Despite much grandstanding in the Biden administration about halting specific arms shipments to Israel over feigned concerns about how they might be used (inflicting death is the expected form), US military supplies have been restored with barely a murmur. In a report in Haaretz on August 29, a rush of weapons to Israel has been noticed since the end of July.
August proved to be the second busiest month for US arms deliveries to Israel’s Nevatim Airbase since the October 2023 attacks by Hamas. This has taken place alongside an increased concentration of US forces in the region since Israel’s assassinations of Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr and Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh at the end of last month. Two aircraft carriers, a guided missile submarine, and deployments of advanced F-22 stealth aircraft in Qatar, have featured in a show intended to deter Tehran from any retaliatory strikes.
After examining open-source aviation data from the end of July, Haaretz concluded that the issue of delayed shipments of US weapons had “been solved.” Dozens of flights by US military transport planes, along with civilian and military Israeli cargo planes, mostly from Qatar and the Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, had been noted. Demands by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in his July 24 speech to Congress that US military aid be “dramatically” expedited to “end the war in Gaza and help prevent a broader war in the Middle East,” had been heeded.
On August 26, Israel received its 500th aerial shipment of weapons and military supplies from the United States since the latest war’s commencement. The 500 flights have also been supplemented by 107 sea shipments, altogether facilitating the transfer of 50,000 tons of military equipment in an initiative between the US military, Israel’s Defence Ministry’s Directorate of Production and Procurement and Mission to the United States, the IDF’s planning Directorate and the Israeli Air Force.
During the same month, the Democratic National Convention, which saw no debate about the candidature of Kamala Harris as its choice for presidential candidate, had tepidly promised some agitation on continued arms to Israel. Ahead of the event, the Uncommitted movement’s 30 delegates, picked by voters alarmed by US support for Israel’s war machine in Gaza, were hoping to convince the 4,000 pledged delegates Harris had captured to add an arms embargo to its campaign in order to induce a ceasefire.
A petition by the group sought two outcomes: the adding of language to both the party and campaign platform “that unequivocally supports a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and a cessation of supplying weapons for Israel’s assault and occupation against Palestinians.”
These wishes proved much too salty for the apparatchiks and party managers. The Democratic Party’s 2024 national platform ironically enough begins with an effusive “land acknowledgment” to “the ancestors and descendants of Tribal Nations” but plays it safe regarding an ally very much the product of territorial seizure, violence and occupation. Despite mutterings in the party room about a split between moderate and progressive members on Israel’s conduct of the war, the topic of a ceasefire never made it to the committee hearings when the document was drafted.
In firmly insisting on continued US support for Israel in its war against Hamas, much is made in the platform about US efforts to forge a way that will see a release of the hostages, “a durable ceasefire”, the easing of “humanitarian suffering in Gaza” and the “possible normalization between Israel and key Arab states, together with meaningful progress and a political horizon for the Palestinian people.” The language is instructive: the Palestinians are objects of pitiful charity, at the mercy of Israel, the US, and various Arab states. Like toddlers, they are to be managed, steered, guided, their political choices forever mediated through the wishes of other powers.
With Israel remaining Washington’s paramount ally in the Middle East, that process of steering and managing the unruly Palestinians has been, thus far, lethal. During her first interview given after the convention (she has an aversion to them), Harris scotched any suggestions on going wobbly on Israel. “I’m unequivocal and unwavering in my commitment to Israel’s defence and its ability to defend itself, and that’s not going to change,” she told CNN’s Dana Bush. In what has become a standard refrain, Harris lamented that “far too many innocent Palestinians have been killed” while acknowledging Israel’s right to self-defence.
When asked whether she would alter President Biden’s policy on furnishing military assistance to Israel, “No” came the reply. “We have to get a deal done. The war must end, and we must get a deal that is about getting the hostages out. I’ve met with the families of the American hostages. Let’s get the hostages out. Let’s get the ceasefire done.”
This middle-management lingo says much about Harris’s worldview; in wishing to “get the ceasefire done”, she is encouraging a range of factors that will make sure nothing of the sort will be achieved. The Netanyahu formula has worked its usual black magic. Hence, the lack of an arms embargo, and the continued, generous supply to the IDF from their largest military benefactor.
[textblock style=”7″]
Like what we do at The AIMN?
You’ll like it even more knowing that your donation will help us to keep up the good fight.
Chuck in a few bucks and see just how far it goes!
Your contribution to help with the running costs of this site will be gratefully accepted.
You can donate through PayPal or credit card via the button below, or donate via bank transfer: BSB: 062500; A/c no: 10495969
[/textblock]
All Seppo politicians will always side with the zionist scumbags that they helped steal somebody else’s country from. Since most big business and banking in Seppoland is owned and run by the jews the lecherous politicians from both sides of the divide will do anything they can to stick their tongues down the back of their trousers so as not to lose political donations and favouritism from those that really run the Divided States.
Netenyahu has shown he is as big a dictator/genocidist as Hitler ever was. Only difference is the race they want to wipe off the face of the earth, in this case the original inhabitants of the stolen state of Palestine. No wonder America is despised worldwide for the war mongerer they are, selling weapons to anyone that has the money to buy them no matter how untrustworthy they are. (because we can always invade them and steal their resources like we’ve done in countless other places in the name of ‘god and country’. I feel sick just talking about it… BARF!!
The word, Conscience, tends to be an underrated term. The OED defines it as “a person’s moral sense of right and wrong,” derived from Middle English via Old French from Latin conscientia, from conscire, ‘be privy to,’ from con- ‘with’ + scire ‘know’.
There’s much more to the word than simply having a social sense of ‘this is okay’ and ‘this is wrong.’ Typically, many, if not most humans are unaware of this potential state of being; we can say, in fact, that they are asleep, in a psychological sense, to the presence or influence of conscience. Conscience doesn’t need to be told that human-made laws permit or deny, that some things are allowed and others forbidden; conscience knows inherently what is the correct way to behave.
The image at the top of this article, for example, shows a soldier with his bill of lading as he checks out another pallet or two of bombs bound for, presumably, Israel, where they will be used by the IDF to murder yet more Palestinian citizens; again presumably, guilt-free and unburdened by a sensitive conscience that murmurs incessantly, ‘just what the actual f^ck do you think you’re doing, you bestial arsehole, killing other human beings, for shame, for shame, you need to weep bitter tears of sorrow for your unforgivable actions.’ If that soldier in the image had a conscience, he wouldn’t be doing what he’s doing. If the hundreds of thousand of Americans involved in the manufacture of weapons had consciences they would refuse to do what they do, and the same for anyone, anywhere, who’s similarly involved.
You could make the same allegations against almost any activity which relies upon the exploitation of people; whether in the corporate sphere where CEOs get paid obscenely large salaries while their employees struggle to make ends meet, farm labour where people get paid pennies while owners reap the rewards, or destruction of landscapes for profit, as in this example from Florida, a classic example of action in the absence of conscience.
If politicians had active consciences, along with the rest of the populations of countries, wars would cease. If soldiers had active consciences, they would refuse to fight. If humanity at large had an active and awake conscience, we wouldn’t trash the planet, our one & only home, with such arrant carelessness & disregard.
Lack of conscience is an ever-present tragedy, the consequences of which we are surrounded by and immersed within.
Manufacturing murderous missiles, munitions, mischief making militarism is SO USA, the land of the deluded, extruded, polluted, executed, uprooted, unsuited. “They” are led by cultural dwarves, intellectual grains, moral flecks and specks, ethical nematodal nitwits. Trump the bowel escapee wants to run again so as to pillage, extract and coerce, while his running mate, a grubby defective on all fronts, remains a monument to misery, dizzery, orifice fizzery and all things dull and uglified. Apart from all that…How can a nation of swollen egofixation allow such squalid squashy squawkers to serve?
I’m afraid I’m becoming a cynic in my old age.
We are told that the six Israeli hostages found in a tunnel had been ‘executed’ by Hamas – normally hostages are considered as a negotiating tool and extremely valuable and to shoot them would seem counter productive. Particularly after Hamas had looked after them for some ten months.
I recall last December when Israeli troops killed three Israeli hostages in Gaza when it mistook them for Hamas militants. On that occasion the IDF took responsibility for killing the three hostages.
Am I right to be just a little cynical ?
I think a “little” cynical is not what’s required here, Terence. I’m more in the “pull the other one, it’s got bells on” camp.
Biden/Harris’s America is heartless, soulless, Godless and totally devoid of Christian values as Palestinians can attest to.
What can one expect from Uncle Sam? Surely nothing but the brutal ignorance and exploitation always in play since its foundation.
For example, it accuses China of all sorts of crimes, ignoring the fact that it participated in the continuation of heinous crimes against China (and others of the East) for many years, and continues to do so. By convenience it promulgates against China endlessly, whilst ignoring that its brutal aggression and exploitation gave China no choice but to free itself commercially, and seek to maintain its freedom by militarization to counter against Uncle Sam’s military ring-fencing.
It’s incessant xenophobia, exceptionalism and greed sees it unable to take its pillaging eyes off the resources of south and central asia, but its faux good world citizen image has it not wishing to initiate an unprovoked bombardment and take-over. Considering its succession of expensive failures, and its crumbling economy, It again needs an auspice.
Step in its Zionist suzerain in the middle east, and its criminal badman bombardier. At last, the original plan of 1947 is coming to fruition. Uncle Sam’s provocateur-in-chief has taken the hinges from the gateway to south and central asia, stirring Gog and Magog.
Whilst it goes about commercial exploitation and political coercion in the south – South America and Africa, it’s easy pickings, as opposed to the weird and obdurate states and wild geography of south and central asia. And besides, its arch enemy Russia has its eyes there, and Uncle Sam couldn’t have that could he!
Very few in the glorious, (designer) God’s own country of wanton self-righteous consumers, would dare to doubt that Uncle Sam’s duty as world’s policemen is ordained and mandatory. So regardless of the fairy floss words between its domestic political rivals, the loading up of their devices and weaponry in the middle east would see no more than an “Oh dear”, “Tut-tut” and “so be it.” “The show must go on.”
And the rest of the West remains toady to the hegemon.
Terrence, it makes a change that these hostages were allegedly murdered, previously found dead ones were collateral damage inflicted by the IDF.
The constant flow of arms makes the US complicit in the destruction of Gaza, ironically offset by the occasional shipment of humanitarian aid.
Yes, but we sent food and medicine too!
Yes, Bert there is a gruesome irony in the IDF temporarily pausing the bombing in Gaza to allow some 600,000 children to be immunized against polio – when that’s done it’s back to the bombing and sniper pot-shots (at children). And, of course, they won’t permit restoration of fresh water or sewerage infrastructure.
I am amazed that anybody actually takes Netanyahu seriously !