels right to defend itself, said a White House official. Conditioning aid has not been our policy.

Some Democrats, including allies of President Biden, say the U.S. government has a responsibility to withhold weapons in the absence of an Israeli commitment to limit civilian casualties during a planned operation in Rafah, a final Hamas stronghold, and ease restrictions on humanitarian aid into the enclave, which is on the brink of famine.

The Biden administration needs to use their leverage effectively and, in my view, they should receive these basic commitments before greenlighting more bombs for Gaza, Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) said in an interview. We need to back up what we say with what we do.
The Israeli government declined to comment on the authorizations.

Four Hamas battalions remain in Rafah, say U.S. and Israeli officials. More than 1.2 million Palestinians have sought shelter there after being forced from their homes during Israels extensive bombing campaign over the past five months. Biden suggested that a scorched-earth invasion of the city along Gazas border with Egypt would cross a red line for him.

Biden requested that Netanyahu send a team of security officials to Washington this week to listen to U.S. proposals for limiting the bloodshed. Netanyahu canceled the visit after the United States refused to veto a United Nations Security Council resolution that called for a temporary cease-fire in Gaza and the release of hostages, but which did not condemn Hamas.

Israeli officials have not allayed U.S. concerns about the impending operation in Rafah, but they agreed to reschedule the meeting in Washington, the White House said.

The 2,000-pound bombs, capable of leveling city blocks and leaving craters in the earth 40 feet across and larger, are almost never used anymore by Western militaries in densely populated locations due to the risk of civilian casualties.

Israel has used them extensively in Gaza, according to several reports, most notably in the bombing of Gazas Jabalya refugee camp Oct. 31. U.N. officials decried the strike, which killed more than 100 people, as a disproportionate attack that could amount to war crimes. Israel defended the bombing, saying it resulted in the death of a Hamas leader.

Israeli officials deny that their military campaign has been indiscriminate and say civilian casualties are the fault of Hamas for embedding its fighters among the population in Gaza.

Bidens decision to continue the flow of weapons to Israel has been strongly supported by powerful pro-Israel interest groups in Washington, including the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which is spending tens of millions of dollars this election cycle to unseat Democrats it views as insufficiently pro-Israel.

AIPAC, alongside congressional Republicans and several Democrats, oppose any conditions on U.S. military assistance to Israel. The U.S. can protect civilians, on both sides of the conflict, by continuing to ensure Israel receives as much U.S. assistance as is needed, as expeditiously as possible, to keep its stockpiles full of lifesaving munitions, Reps. August Pfluger (R-Tex.) and Don Davis (D-N.C.), and Michael Makovsky, president of the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, wrote in a recent column. Doing so is also morally right and in the U.S. interest.

Bidens recurring approvals of weapons transfers are an abrogation of moral responsibility, and an assault on the rule of law as we know it, at both the domestic and international levels, said Josh Paul, a former State Department official involved in arms transfers who resigned in protest of Bidens Gaza policy.

This is a policymaking process that is fundamentally broken, and which makes everyone from policymaking officials to defense manufacturers to the U.S. taxpayer complicit in Israels war crimes, he said.

Advocates of the policy inside the administration say behind-the-scenes discussions with the Israelis have succeeded in delaying the countrys Rafah operation, which they now dont expect to happen until May. But at least part of that delay is due to Israels military operations in Khan Younis taking longer than anticipated.

I hope history remembers Biden poorly for his role in the ethnic cleansing of Gaza.

But it's totally still okay to support the guy. /s

So you are saying you are not going to vote for him to keep Trump out? No vote or independent vote is essentially a republican vote. Wow.

There comes a point where you need to start blaming Biden for his fuck ups instead of trying to guilt people into voting for him. Perhaps if so many weren't constantly playing cover for shit like this there would be enough pressure being put on him that he'd stop doing this.

I get where you are coming from. But do this after the election. We don't need Trump in office.

But I've never voted for Donald Trump in my life so that's definitely untrue

I hope history remembers Biden poorly for his role in the ethnic cleansing of Gaza.

I get where you are coming from. But do this after the election. We don't need Trump in office.

My theory is that Israel has Epstein level blackmail on some powerful people and Biden's hands are tied

That doesn't matter, you potentially took votes away from Biden and are still doing so

I get where you are coming from. But do this after the election.

Or the fact all of our presidents have been Christian and they feel Israel is literally the holy land.

I get where you are coming from, but Rafah and its refugees will probably be rubble before the election. The lives of tens of thousands of people, or an order of magnitude more depending on how long aid is strangleholded and the famine goes on, are on the line now and in the next several months. If pointing out the severity of this is bad for the current administration, then, IDK, maybe they should walk back giving 1800 city-blocks-clearing bombs to a country that wants to level a refugee center with a million people inside.

That doesn't matter, you potentially took votes away from Biden and are still doing so

I don't understand what Biden is doing anymore. He could have just not sent that shipment and he wouldn't have lost a single vote.

Why can the US send bombs to Israel who doesn't need them but cannot send bombs to Ukraine who desperately needs them?

Ukraine didn't bribe everyone in government like Israel did.

And what? Biden is not automatically entitled to those votes. Like anyone else, he has to earn them.

When the alternative is Hitler in the White House, "yOu hAvE tO eArN mY vOtE" is an irresponsible position at best.

When the alternative is Hitler in the White House, "yOu hAvE tO eArN mY vOtE" is an irresponsible position at best

That doesn't matter, you potentially took votes away from Biden and are still doing so

The alternative is Americans getting it through their fucking heads that you do not have to pick one of these two options.

You cannot justify voting for a genocide enabler when you could vote for someone who is not a genocide enabler. You may not necessarily support his actions there, but at the very least, if you vote for him you are at least saying you are okay with said actions (unless you are unaware of them, which you are not). Even if it's more just "willing to turn a blind eye to it", that's maybe okay (and even that's a very big maybe) for a politician who engages in some minor corruption; it's not okay for one who is supporting a fucking genocide.

I get where you are coming from. But do this after the election. We don't need Trump in office.

No one owes Genocide Joe not one fucking vote.

So you are saying you are not going to vote for him to keep Trump out? No vote or independent vote is essentially a republican vote. Wow.

I'm never voting for another presidential election ever again.

My theory is that Israel has Epstein level blackmail on some powerful people and Biden's hands are tied

Stop giving right wingers ammo to propagandize.