{"id":253922,"date":"2024-02-05T12:00:22","date_gmt":"2024-02-05T12:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=253922"},"modified":"2024-02-05T05:41:25","modified_gmt":"2024-02-05T05:41:25","slug":"state-department-declares-ethnic-cleansing-in-sudan-but-wont-say-the-same-about-israels-war-in-gaza","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2024\/02\/state-department-declares-ethnic-cleansing-in-sudan-but-wont-say-the-same-about-israels-war-in-gaza\/","title":{"rendered":"State Department Declares \u201cEthnic Cleansing\u201d in Sudan but Won\u2019t Say the Same about Israel\u2019s War in Gaza"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Palestinians carrying some belongings walk past ammunition containers left behind by Israeli troops as they flee Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, on 2 Feb 2024.
Photo: Mahmud Hams\/AFP<\/p><\/div>\n

The U.S. risks complicity with Israeli atrocities, experts say. <\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

4 Feb 2024<\/em> – Late last year,<\/span> 50 humanitarian organizations asked Secretary of State Antony Blinken to make an atrocity determination<\/a> related to a conflict that was drawing global attention.<\/p>\n

\n

The groups requesting the designation had been lobbying the Biden administration for months. In their November letter, they zeroed in on atrocities committed by the Rapid Support Forces, one of the warring factions in a battle for control of Sudan. Six days later, Blinken responded with a determination that the RSF and the Sudanese Armed Forces were guilty. \u201cBased on the State Department\u2019s careful analysis of the law and available facts, I have determined that members of the SAF and the RSF have committed war crimes in Sudan,\u201d he said in a December 6 statement<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In the case of the RSF, Blinken went further: \u201cI have also determined that members of the RSF and allied militias have committed crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing.\u201d<\/p>\n

For the human rights activists who had pushed for the designation, it was a sweet victory. Such a determination can have important foreign policy implications, creating a legal designation for international crimes usually accompanied by limits on weapons and security assistance, economic sanctions, and other penalties. Yet something seemed off. Just over 1,100 miles from Sudan\u2019s capital, Khartoum, well-documented war crimes were being carried out with impunity. But the State Department has been unwilling to make a similar determination in regard to Israel\u2019s war on Gaza.<\/p>\n

\u201cU.S. officials regularly \u2014 and often rightly \u2014 condemn the actions of other warring parties in other places like Ukraine, Ethiopia, and Sudan,\u201d Sarah Yager, the Washington director at Human Rights Watch, told The Intercept. \u201cBut on Gaza, U.S. officials are avoiding passing judgment on Israel\u2019s conduct.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cComplicit\u201d in Israeli Atrocities<\/h2>\n

On a near-daily basis, a State Department spokesperson takes questions from the media and is routinely pressed about the latest atrocity alleged to have been committed by Israeli forces<\/a>, whether it\u2019s gunfire aimed at civilians in a church; the bombing of hospitals, mosques, schools, universities, or residential buildings; or the cutting off of food, fuel, and medicine. Generally, the questions refer to either video evidence or on-record statements from Israeli government ministers.<\/p>\n

The State Department consistently declines to cast judgment, often saying that the views or actions of some elements of the security forces or some ministers don\u2019t represent the official Israeli position. \u201cThe United States rejects recent statements from Israeli Ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir advocating for the resettlement of Palestinians outside of Gaza,\u201d State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said earlier this month.<\/a> \u201cThis rhetoric is inflammatory and irresponsible. We have been told repeatedly and consistently by the government of Israel, including by the prime minister, that such statements do not reflect the policy of the Israeli government.\u201d<\/p>\n

By refusing to make an atrocity determination relative to Israeli forces, the U.S. is leaving one of its critical levers off the field. The United States has long used atrocity determinations<\/a> to draw attention to conflicts and mobilize the international community. It has done so with increasing frequency in recent years, employing them for Bosnia and Herzegovina (1993), Rwanda (1994), Iraq (1995, 2014), Darfur (2004), Burma (2021), China (2021), Ethiopia (2023), and Sudan (2023). Experts say the State Department is shirking its obligation to assess whether Israel is complying with the laws of war<\/a> and has failed to act on backchannel requests from some of the same advocates who lobbied for the Sudan determination to do something similar regarding Israel\u2019s war in Gaza.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is imperative that the United States assess Israel\u2019s international law compliance because many of the weapons that the Israeli military has used to kill civilians, flatten homes, and destroy medical facilities are made in the United States and paid for by U.S. taxpayers,\u201d said John Ramming Chappell, an advocacy and legal fellow at the Center for Civilians in Conflict. \u201cBy providing military aid, the United States risks making itself complicit in possible atrocity crimes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The rifle of an Israeli soldier hangs on a wall near the border with the Gaza Strip, upon the return of troops from a mission there on Feb. 1, 2024. Photo: Jack Guez\/AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n

Billions Worth of U.S. Weapons<\/h2>\n

U.S. munitions have been central to Israel\u2019s destruction of Gaza. In the first month and a half of the war alone, Israel dropped more than 22,000 U.S.-supplied bombs on Gaza, according to intelligence figures provided to Congress and disclosed<\/a> by the Washington Post. Between October and late December 2023, the U.S. delivered more than 10,000 tons of armaments and equipment<\/a> to Israel, according to the Israel\u2019s Channel 12 television network. That report also noted that Israel\u2019s Defense Ministry had ordered $2.8 billion<\/a> in additional arms and equipment from the United States.<\/p>\n

The US already had, as of October 2023, nearly 600 pending Foreign Military Sales <\/a>to Israel, including F-35 Joint Strike Fighter aircraft and precision-guided munitions, with an overall value of $23.8 billion. Under the Direct Commercial Sales process<\/a> \u2014 by which Israel purchases directly from U.S. arms manufacturers \u2014 the U.S. authorized the permanent export of over $5.7 billion in weapons and equipment between 2018 and 2022<\/a>. The U.S. has provided Israel with another $6.6 billion worth of equipment under the Excess Defense Articles<\/a> program since 1992. All told, the U.S. has given Israel $158 billion in bilateral assistance and missile defense funding, more than any other country<\/a> since World War II, according to a March 2023 report by the Congressional Research Service.<\/p>\n

\u201cAdministration spokespeople have repeatedly said that the United States is not assessing whether Israel is complying with international law in its operations in Gaza. These statements are inconsistent with the administration\u2019s own conventional arms transfer policy, in which President Biden committed to \u2018engage in appropriate monitoring\u2019 to ensure that U.S. weapons are used in accordance with international human rights and humanitarian law obligations,\u201d said Chappell. \u201cThe same policy requires government agencies to determine whether a proposed arms transfer is \u2018more likely than not\u2019 to aggravate the risk of violations based on a recipient\u2019s past conduct. The Biden administration cannot implement this requirement in good faith without assessing the legality of the Israeli military\u2019s conduct in Gaza.\u201d<\/p>\n

The State Department did not respond to The Intercept\u2019s questions about their atrocity determination for Sudan and their failure to issue a similar designation for Israel.<\/p>\n

_________________________________________<\/p>\n

Ryan Grim – <\/a> ryan.grim@theintercept.com<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Nick Turse – <\/a> @nickturse Opens in a new tab<\/span><\/a> on X<\/span> <\/span> <\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original – theintercept.com<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

4 Feb 2024 – The U.S. risks complicity with Israeli atrocities, experts say.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":253924,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[1199,87,865,88,427,128,70,1025],"class_list":["post-253922","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-anglo-america","tag-ethnic-cleansing","tag-gaza","tag-genocide","tag-israel","tag-palestine","tag-sudan","tag-usa","tag-west-bank"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253922","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=253922"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253922\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":253927,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253922\/revisions\/253927"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/253924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}