US approves $20bn worth of weapons sales to Israel
On Tuesday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken approved a new batch of arms sales to Israel, totalling over $20bn in military equipment as the death toll from Israel's genocidal war on Gaza neared 40,000, with dozens killed over just the past 24 hours in Israeli attacks across the besieged enclave.
In a statement, the Pentagon said, “The United States is committed to the security of Israel, and it is vital to US national interests to assist Israel in developing and maintaining a strong and ready self-defense capability. This proposed sale is consistent with those objectives.”
The Pentagon confirmed that Blinken approved the potential sale of F-15 jets and related equipment worth nearly $19 billion. Additionally, he approved the possible sale of tank cartridges valued at approximately $774m and army vehicles worth $583m.
The tank rounds would be almost immediately available for delivery.
This multibillion-dollar package is the latest in a series of arms deals that Israel is set to receive from the US, adding to the $14bn in additional military aid approved earlier this year.
“The Senate should introduce a Joint Resolution of Disapproval to block the sale of F-15 fighter jets, related munitions, and other arms to Israel, a package which, if executed, would be in violation of U.S. and international laws,” Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) said in a statement Tuesday.
Josh Paul, a senior adviser to DAWN who resigned from the U.S. State Department last year over the Biden administration’s arming of Israel, said that “the people of Gaza are pleading for food and medicine as Israel continues to rebuff the Biden administration’s pleas to ramp down its deliberate bombardment of civilians and allow aid to reach the starving population.”
“Authorizing billions of dollars in new arms transfers,” Paul warned, “effectively provides Israel a carte blanche to continue its atrocities in Gaza and to escalate the conflict to Lebanon-and doing so while Congress is in recess is especially craven.”
Medea Benjamin, co-founder of the peace group CodePink, called the administration’s pending arms sale “sickening beyond words” and said that “we in the U.S. must rise up and demand an end to this.”
Jewish Voice for Peace Action echoed that message, writing on social media that “the U.S. is directly responsible for this genocide.”
“It must end,” the group added. “ARMS EMBARGO NOW.”
Edward Ahmed Mitchell, national deputy director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), said Wednesday that “by approving another massive shipment of arms to the far-right Israeli government, the Biden administration is pouring gasoline on a fire that could engulf millions across the region.”
“The increasingly unhinged Israeli government has demonstrated time and again that it not only intends to continue its brutal genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza, but also to provoke a broader regional war,” said Mitchell. “It’s time for the Biden administration to wake up to reality: The Israeli government is not a rational actor, it is not an ally, and it is trying to drag our nation into an all-out war.”