By now, you've probably seen reports on the latest alleged disagreement between the Obama Administration and the Israeli government. If you haven't, the claim is that Israel went behind the back of the White House and State Department to get weapons from the Pentagon during the war. But what is really behind this very odd and unlikely claim and why does it matter?
News Analysis
Is The Latest US-Israel Fight Real? And, If It is, What Does It Mean For Israel?
Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com
By now, you've probably seen reports on the latest alleged disagreement between the Obama Administration and the Israeli government.
If you haven't, the claim made by the Wall Street Journal today is that Israel went behind the back of the White House and State Department to get weapons from the Pentagon during the Gaza war.
NBC's longtime Pentagon correspondent says this is all nonsense and that the weapons came from pre-stocked supplies kept in Israel under US control that were meant to be given to Israel in wartime if it needed to be rearmed. The Pentagon never hid the rearmament of ISrael and in fact openly answered questions about it weeks ago.
In other words, no backs were gone behind.
So why the Wall Street Journal story?
It's hard to say with certainty. It could be the White House or the State Department leaked the allegation to get back at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for his hostile treatment of US Secretary of State John Kerry and for his recent alleged arguments with and lecturing of President Obama.
Or it could have been leaked by Republicans seeking to paint Obama and Kerry as anti-Israel.
However it became public, there does appear to be a basis for the complaint.
All US weapons bought or gifted come with conditions for their use – conditions that normally preclude disproportionate use and use in a way that disproportionately injures and kills civilian non-combatants.
Israel attacked on or very near three UN schools that were being used as shelters for civilians, even though the UN says it repeatedly warned the IDF and the Israeli government before the attacks that these schools were being used to as civilian shelters.
On MSNBC this morning, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's spokesman Mark Regev was asked about this . Regev gave the same response he has given on CNN and to other media over the past weeks– Hamas attacked the IDF from or near some UN schools and stored weapons in at least three others. Therefore, Regev insists, the fault for the civiliain casualties at these UN shelters belongs to Hamas, not to Israel and the US-made bombs, rockets, mortar and other munitions Israel fired at them.
But that is not what international law says and it is not what US policy is.
The fact that a combatant is firing from a civilian shelter does not give the opposing army the right to bomb that shelter or to use other types of disproportionate force against it or adjacent to it except in very special circumstances.
(For example, if the enemy combatant is a leading brigade commander or a leading general whose capture or death would cause the enemy to flee, that might justify firing on the building or using a very targeted explosive device against that one area of the building only. However, it almost never would allow the uses of indiscriminate fire or larger, less targeted explosives.)
So when you hear Regev and other Israeli spokesmen talk about what Hamas did wrong, understand that, for the most part, those Hamas war crimes most often do not appear to justify Israel's response to them. Claiming Israel's intent was only to kill Hamas terrorists is essentially irrelevant if the weapons Israel used would have almost certainly kill and wound far more civilians than terrorists. This means that in the strict definition of the law, some of what Israel did in Gaza may very well be classified as a war crime or as a violation of the terms of use of the US-made weapons Israel used. (This is already an open issue with British-made weapons Israel used during the Gaza war.)
Like it or not, agree with it or not, this is the actual legal reality Israel is now facing.