Go Not Abroad to Arm and Defend Monsters

The U.S. has enabled the slaughter and starvation in Gaza for more than thirteen months.

The Biden administration confirmed that it would do absolutely nothing while the Israeli government starves and ethnically cleanses north Gaza:

Washington last month told Israel to take “urgent and sustained actions” to improve the catastrophic conditions in the Palestinian enclave within 30 days and warned that if it did not, US military aid to Israel could be at risk.

However, after secretary of state Antony Blinken was briefed on Monday by Israeli minister of strategic affairs Ron Dermer on how his government had improved conditions in Gaza, the Biden administration decided that no further action was needed.

The U.S. has enabled the slaughter and starvation in Gaza for more than thirteen months. Conservative estimates from medical workers that have served in Gaza put the overall death toll at nearly 119,000, and that number will have risen significantly in the weeks since then. We have seen the same pattern repeat for all that time: the Israeli government commits grievous crimes against the Palestinian civilian population, the administration tut-tuts and asks that Netanyahu and his allies be slightly less sadistic, the Israeli government blows through whatever lines the administration has drawn, and then the U.S. shrugs and takes their word for it that they are improving. The Biden administration will never find Israel in violation of any law because they do not want to withhold the weapons that the Israeli military uses to commit war crimes. The “deadline” that the administration set was meaningless, and when it came and went humanitarian aid groups said that things had become much worse in the intervening weeks:

However, in a report published as the US deadline expired on Tuesday, eight aid groups, including Oxfam, Save the Children, Anera and the Norwegian Refugee Council, said Israel had not met “any of the specific criteria” set out by the US last month.

“Israel not only failed to meet the US criteria that would indicate support to the humanitarian response, but concurrently took actions that dramatically worsened the situation on the ground, particularly in northern Gaza,” the report said.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) called Biden’s inaction in the face of the Palestinians’ suffering “shameful” and “weak,” but it is even worse than that. Biden has not only failed to put pressure on Israel to end the slaughter and starvation, but he has gone out of his way to ensure that it can continue. He has repeatedly rushed weapons and U.S. military personnel to protect the perpetrators of these crimes, and he has brought the U.S. closer to direct conflict with Iran to shield a government of war criminals and genocidaires. Biden is guilty of shameful dereliction, yes, but he is also an active participant and accomplice to one of the great crimes of the century.

This week a U.N. report concluded that the Israeli government’s actions were “consistent with the characteristics of genocide” and Human Rights Watch reported that the Israeli government’s forced displacement of civilians in Gaza amounts to ethnic cleansing. This is from the HRW summary:

According to the United Nations, 1.9 million people were displaced in Gaza as of October 2024 out of a population of 2.2 million people. This report examines the Israeli authorities’ conduct which has led to this extraordinarily high level of displacement and finds these actions amount to forced displacement. Given the evidence strongly indicates that multiple acts of forced displacement were carried out with intent, it amounts to war crimes. The report further finds that the Israeli government’s acts of forced displacement are widespread and systematic. Statements by senior officials with command responsibility show that forced displacement is intentional and forms part of Israeli state policy and therefore amount to a crime against humanity. Israel’s actions appear to also meet the definition of ethnic cleansing.

The Biden administration keeps sticking its head in the sand and pretending that none of this is happening. Secretary Blinken absurdly claimed that Israel had met 12 of the 15 steps that they had called for, but the aid groups have shown that this isn’t true. Whatever the Israeli government may have said it was doing to improve conditions, it has been lying to the administration and once again the administration prefers those lies to the mountain of evidence that shows deliberate starvation and ethnic cleansing.

The U.S. is obliged under its own laws to halt all weapons transfers to Israel immediately. It is clearly in the interests of the United States to disentangle ourselves from a client government committing war crimes and genocide. Cutting off weapons to Israel also happens to be what most Americans support. Ending U.S. support for these wars is legally required, prudent, and popular, so it takes a truly deranged and ideological administration to refuse to do it.

There is a broader lesson for U.S. foreign policy in all of this. Two hundred years ago, John Quincy Adams famously told Americans that our country “goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy.” At the time, there was a danger that the U.S. might think that it should act like a “knight-errant” to defend likeminded causes in other parts of the world. Adams was right that the U.S. shouldn’t ensnare itself in distant conflicts on behalf of liberty, so imagine how disgusted he would be if he saw his country becoming ensared in foreign conflicts to defend oppression, massacre, and man-made famine?

In addition to not going in search of monsters to destroy, America should not go abroad to arm and defend monsters. Our government has done that with the Saudis and the UAE when it backed their war on Yemen, and it is doing it again in backing Israel’s wars in Gaza and Lebanon. That has to stop, and we need to have an overhaul of our foreign policy so that it will never happen again.