Equity

This article was first published by ProPublica, a Pulitzer Prize-winning analytical news website.

Reporting features

• More weapons: Because Israel has a “decades-long proven track record” of avoiding killing citizens, Ambassador Jack Lew urged Washington to send hundreds more weapons to them.
• A thank-you: After State Department officials spent months working through weekends and after time on hands sales, the Israelis sent cases of wine to them just before Christmas.
• A lobbying force: Defense companies and activists have also helped drive down important sales by leaning on State Department officials and lawmakers whenever there’s a flow.

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Israel’s military demanded 3, 000 more weapons from the British government in soon January as the death toll in Gaza soared to 25, 000 and Palestinians fled their destroyed cities in search of safety. US Ambassador to Israel Jack Lew, along with other major officials in the Jerusalem ambassador, sent a wire to Washington urging State Department leaders to review the price, saying there was no probable the Israel Defense Forces would use the weapons.

The wires did not address the Biden administration’s common concerns over the escalating civilian casualties, nor did it solve well-known reports that Israel had dropped 2, 000-pound bombs on crowded Gazan areas weeks earlier, causing house collapses and the deaths of hundreds of Palestinians, many of whom were children. Lew was aware of the issues. Authorities say his own team had repeatedly noted episodes where large numbers of citizens died. Jewish airstrikes had targeted the homes of the ministry’s personal Israeli employees.

However, Lew and his senior administration argued that Israel may be trusted with this fresh package of weapons, known as GBU-39s, which are smaller and more accurate. They claimed that Israel’s air force had a “decades-long proven track record” of avoiding shooting civilians when using the American-made weapon and had “demonstrated an ability and willingness to use it in]a manner that minimizes money destruction.”

While that request was pending, the Israelis proved those assertions wrong. In the months that followed, the Israeli military repeatedly dropped GBU-39s it already possessed on shelters and refugee camps that it said were being occupied by Hamas soldiers, killing scores of Palestinians. The IDF then bombed a mosque and school where civilians were frightened in early August. At least 93 died. Parents had trouble identifying children’s bodies because their bodies were so mutilated.

Weapons analysts identified shrapnel from GBU-39 bombs among the rubble.

In the months before and since, an array of State Department officials urged that Israel be completely or partially cut off from weapons sales under laws that prohibit arming countries with a pattern or clear risk of violations. Top State Department political appointees have consistently rejected those appeals. Government experts have for years unsuccessfully tried to withhold or place conditions on arms sales to Israel because of credible allegations that the country had violated Palestinians ‘ human rights using American-made weapons.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken held a town hall for the organization at the State Department’s headquarters on January 31 the day after the embassy’s assessment was made, where he received sharp questions from his subordinates about Gaza. He said the suffering of civilians was “absolutely gut wrenching and heartbreaking”, according to a transcript of the meeting.

” But it is a question of making judgments”, Blinken said of his agency’s efforts to minimize harm. On October 7, we premised that Israel had the right to defend itself, and more importantly, the right to try to prevent October 7 from occurring again.

The embassy’s endorsement and Blinken’s statements reflect what many at the State Department have understood to be their mission for nearly a year. The unwritten policy, according to a former embassy official, was to “protect Israel from scrutiny” and to encourage the flow of arms no matter how many human rights violations are reported. ” We ca n’t admit that’s a problem”, this former official said.

The embassy has even historically resisted accepting funds from the State Department’s Middle East bureau earmarked for investigating human rights issues throughout Israel because embassy leaders did n’t want to insinuate that Israel might have such problems, according to Mike Casey, a former U. S. diplomat in Jerusalem. Our main objective is to address human rights violations, Casey continued. ” We do n’t have that in Jerusalem”.

The US Agency for International Development and the State Department’s refugees bureau, according to a ProPublica report from last week, concluded in april that Israel had purposefully stopped the flow of food and medicine into Gaza and that weapons sales should be stopped. But Blinken rejected those findings as well and, weeks later, told Congress that the State Department had concluded that Israel was not blocking aid.

The episodes uncovered by ProPublica, which have not been previously detailed, offer an inside look at how and why the highest ranking policymakers in the US government have continued to approve sales of American weapons to Israel in the face of a mounting civilian death toll and evidence of almost daily human rights abuses. This article draws inspiration from a trove of State Department records, including internal cables, email threads, memos, meeting minutes, and other documents, as well as interviews with current and former officials from the organization, the majority of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak in public.

The records and interviews also show that the pressure to keep the arms pipeline moving also comes from the US military contractors who make the weapons. Behind the scenes, lobbyists for those companies have frequently pressed lawmakers and State Department officials to approve shipments both to Israel and other contentious allies in the region, including Saudi Arabia. When one company executive pushed his former subordinate at the department for a valuable sale, the government official reminded him that strategizing over the deal might violate federal lobbying laws, emails show.

The Biden administration’s repeated willingness to give the IDF a pass has only emboldened the Israelis, experts told ProPublica. Critics claim that the risk of a regional war is as high as it has been in decades as Israel and Iran trade blows, and that the cost of that failure has increased.

” The reaffirmation of impunity has come swiftly and unequivocally”, said Daniel Levy, who served in the Israeli military before holding various prominent positions as a government official and adviser throughout the’ 90s. He later served as the president of the US/Middle East Project and one of the founding members of the advocacy group J Street.

Levy said there is virtually no threat of accountability for Israel’s conduct in Gaza, only” a certainty of carte blanche”. Or, as another State Department official said,” If there’s never any consequences for doing it, then why stop doing it”?

The conflict in Gaza has continued for almost a year without abating. There are at least 41, 000 Palestinians dead, by local estimates. In contrast to Hamas, which killed more than 1,100 Israelis, mostly civilians, on October 7 and continues to hold dozens of hostages, Israel claims its actions were legal and legitimate.

The US has been a stalwart ally of Israel for decades, with presidents of both parties praising the country as a beacon of democracy in a dangerous region filled with threats to American interests.

In response to detailed questions from ProPublica, a State Department spokesperson sent a statement saying that arms transfers to any country, including Israel, are done “in a deliberative manner with appropriate input” from other agencies, State Department bureaus and embassies. We anticipate that any nation that receives US security articles will use them in full compliance with international humanitarian law, and we have a number of ongoing investigations underway to check whether it is done.

The spokesperson also said Lew has been at the forefront of ensuring” that every possible measure is taken to minimize impacts on civilians” while working on a ceasefire deal to secure” the release of hostages, alleviate the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza, and bring an end to the conflict”.

Israeli military leaders generally support the Israeli military’s aerial assault on Gaza as a “military necessity” to put an end to terrorists hiding among the population. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has also publicly pressured the Biden administration to hasten arms transfers. ” Give us the tools and we’ll finish the job a lot faster”, he said in June.

ProPublica also emailed Israeli government representatives in-depth inquiries. A spokesperson said in a statement:” The article is biased and seeks to portray legitimate and routine contacts between Israel and the Embassy in Washington with State Department officials as improper. Its intention appears to be to cast doubt on the security cooperation between two close allies and friendly nations.

Weapons sales are a pillar of American foreign policy in the Middle East. Historically, the US gives more money to Israel for weapons than it does to any other country. The majority of those American tax dollars are used to purchase US-made weapons and equipment, according to Israel.

While Israel has its own arms industry, the country relies heavily on American jets, bombs and other weapons in Gaza. More than 50 000 tons of weapons have been shipped by the US since October 2023, according to the Israeli military, which is” crucial for sustaining the IDF’s operational capabilities during the ongoing war.” The air defenses that defend Israeli towns and cities — known as the Iron Dome — also depend largely on US support.

There is little sign that either party is prepared to curtail US weapons shipments. Kamala Harris, the vice president, has called for a ceasefire, lamented the death toll in Gaza, and said she supports the decision of President Joe Biden to halt a shipment of 2, 000 bombs in June. She has also echoed a refrain from previous administrations, pledging to “ensure Israel has the ability to defend itself”. Additionally, Harris added that she had no intention of opposing Biden’s Israel policy.

Republican nominee for president Donald Trump, who has described himself as the “best friend that Israel has ever had”, reportedly told donors that he supports Israel’s “war on terror” and promised to crush pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses. Trump was also recently a featured speaker at the Israeli-American Council’s summit, where he cast himself as the most pro-Israel choice in the coming election. He said to the crowd,” You have a big protector in me. ” You do n’t have a protector on the other side”.

In the early 1970s, the United States first started offering significant amounts of weapons to Israel. Until then, Israel had relied on an array of home-grown and international purchases, notably from France, while the Soviet Union armed Israel’s adversaries. Over the past half-century, no country in the world has received more American military assistance than Israel.

The US provides the Israeli government with$ 3.8 billion annually and much more during conflicts to keep its military might in the area. Congress and the executive branch have imposed legal guardrails on how Israel and other countries can use the weapons they buy with US money. If there is a pattern or real danger of breaking international humanitarian law, such as preventing food deliveries to refugees, or requiring the State Department to review and approve the majority of those large military sales, the State Department is required to shut off a nation. The department is also supposed to withhold US-funded equipment and weapons from individual military units credibly accused of committing flagrant human rights violations, like torture.

Initially, a country makes a request and the local embassy, which is under the State Department’s jurisdiction, writes a cable called a” country team assessment” to judge the fitness of the nation asking for the weapons. Because of the local expertise of the embassies, this is only the start of a complicated process.

Then, the bulk of that review is conducted by the State Department’s arms transfers section, known as the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, with input from other bureaus. If the sale is worth at least$ 100 million for weapons or$ 25 million for equipment, Congress also receives final approval, as are NATO allies and Israel. If lawmakers try to block a sale, which is rare, the president can sidestep with a veto.

For years, Josh Paul, a career official in the State Department’s arms transfers bureau, reviewed arms sales to Israel and other countries in the Middle East. He eventually developed into one of the agency’s most in-depth experts on arms sales.

Even before Israel’s retaliation for October 7, he had been concerned with Israel’s conduct. He claimed that he had heard that the law required the government to withhold weapons transfers on numerous occasions. In May 2021, he refused to approve a sale of fighter jets to the Israeli Air Force. ” At a time the IAF are blowing up civilian apartment blocks in Gaza”, Paul wrote in an email,” I cannot clear on this case”. After Amnesty International published a report accusing Israeli authorities of apartheid, he would n’t agree to another sale the following February.

In both cases, Paul later told ProPublica, his immediate superiors signed off on the sales over his objections.

He wrote to a deputy assistant secretary at the time,” I have no expectation of making any policy gains on this topic during this Administration.”

During that same time period, Paul circulated a memo to some of the agency’s senior diplomats with recommendations to strengthen the arms sales review process, such as including input from human rights groups. Paul warned that the Biden administration’s new arms transfer policy — which prohibits weapons sales if it’s “more likely than not” the recipient will use them to intentionally attack civilian structures or commit other violations — would be “watered down” in practice.

The December 2021 memo stated that the sale of precision-guided weapons to Israel and Saudi Arabia “posses an undisputed significant risk of civilian harm.” The US government has been historically unable to hold itself to its own standards, he wrote, “in the face of pressure from partners, industry, and perceived policy imperatives emerging from within the government itself”.

The memo’s recommendations do n’t appear to have been followed either. Paul resigned in protest over arms shipments to Israel last October, less than two weeks after the Hamas attack. It was the Biden administration’s first major public departure since the start of the war. Local authorities claimed that at least 3,300 Palestinians had been killed by Israeli military operations in Gaza as of that time.

Internally, other experts began to worry the Israelis were violating human rights almost from the onset of the war as well. According to those who participated in the creation of some of them, Middle Eastern officials sent at least six dissert memos to senior leaders praising the administration’s decision to continue arming Israel. The content of several memos leaked to the media earlier this year. The agency says it welcomes input from the dissent channel and incorporates it into policymaking decisions.

A group of experts from various bureaus claimed in a previously unreported memo from November that they had not been consulted before several policy decisions regarding arms transfers made immediately after October 7 and that there was no effective vetting process in place to assess the repercussions of those sales.

That memo, too, seemed to have little impact. State Department staff worked overtime, frequently after hours and on weekends, in the early stages of the conflict to process Israeli requests for more weapons. Some in the agency have thought the efforts showed an inappropriate amount of attention on Israel.

The Israelis, however, felt different. Staff in the arms transfers bureau entered their Washington, DC, office in late December, and they discovered cases of wine from a winery in the Negev Desert, along with personalized letters on each bottle.

The gifts were courtesy of the Israeli embassy.

According to the State Department, employees are permitted to accept donations from foreign governments that are less than the dollar amount. ” To allege that any of their allegiances to the United States should be questioned is insulting”, he added. ” The accusation that the Department of State is placing a disproportionate attention on Israel is inconsistent with the facts”.

The embassy frequently sends individual bottles of wine ( not cases ) to many of its contacts to celebrate the end of the year holidays, according to an Israeli government spokesperson.

One month later, Lew delivered his endorsement of Israel’s request for the 3, 000 precision GBU-39 bombs, which would be paid for with both US and Israeli funds. Lew, who has served in various administrations, is a significant figure in Democratic circles. He was President Barack Obama’s chief of staff and then became his treasury secretary. He has also been a top executive at Citigroup and a major private equity firm.

Rear Admiral Frank Schlereth, the US’s defense attaché to Israel, also authorized the January cable. In addition to its assurances about the IDF, the memo cited the Israeli military’s close ties with the American military: Israeli air crews attend US training schools to learn about collateral damage and use American-made computer systems to plan missions and “predict what effects their munitions will have on intended targets”, the officials wrote.

Many experts criticized Israel’s use of American-made, unguided “dumb” bombs, some of which were thought to be as much as 2, 000 pounds, as indiscriminate in the beginning of the conflict. But at the time of the embassy’s assessment, Amnesty International had documented evidence that the Israelis had also been dropping the GBU-39s, manufactured by Boeing to have a smaller blast radius, on civilians. Months before October 7, a May 2023 attack left 10 civilians dead. Then, in a strike in January of this year, 18 civilians, including 10 children, were killed. Amnesty International investigators found GBU-39 fragments at both sites. ( Boeing referred ProPublica to the government and declined to comment. )

At the time, State Department experts were also cataloging the effect the war has had on American credibility throughout the region. Hala Rharrit, a career diplomat based in the Middle East, was required to send daily reports analyzing Arab media coverage to the agency’s senior leaders. Her emails frequently featured graphic images of Palestinians dead and wounded along with US bomb fragments in the rubble, and described the collateral damage from airstrikes in Gaza.

” Arab media continues to share countless images and videos documenting mass killings and hunger, while affirming that Israel is committing war crimes and genocide and needs to be held accountable”, she reported in one early January email alongside a photograph of a dead toddler. These videos and images of carnage, particularly those of children who are repeatedly injured and killed, are traumatizing and enrage the Arab world in unheard ways.

Rharitt, who later resigned in protest, told ProPublica those images alone should have prompted US government investigations and factored into arms requests from the Israelis. She said the State Department has “willfully violated the laws” by failing to act on the information she and others had documented. Rharitt continued,” They ca n’t say they did n’t know.”

Rharitt said her superiors eventually told her to stop sending the daily reports. ( A spokesperson for the State Department claimed that the organization continues to take perspectives from Arab media into account when conducting regular internal analyses. )

Lew’s January cable makes no mention of the death toll in Gaza or the incidents of the Israelis dropping GBU-39s on civilians. Eight current and former State Department officials with expertise in human rights, the Middle East or arms transfers said the embassy’s assessment was an inadequate but not a surprising distillation of the administration’s position. Charles Blaha, a former human rights director at the agency, described it as an exercise in checking the boxes.

The State Department declined to comment on the status of that request other than to say the US has provided large amounts of GBU-39s to Israel multiple times in past years.

While the US hoped that the smaller bombs would stop unnecessary deaths, experts in the laws of war contend that it does n’t matter if a civilian is killed more than the military targets ‘ justifications. Lieutenant Colonel Rachel E VanLandingham, a retired officer with the Air Force’s Judge Advocate General’s Corps, said the IDF is legally responsible for doing all it can to know the risk to civilians ahead of any given strike and to avoid indiscriminately bombing densely populated areas like refugee camps and shelters. ” It seems extremely plausible that they just disregarded the risk”, VanLandingham added. It “induces serious concerns and indicators of a violation of the law of war”

According to officials at the embassy in Jerusalem and elsewhere in Washington, Lew has been the subject of similar concerns before, but his first reaction was to defend Israel. In a separate cable obtained by ProPublica, he told Blinken and other leaders in Washington that” Israel is a trustworthy defense articles recipient” and his country team assessments ahead of past weapons sales have found that Israel’s “human rights record justifies the sale”.

Lew went even farther and said the IDF’s system for choosing targets is so” sophisticated and comprehensive” that, by defense attaché Schlereth’s estimation, it “meets and often exceeds our own standard”, according to the cable. Lew and Schlereth have made similar statements at internal meetings, according to two State Department officials who spoke to ProPublica. ( The Navy did not make Schlereth available for an interview or respond to a list of questions. )

In addition to numerous other incidents involving civilians, diplomats at the embassy also reported that Israel had dropped bombs on some of the embassy’s own employees at the start of the war.

As to why Lew’s cables failed to reflect that kind of information, one official said,” My most charitable explanation is that they may not have had the time or inclination to critically assess the Israelis ‘ answers”.

In Israel’s New York consulate, weapons procurement officers occupy two floors, processing hundreds of sales each year. One former Israeli officer who worked there claimed that while his American counterparts tried just as hard to sell them, he tried as hard to buy as many weapons as possible. ” It’s a business”, he said.

According to ProPublica, lobbyists for powerful corporations have intervened in the background to pressure and advance the deal if government officials took too long to process it.

Some of those lobbyists formerly held powerful positions as regulators in the State Department. In recent years, at least six high-ranking officials in the agency’s arms transfers bureau left their posts and joined lobbying firms and military contractors. In July, Jessica Lewis, the bureau’s assistant secretary, resigned and began working at Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck. The company is the largest lobbying firm in Washington, by lobbying revenue, and has represented the defense industry and countries including Saudi Arabia. ( Lewis and the company did not respond to requests for comment. )

Paul Kelly, who was the top congressional affairs official at the State Department between 2001 and 2005, during the US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, said he regularly “got leaned on” by the private sector to push sales to lawmakers for final approval. ” They would n’t bribe or threaten me, but they would say … ‘ When are you going to sign off on it and get it up to the Hill?'” he told ProPublica.

Three other State Department officials who currently or recently worked on military assistance said little has changed since then and companies that profit from the wars in Gaza and Ukraine frequently call or email. ( The agency representative told ProPublica that arms transfers are” not influenced by a particular company. ) The pressure also reaches lawmakers ‘ offices once they are notified of impending sales. Those measures include frequent phone calls and regular daytime meetings, according to an official familiar with the communications.

The efforts may have veered into dubious legal territory in some instances. In 2017, the Trump administration signed a$ 350 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia, an extension of Obama’s former policy before he suspended some sales because of humanitarian concerns. In the process of attacking Houthi militant targets in Yemen, the Saudis and their allies have used American-made jets and bombs for years, killing thousands of civilians.

The following February, the State Department was weighing whether to approve a sale of precision-guided missiles produced by Raytheon to Saudi Arabia. A vice president at the company named Tom Kelly — the former principal deputy assistant secretary of the State Department’s arms transfers bureau — emailed a former subordinate, Josh Paul. Kelly requested to schedule a meeting with Paul and a coworker to “talk through strategy” for advancing the sale, according to an email exchange.

Paul wrote back that such a meeting could be illegal. According to him,” we are prohibited by the Anti-Lobbying Act from coordinating legislative strategies with outside groups,” he said. ” However, I think the potential bumps in the road are relatively obvious”. Those bumps were a reference to recent media articles about mass civilian casualty incidents in Yemen.

” No worries,” Kelly said. ” I’m sure I’ll see you around”.

In response to requests for comment, Kelly and Raytheon did not respond.

The State Department ultimately signed off on the sale.

Mariam Elba contributed research.

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