Sara Yaghur, director of Human Rights Watch in Washington, described the United States’ handling of the Israeli war on Gaza as “hypocrisy,” and the Biden administration must evaluate Israel’s behavior and hold it accountable for it.
Yaghur commented in an article published in Foreign Affairs magazine that the staggering number of Palestinian casualties and injuries resulting from Israel’s war on Gaza in response to Hamas’s attack on October 7th cannot be looked at without considering whether Israel violated international humanitarian law during its war.
She added that a large amount of available information indicates that Israel did so in reality, as human rights organizations and media outlets have reported on the unlawful collective punishment of Palestinian populations, the use of starvation as a weapon in the war, air and artillery strikes, and the destruction of buildings that did not have clear military targets but resulted in significant losses among civilians and property destruction.
Yaghur mentioned that there is enough smoke to suspect a fire, putting American officials in a dilemma because US law requires the State Department to ensure that American security assistance does not go to security forces that continuously commit serious human rights violations.
The current US policy also requires the department to assess whether the recipient of American military aid is “more likely” to use US weapons to violate international law, and to ban transfers to any country to which these criteria apply.
Deliberate Israeli Destruction in Gaza (Reuters)
Impromptu Warning
Yaghur doubted whether the State Department had conducted these assessments so far despite Secretary Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin repeatedly saying that the number of civilian casualties was “very high.”
However, regardless of the impromptu warning issued by President Joe Biden in December regarding the danger to Israel’s reputation from executing “indiscriminate bombing,” American officials avoided clearly stating that specific Israeli actions in Gaza were unacceptable. They refrained from commenting directly, unlike Biden’s previous criticism of the behavior of warring parties in other conflicts.
The reason is that drawing more attention to what is happening in Gaza could almost certainly force a policy change that Biden does not want to make. It could present his administration with a series of difficult choices that it prefers to avoid, further complicating the already complex dynamics of the US-Israeli relationship and potentially creating political vulnerability for Biden in an election year.
Double Standard and Hypocrisy
Yaghur added that as long as the administration avoids the reality of Israeli violations in Gaza and selectively applies military assistance rules, the ethical authority the United States demands will diminish further. The clear unwillingness of the Biden administration to apply the legal aspect to the available information due to its apparent failure to adhere to the policies it set as an expression of Biden’s supposed commitment to human rights exacerbates this.
She believes that the worst outcome of the administration’s failure to comply with the letter and spirit of US law is that Washington may enable severe and potentially criminal civilian casualties in Gaza. There is another victim of this approach: the credibility of the United States, which has been compromised due to what could be considered, at best, inconsistency and, at worst, hypocrisy.
She cited the condemnation of President Barack Obama in 2016 for depriving civilians in Aleppo, Syria, of food and water, comparing Israel’s similar actions in Gaza for over three months without facing any criticism from the Biden administration. Biden pushed Netanyahu to open a passage to Gaza for more aid but did not directly criticize the blockade.
To begin reining in Israel and stopping the hemorrhage of American credibility, the Biden administration needs to task its attorney with evaluating all available information – classified and unclassified – about Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, pinpoint when and where Israeli forces violated the laws of war, publish the findings, and present the evidence to Congress.
She concluded that the political costs of directly looking at the evidence and adjusting US policy as needed will not be comfortable for the president and lawmakers during the election campaign. However, these costs are less than the cost of allowing US authorities to act as if the severe suffering of the Palestinian people in Gaza is not deserving of the same scrutiny as the suffering of civilians in other conflicts. This stance gives credence to those who argue that when it comes to applying fundamental American principles and protecting genuine human rights, Washington applies a clear double standard and hypocrisy.
