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After admitting there are no real facts, Biden effectively accuses Israel of war crimes

By Andrea Widburg

It’s obvious that this report is a purely political document intended to bolster Biden’s decision to withhold from Israel the very weapons that would allow Israel to minimize civilian casualties. This will force Israel to use more destructive weapons, increasing the risk of civilian casualties. At that point, the Biden administration can say, “We told you so!”

Yesterday afternoon, the State Department issued a report in response to Biden’s demand that it analyze whether foreign governments are appropriately using weapons they received from America. It was apparent from the beginning that this was a set-up to attack Israel, and attacking Israel is what the State Department did. Despite admitting that it has no data to back up its conclusions, it nevertheless concluded that Israel has failed to protect Gaza’s civilian populations while using American weapons.

The New York Times went with the big headline: “US Criticizes Israel for Failure to Protect Civilians in the Gaza Conflict:

The Biden administration believes that Israel has most likely violated international standards in failing to protect civilians in Gaza...

In the administration’s most detailed assessment of Israel’s conduct in Gaza, the State Department said in a written report that Israel “has the knowledge, experience and tools to implement best practices for mitigating civilian harm in its military operations.”

But it added that “the results on the ground, including high levels of civilian casualties, raise substantial questions” as to whether the Israel Defense Forces are making sufficient use of those tools.

Apparently, Israel’s unique approach to protecting enemy civilians—warning its enemy in advance of battle plans, warning civilians in advance of strikes, providing evacuation assistance to civilians in advance of battles, and providing millions of tons (and millions of dollars) worth of supplies, including food and medicine, to civilians—simply isn’t good enough. Nor does it matter that Hamas has deliberately intertwined its military operations with civilians or that it continuously attacks Israeli civilians). If only one Gazan civilian dies, Israel is in the crosshairs.

If you understand that overriding principle—that is, that Israel shouldn’t be waging an offensive war at all against a genocidal military force embedded among a mostly supportive civilian population—you begin to understand how the State Department generated its report. And the way it did was to rely on Hamas statistics that are so obviously fake that they’re easily debunked (indeed, the UN has debunked them) and on...guesses.

In the report, the State Department explicitly concedes that it has no actual information about the facts on the ground in Gaza and is relying on Hamas propaganda. It also recognizes that Hamas uses civilians as shields:

Given the nature of the conflict in Gaza, with Hamas seeking to hide behind civilian populations and infrastructure and expose them to Israeli military action, as well as the lack of USG personnel on the ground in Gaza, it is difficult to assess or reach conclusive findings on individual incidents.

Nevertheless, says the State Department, it just feels deep in its bones that Israel has the kind of sophisticated weapons that should allow it to achieve a magical zero casualty rate for civilians:

Nevertheless, given Israel’s significant reliance on U.S.-made defense articles, it is reasonable to assess that defense articles covered under NSM-20 have been used by Israeli security forces since October 7 in instances inconsistent with its IHL obligations or with established best practices for mitigating civilian harm.

Scott Johnson has more about how the State Department acknowledges Israel’s heroic (and often self-destructive) efforts to protect civilians who want all Jews dead but nevertheless finds those Hamas mortality figures just too tempting to resist.

It’s obvious that this report is a purely political document intended to bolster Biden’s decision to withhold from Israel the very weapons that would allow Israel to minimize civilian casualties. This will force Israel to use more destructive weapons, increasing the risk of civilian casualties. At that point, the Biden administration can say, “We told you so!”

Israel must surely know that she cannot win. In the world’s eyes, she’s damned if she does and damned if she doesn’t. But still, she continues to do her best to save a people who despise her. Either Israel’s leaders are very stupid, or they understand that they answer to a higher moral standard than our broken, Islamist, socialist world leaders demand.

That’s undoubtedly why, in the lead-up to the final showdown in Rafah, Israel has urged the evacuation of the civilian population, providing venues in which civilians will be safe, along with receiving shelter, food, water, and medical care. Israel does so knowing that, in getting civilians off the battlefield, she’ll probably be accused of setting up concentration camps. The world, including the Biden administration, may be evil, but Israel sets a higher standard.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/05/after_admitting_there_are_no_real_facts_biden_effectively_accuses_israel_of_war_crimes.html