The role of U.S. weapons for Israel

Prior to October 7, 2023, Israel and the U.S. had a sweet deal. The U.S. sent Israel  $3.8 billion each year to be provided through 2028 to maintain its Qualitative Military Edge (QME). According to the military experts quoted in the June 29 Reuters article, the U.S. must provide better weapons to Israel than those possessed by other countries in West Asia. This ostensibly maintained Israel’s “ability to defend itself” militarily against all comers.

Then October 7 happened, and that changed the dynamic in the region. Since October 7, Israel has received $12.5 billion, mostly in military aid, from the U.S. According to the Reuters article, Washington has already sent over 10,000 bombs, each with 2,000 pounds of explosives, and thousands of Hellfire missiles. The bombs are considered “highly destructive.”

Jeremy Konyndyk, a former senior Biden administration official and current president of Refugees International, said, “That’s an extraordinary number of sales over the course of a pretty short amount of time, which really strongly suggests that the Israeli campaign would not be sustainable without this level of U.S. support.” (Washington Post, March 6)

This huge increase in U.S. military aid has been pushed through without congressional review or public announcement. The government has kept it quiet by sending 100 weapons transfers to Israel. By sending many relatively small packages of weapons, the cost for each is small enough to slip under the amount above which congressional review is required.

Also going unreported as new aid packages are large stockpiles of weapons already existing in Israel that the U.S. had bought and now leases back to Israel, such as Iron Dome missile defense batteries.

These weapons are being used against a primarily refugee population that is increasingly living in tents due to constant displacement.

Hi-tech weapons

“Hours after the Oct. 7 attack, a small, high-tech weapons firm named Skydio began receiving calls from Israel for short-range reconnaissance drones.” (Politico, Nov. 23, 2023) Skydio has sent over 100 drones to the Israeli military and more, according to a Skydio executive. There are apparently many small, high-tech, cutting-edge defense companies outside traditional, nation-to-nation negotiations, which are harder to monitor by international regulatory institutions.

The drones have autonomy and can be programmed by artificial intelligence (AI), with the intent of locating and destroying all kinds of hidden targets, human and otherwise. Skydio provides the drones without programming them. The buyer can add their own program to fit their needs.

Confronted with this information, a Skydio representative said they didn’t know of any civilians harmed by their weapons, and they would not allow it. When U.S. representatives were asked about monitoring such sales, they answered that they were not allowed to say.

By various means, the U.S. government has provided Israel with weapons that were designed to destroy far more mechanized or armored targets. These weapons, often declared illegal by the U.N. charter, are capable of tearing apart human beings, burning and shredding them. Israel is using them largely against children and women, not against military targets.

Also, using hi-tech reconnaissance weapons, Israel has been able to search and destroy — not weapons caches or hidden militants as they claim — but families, refugees praying and newborns and their mothers.

In one answer to all this weaponry, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, one of the resistance organizations operating in Gaza, said the following in a statement published in Resistance News Network on June 22: “Netanyahu is deeply mired in the Gaza quagmire and has achieved none of his aggressive goals except for murder and destruction.

“His statements are intended for local consumption to try to prolong the war, which contradicts the position of the exhausted army, unable to continue this war or fight on multiple fronts due to the heavy losses it suffers in Gaza and the war of attrition from multiple fronts, especially the Lebanese front.”