by Brett Murphy at ProPublica
Reporting Highlights
– Empty Threats: Since Oct. 7, 2023, Biden has repeatedly issued threats that Israel ignored. U.S. officials tried to enforce consequences — but they couldn’t.
– Internal Dissent: The State Department disregarded its own experts and cracked down on leaks. Some human rights officials said they were prevented from pursuing evidence of Israeli abuses.
– Costs of Inaction: Experts say Biden’s failure to follow through led to impunity for widespread human rights abuses, including blocking aid deliveries, even after explicit U.S. warnings.These highlights were written by the reporters and editors who worked on this story.
In early November, a small group of senior U.S. human rights diplomats met with a top official in President Joe Biden’s State Department to make one final, emphatic plea: We must keep our word.
Weeks before, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the administration delivered their most explicit ultimatum yet to Israel, demanding the Israel Defense Forces allow hundreds more trucksloads of food and medicine into Gaza every day — or else. American law and Biden’s own policies prohibit arms sales to countries that restrict humanitarian aid. Israel had 30 days to comply.
In the month that followed, the IDF was accused of roundly defying the U.S., its most important ally. The Israeli military tightened its grip, continued to restrict desperately needed aid trucks and displaced 100,000 Palestinians from North Gaza, humanitarian groups found, exacerbating what was already a dire crisis “to its worst point since the war began.”
Several attendees at the November meeting…
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