The Blinken-Austin letter could be a game-changer, or just another electoral gimmick

First published in Canadian Dimension, October 15, 2024

In my most recent article for Canadian Dimension, I wrote about the stark discrepancies between US policy on supplying arms to Ukraine and Israel.

Though both states are nominally US allies, the Biden-Harris administration’s “unwavering support” for Ukraine has not stopped it from limiting or conditioning supplies of “offensive” as distinct from “defensive” weapons—long-distance ballistic missiles that are capable of reaching deep into Russia, for instance—in the interests of preventing escalation of the conflict and keeping European allies onside.

The US’s “ironclad commitment” to Israel, by contrast, has meant that the supply of offensive weaponry—like 500-pound and 2,000-pound “bunker buster” bombs capable of demolishing whole apartment blocks and incinerating their occupants—has continued to flow unimpeded, notwithstanding widespread international condemnation (including by several European states) of Israel’s war crimes, crimes against humanity, and possible genocide in Gaza, or the Netanyahu government’s frequent breaches of what the US has itself described as “red lines.”

Until now. But a recent report by Axios suggests things may—may—be about to change.

Axios claims to have seen a letter sent on October 14 by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin to Israeli Minister for Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer and Minister of Defence Yoav Galant, which was first reported on Israel’s Channel 12.

If the Axios report is accurate, for the first time the US administration is explicitly threatening to suspend military aid to Israel unless some very specific conditions are met.

These conditions, says Axios, amount to “the most wide-ranging and comprehensive list of US demands from Israel since the beginning of the war.”

Noting that IDF evacuation orders have forced 1.7 million Palestinians into Mawasi, a narrow strip of land on the Gaza coast where they are prey to dangerous diseases, at the same time as recent Israeli policies have made it harder to supply international aid into Gaza and limited its movement within the Strip, Blinken and Austin wrote that:

The amount of assistance entering Gaza in September was the lowest of any month during the past year … to reverse the downward humanitarian trajectory as consistent with its assurances to us, Israel must, starting now and within 30 days act on the following concrete measures …

Failure to demonstrate a sustained commitment to implementing and maintaining these measures may have implications for US policy under NSM-20 and relevant US law (weapons supply).

These “concrete measures” included demands that Israel must:

• allow “the permanent transfer of 350 aid trucks daily to the Gaza Strip through all four current border crossings as well as the opening of a fifth border crossing”;
• enable “humanitarian pauses [in the fighting] throughout Gaza to allow the distribution of aid for at least the next four months”;
• permit “the Palestinians who are concentrated along the coast in Mawasi to move east inland and away from the coastal area before winter”;
• “end the isolation of northern Gaza Strip and officially announce it has no policy of forced evacuation of Palestinians from northern Gaza Strip to the southern Gaza Strip”; and
• “allow the Red Cross to visit Palestinian detainees in detention facilities in Israel as soon as possible, in light of reports of abuse of detainees.”

In addition, Blinken and Austin expressed the US administration’s “concern” about a bill currently before the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, that would “sever ties between the Israeli government and UNRWA and to change the status-quo towards the organization in Jerusalem.”

Noting that this law, if passed, “would be devastating for the humanitarian effort in the Gaza Strip at a critical time and would prevent education and welfare services for tens of thousands of Palestinians in Jerusalem” and could also “constitute a violation of US laws,” Blinken and Austin demanded that “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu exercise his powers and influence over Knesset members so the bill doesn’t pass.”

Finally, Blinken and Austin wrote, “the US wants to establish a new mechanism with Israel to discuss incidents of mass Palestinian civilian casualties during IDF operations.”

On reading this report my response was mixed. This could be a game-changer, not only for Gaza but for the rapidly escalating conflict that threatens to engulf the entire Middle East (if not eventually the world). Without US arms and diplomatic support at the United Nations for its defiance not only of UN Security Council resolutions but also the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court, Israel becomes far more vulnerable not only militarily but to international pressure.

A change in US policy on arms at this point would also make domestic political sense. The presidential election is less than a month away, and the race is too close to call in the critical swing states.

While Kamala Harris has doubled down on Biden’s “ironclad commitment” to Israel’s defence, a threat to condition the supply of offensive weapons of the sort that has been the administration’s policy in Ukraine could win back some of the Palestinian American, Arab American, Muslim American, and young American votes the Democrats have lost over Gaza—because these groups have much to lose otherwise from a Trump victory.

If, that is, it is not too late. Remember Hubert Humphrey’s loss, in uncannily similar circumstances—cleaving too close to an unpopular president despite US involvement in a divisive war (Vietnam)—to Richard Nixon in 1968?

On the other hand, Biden has ignored his own red lines before, and Blinken has recently been exposed as flagrantly disregarding State Department advice back in April that Israel’s actions in Gaza were not in conformity with the very same legal requirements he is now invoking. The Blinken-Austin letter sets a 30-day deadline for Israel to act on its demands, which takes us to November 12—a week after the US election.

Should Harris, buoyed by the apparent prospect of a U-turn on Biden’s policy on arms to Israel, win on November 5, what is there to prevent her administration, having done its due diligence, from certifying that Israel’s assurances that it is acting in accord with relevant US laws are “credible and reliable,” as Blinken did—outrageously—before?

So long as the IDF continue to blockade aid, turn Jabalia refugee camp into a free-fire kill zone, fire on UN peacekeepers in Lebanon, and burn hospital patients alive with US-supplied bombs, this is not a time to ease up on the pressure on Israel and the US to obey international law.

It is a time, on the contrary, for heightened vigilance.

Update

The full text of the Blinken-Austin letter has now been posted on X by the Israeli journalist Barak Ravid and its authenticity confirmed by the White House, whose spokesman Matthew Miller describes it as “a private diplomatic communication” whose “timing was not influenced by next month’s presidential election.” Sure.

The contents of the letter are as described by Axios, though there are some additional demands made of Israel that are not mentioned in the Axios report.

‘Unwavering support’ versus ‘ironclad commitment’—a tale of two strategies

First published in Canadian Dimension October 1, 2024 / 14 min read

The Great Mosque of Gaza in the late nineteenth century. Photo by Maison Bonfils/Library of Congress.

The discrepancy between Western framing of the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza has often been noted. In the words of one critic, Kari McKern, writing in July 2024:

In Gaza, Palestinian suffering is often sanitised or contextualised to diminish its horror. When an Israeli airstrike hit a UN school sheltering civilians in July 2024, killing dozens, many Western outlets led with the Israeli military’s claims of militant activity in the area rather than centring the civilian deaths. Meanwhile, Ukrainian civilian casualties are presented as unambiguous tragedies, with individual stories examined and highlighted to evoke empathy. This asymmetry extends to the language used to describe combatants and their actions. Hamas fighters are invariably “terrorists,” while Ukrainian forces are “defenders” or “freedom fighters.” Israel “responds” or “retaliates,” while Russia “invades” or “attacks” …

The human toll in both conflicts is staggering, yet the West’s reaction has been wildly inconsistent. [When] Ukrainian apartment buildings are destroyed Western leaders were quick to decry war crimes. But similar accusations against Israel for its actions in Gaza are absent, muted or included so as to be dismissed entirely. As one Palestinian journalist put it, “Our dead don’t seem to count the same way.”

There is one instance of the West’s double standards, however, that has received little if any comment. Arguably, it is the most important—and revealing—inconsistency of all. It concerns Western, and especially American, policies regarding arms supplies to “allies.”

When US President Joe Biden and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer met in Washington, DC, two weeks ago for “an in-depth discussion on a range of foreign policy issues of mutual interest,” the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza dominated their conversation.

According to the official White House readout of their September 13 meeting, “The two leaders reaffirmed their unwavering support for Ukraine as it continues to defend against Russia’s aggression.” In that connection, they “expressed deep concern about Iran and North Korea’s provision of lethal weapons to Russia and the People’s Republic of China’s support to Russia’s defense industrial base.”

While paying lip-service to “the urgent need for a ceasefire deal that will free the hostages and enable increased relief in Gaza, and the need for Israel to do more to protect civilians and address the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza,” the self-appointed leaders of the free world “reiterated … their ironclad commitment to Israel’s security.”

No doubt diplomats can explain the subtle differences between “unwavering support” and “ironclad commitment.” On previous form, they would seem to be considerable.

Unwavering support, or the “slow yes” Ukraine strategy

Kari McKern’s point was nicely illustrated in Keir Starmer’s address to the UN Security Council on September 25.

Directly addressing the Russian representative, he said he deplored the 35,000 Ukrainian civilians killed or injured, the six million forced to flee and the 20,000 Ukrainian children kidnapped since Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February 2022—not to mention “Six hundred thousand Russian soldiers … killed or wounded in this war.”

And for what? The UN charter, which they [Russian representatives] sit here to uphold, speaks of human dignity. Not treating your own citizens as bits of meat to fling into the grinder.

“I think of Yaroslav Bazylevych, whose wife and three daughters were killed earlier this month by a Russian strike on civilians in Lviv,” the British PM went on. “And I wonder how Russia can show its face in this building.”

We must ensure accountability for those violating the UN charter and this council must recommit to the values that it sets out. This should go without saying. Yet, the greatest violation of the charter in a generation has been committed by one of this council’s permanent members.

We have yet to hear Starmer shedding any tears over Israel’s killings of five-year-old Hind Rajab and seven-year-old Sidra Hassouna, or the assassination of Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer, who was murdered along with his brother, his brother’s son, his sister, and four of her children in a targeted Israeli airstrike on his Gaza apartment on December 7—or any criticism of Israel’s condemnation of scores of its own citizens to fiery deaths at IDF hands on October 7 as a result of applying the Hannibal Directive.

The British PM also had little to say about “flagrant violations of the charter” when Israel disregarded four UN Security Council ceasefire resolutions this year, ignored two rulings by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on the plausible risk of genocide in Gaza and the illegality of its continuing occupation of the Palestinian territories seized during the 1967 Six Day War, and refused to cooperate with the International Criminal Court (ICC) investigation into possible war crimes in the Occupied Territories. But let that pass.

The crucial point, in the present context, is that despite what Starmer (rightly) represents as a blatant act of aggression by Russia—and notwithstanding the ICC issuing an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin for “the war crime of unlawful deportation of population (children)”—the West has consistently not provided Ukraine with all the armaments it has requested, nor permitted their unconditional use against Russia.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s repeated pleas that these restrictions harm Ukraine’s ability to defend itself have so far fallen on deaf ears—not least in the US.

Though the line is not always an easy one to draw, the Biden administration has mostly limited its “unwavering support” to provision of defensive weapons for use in fighting within Ukraine or immediately adjacent border areas, and conditioned supplies of arms on their not being used to strike the Russian heartland.

Hardware requested in the course of the war by Ukraine and denied or delayed by Western states includes Patriot air-defence missiles (not supplied by the US until 300 days into the war), US Abrams and German Leopard and Marder tanks, long-range high precision HIMARS artillery, and F-16 fighter jets (which the US embargoed until 29 months after the Russian invasion).

Provision of ATACAMS (Army Tactical Missile Systems), which have a range of around 190 miles and could hit many Russian cities, has so far remained a particular no-no.

While the UK now wishes to give Zelensky permission to deploy British-made Storm Shadow long-range ballistic missiles to strike targets deep within Russia, the US, which makes some components for the missiles, has so far refused to entertain this. Despite the urgings of Starmer and UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy on their recent visits to Washington, at the time of writing the US is continuing to veto Britain’s suggestion.

Criticizing what he calls the Biden administration’s “slow yes” strategy in Time magazine in December 2023, Elliot Ackerman wrote that:

This has led to a kind of phony war, in which the US and NATO cheer Ukraine’s victories and gradually provide Ukraine with high-end weapons, but dole them out slowly and in numbers small enough to allow Ukraine to fight but not to win.

The key considerations behind this strategy, at least as publicly stated by Biden and other American officials, appear to be avoidance of provoking a potentially nuclear escalation, as Putin has threatened, and fear of exacerbating disagreements among NATO European members, whose support for the Ukrainian cause differs widely.

These are eminently reasonable concerns. We might therefore equally reasonably ask: why has similar caution not prevailed when it comes to arming Israel?

Ironclad commitment, or the “we never say no” strategy

While the united Western support for Israeli action that followed Hamas’s attacks of October 7 has slowly fractured as the carnage in Gaza has grown, with Ireland, Spain, Norway, Belgium, Portugal, and even France among others becoming more critical of Israel and supportive of the Palestinian cause—though not of Hamas—Israel’s major Western arms suppliers have stood fast in their commitment to the Jewish state.

The UK and Germany have recently introduced (very) limited restrictions on licenses for arms sales to Israel following the ICJ advisory opinion of July 19 on the illegality of Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories—presumably in the hope that this will protect them against any future charges of complicity in Israeli war crimes in Gaza.

A German government spokesman was nonetheless adamant that “There is no ban on arms exports to Israel, and there will be no ban,” while David Lammy assured the UK Parliament that it was “with regret” that “we are announcing the suspension of around 30 export licences to Israel,” affirming once again that “The UK continues to support Israel’s right to self-defence in accordance with international law.” Those 30 licenses represented a mere eight percent of the UK’s total arms sales to Israel.

According to Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly, Canada officially ceased approving new arms supplies to Israel in March. The details, however, including continuing use of Canadian-made components in US-supplied weapons, remain distinctly murky.

Michael Bueckert, vice president of Canadians for Peace and Justice in the Middle East, is one of many who argues that because of lack of clarity and loopholes in the law:

this government is misleading Canadians into thinking that we aren’t exporting weapons to Israel at all. As Canadians increasingly demand that their government impose an arms embargo on Israel, politicians are trying to pretend that the arms trade doesn’t exist.

Most consequentially, the US (which supplies around 70 percent of Israel’s arms imports) has remained determinedly immune to any pressure to restrict or condition these supplies, whether from international bodies like the UN, the ICJ, the ICC, and a raft of human rights and charitable NGOs, or from domestic critics.

I am not just referring here to the usual left-wing suspects like Jill Stein, Bernie Sanders, or “Squad” members Ilhan Omar and Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez.

Even the self-described “highest-ranking Jewish elected official in our government, and a staunch defender of Israel,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, warned back on March 14:

If Prime Minister Netanyahu’s current coalition … continues to pursue dangerous and inflammatory policies that test existing US standards for assistance, then the United States will have no choice but to play a more active role in shaping Israeli policy by using our leverage to change the present course.

The United States’ bond with Israel is unbreakable, but if extremists continue to unduly influence Israeli policy, then the Administration should use the tools at its disposal to make sure our support for Israel is aligned with our broader goal of achieving long-term peace and stability in the region.

While Schumer did not explicitly call for conditioning future US arms supplies on Israel “changing course,” the inference is difficult to avoid.

Despite widespread speculation at the time that “There is a very real chance that the United States will halt the sale of offensive weaponry to Israel by month’s end should it fail to dramatically improve the amount of aid entering Gaza, or if it launches a military operation in Rafah without a credible plan for the million-plus Palestinians sheltering there,” the Biden administration instead doubled down on arming the genocide.

On May 8 Biden told CNN that “I made it clear that if they go into Rafah … I’m not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah, to deal with the cities—that deal with that problem.” The subsequent US suspension of a shipment of 1,700 500-pound bombs and 1,800 2,000-pound bombs—its only restriction of arms supplies to date—proved to be short-lived. Israel ignored Biden’s “red line” and launched its bloody assault on Rafah. The US lifted its halt on 500-pound bombs on July 10.

Meanwhile, Secretary of State Antony Blinken reportedly twice played fast and loose with US law in cases that would have required the US to cease supplying arms to Israel.

In late April, Blinken allegedly ignored misgivings in the State Department over whether Israel’s use of US-supplied arms in Gaza was “consistent with all applicable international and domestic law and policy, including international humanitarian law and international human rights law,” and certified Israel’s own assurances as “credible and reliable.” This was required under the Biden administration’s National Security Memorandum (NSM) 20, a measure adopted on February 8 with the declared aim of ensuring accountability.

Around the same time, per a recent scoop in Politico, Blinken was aware of both a US Agency for International Development (USAID) 17-page memo to the State Department claiming that Israel was “subjecting US humanitarian aid destined for Gaza to ‘arbitrary denial, restriction and impediments,’” and emails from the head of the State Department Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration which asserted that “Israel was blocking humanitarian aid and that the Foreign Assistance Act should be triggered to freeze almost $830 million in taxpayer dollars earmarked for weapons and bombs to Israel.”

Blinken chose to ignore both sets of recommendations, testifying to Congress on May 10 that “We do not currently assess that the Israeli government is prohibiting or otherwise restricting the transport or delivery of US humanitarian assistance.”

On July 2, 12 former Biden administration officials who had resigned over US policy toward Gaza issued a joint statement in which they argued that:

America’s diplomatic cover for, and continuous flow of arms to Israel has ensured our undeniable complicity in the killings and forced starvation of a besieged Palestinian population in Gaza.

Ongoing weapons transfers to Israel despite its actions in Gaza, they added, have “put a target on America’s back.”

Notwithstanding the Rafah offensive and other subsequent Israeli atrocities including airstrikes on schools and hospitals, on August 13 the Biden administration approved a further $20 billion in weapons sales to Israel, including 50 F-15 fighter jets, 30 medium range air-to-air missiles, tactical vehicles, 32,739 tank cartridges of 120-mm rounds and 50,400 120-mm high-explosive cartridges for mortars.

America’s “ironclad commitment” to Israel seems unlikely to change whoever wins the November US presidential election. Interviewed on CNN on August 30, the only person standing in the way of a second Donald Trump presidency offered little “joy”—am I the only one who finds this campaign motif obscene in the circumstances?—to Palestinians:

Let me be very clear: I am unequivocal and unwavering in my commitment to Israel’s defense and its ability to defend itself. And that’s not going to change …

Asked whether this means there would be “no change in policy in terms of arms and so forth?” Kamala Harris responded: “No, I—we have to get a deal done.”

This refusal to countenance any deviation from Biden’s policy is all the more remarkable given that opinion polls suggest the election is likely to be extremely close.

According to a recent YouGov poll in the crucial swing states of Arizona, Pennylvania, and Georgia, “80% or more of Democrats and Independents support a permanent cease-fire and 60% or more disapprove of more weapons to Israel.” Polls cannot be treated as reliable predictors, but the successes of the “uncommitted” campaign in the Democratic primaries earlier this year suggest that in refusing to reconsider the party position on arms to Israel Harris is risking losing substantial Arab American, Muslim American, and youth support and votes in the swing states where she needs them most.

There could be no more eloquent—or sadder—testimony to the US “ironclad commitment” than the Democrats’ apparent willingness to throw the election to Donald Trump rather than even consider conditioning arms supplies to Israel on its behaving in accordance with international law.

Beyond realpolitik?

The contrast between Western, and especially US, policies on arms supply to Ukraine and Israel, is glaring. It is also difficult to rationally comprehend, let alone morally justify.

While the figures for Ukrainian casualties cited by Keir Starmer in his September 25 address to the UN are undoubtedly horrific, they look positively benign when compared with the casualties in Gaza. In eleven months of war (compared with two years and eight months of war in Ukraine), at least 41,534 Palestinians have been killed and more than 96,092 injured. More than 10,000 are missing, presumed buried under the rubble.

Though Gaza’s Health Ministry casualty figures do not differentiate between civilians and combatants, even Joe Biden conceded back in March that “more than 30,000 Palestinians have been killed—most of whom are not Hamas” (my emphasis).

Israel has slaughtered nearly 16,500 children in Gaza—surely a more heinous war crime than Russia’s kidnappings of Ukrainian kids. Around 1.9 million people—nearly nine in ten Gazans—have been “displaced,” i.e., forced to flee from their homes, at least once.

In making these comparisons, we need to remember that while the pre-war population of Ukraine was 37.9 million, that of Gaza was a mere 2.3 million.

If ever there was a case for embargoing or at least conditioning arms supplies on purely humanitarian grounds, Gaza provides it. The IDF makes Putin’s butchers of Chechnya, Georgia, and Syria—not to mention Mariupol—look like the most moral army in the world.

Ukraine is facing a genuine existential crisis provoked by an invasion by a great power that possesses the largest nuclear armory on the planet. Should Russia win this war, the implications for European—and Western—security are potentially profound.

By contrast, however appalling (or criminal) the events of October 7 may have been, Israel is confronting what some have likened to a prison breakout by a people whose territories it has been illegally occupying for 67 years, in an area around twice the size of Washington, DC, whose borders it has blockaded since 2007.

Hamas might wish to destroy Israel but it does not remotely have the capacity to do so. October 7 is not evidence of an existential threat to the Israeli state, but of unforgiveable lapses in security while its leaders’ minds were on other things.

The costs to the West of its “ironclad commitment” to Israel far outweigh any benefits. Whatever potential geopolitical, economic, or domestic political advantages may once have been conferred by support for Israel are forever buried in the rubble of Gaza. We are beyond realpolitik, and the world is slowly realizing it.

On September 18 the United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly adopted “a historic text demanding that Israel brings to an end its unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, no later than 12 months from the adoption of the resolution,” in accord with the ICJ advisory opinion of July 19.

With a recorded vote of 124 nations in favour, 14 against, and 43 abstentions, the resolution calls for Israel to comply with international law and withdraw its military forces, immediately cease all new settlement activity, evacuate all settlers from occupied land, and dismantle parts of the separation wall it constructed inside the occupied West Bank.

The General Assembly further demanded that Israel return land and other “immovable property”, as well as all assets seized since the occupation began in 1967, and all cultural property and assets taken from Palestinians and Palestinian institutions.

The resolution also demands Israel allow all Palestinians displaced during the occupation to return to their place of origin and make reparation for the damage caused by its occupation.

Apart from Israel and the US, the opponents of the resolution were Argentina, Czechia, Hungary, Malawi, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, and the Pacific states of Fiji, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Tonga, and Tuvalu—a tiny minority of the international community.

Several European nations, including the UK, Germany, and Italy, abstained, as did Australia, Canada, India—and Ukraine, whose supply of US arms, as we have seen, has always been conditional on doing what Uncle Sam says.

It is noteworthy—and shows how far opinion has shifted over the last eleven months—that supporters of the resolution included Belgium, Estonia, Finland, France, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Japan, Latvia, Luxembourg, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, and Spain. Most of the BRICS countries, including Russia, China, South Africa, and Brazil, voted in favor of the resolution.

Israel and the United States are increasingly isolated in the court of world opinion.

Yet still the carnage continues and still the arms flow. On September 27, in what may prove to be a cataclysmic escalation of the war to Lebanon, Israel dropped US-supplied 2,000-pound bunker-buster bombs on the Dahiya residential area of Beirut, flattening six apartment blocks and killing Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. Benjamin Netanyahu authorized the strike by telephone from his hotel room in New York, where he was addressing the UN General Assembly and scores of delegates walked out.

The cost of Nasrallah’s scalp was likely several hundred Lebanese civilian lives. The Palestinian journalist got it right. Their dead don’t seem to count the same way.