Image by Library of Congress.

In recent weeks, political soothsayers have speculated about a wide variety of odious new policies the incoming Trump administration and its allies in Congress may or may not pursue. No one can predict with certainty which of those measures they will inflict on us and which they’ll forget about. But we can make one prediction with utter confidence. The White House and large bipartisan majorities in Congress will continue their lavish support for Israel’s war on Gaza, however catastrophic the results.

Washington has supplied a large share of the armaments that have allowed the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) to rain death and destruction on Gaza (not to speak of Lebanon) over the past year and a quarter. Before October 7, 2023, when Hamas and other groups attacked southern Israel, that country was receiving $3.8 billion worth of American military aid annually. Since then, the floodgates have opened and $18 billion worth of arms have flowed out. The ghastly results have shocked people and governments across the globe.

In early 2024, the United Nations General Assembly and International Court of Justice condemned the war being waged on the people of Gaza and, in November, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights, and Médecins Sans Frontières all followed with determinations that Israel was indeed committing genocide.

This country’s laws and regulations prohibit aid to military forces deliberately killing or wounding civilians or committing other grave human rights abuses. No matter, the U.S.-to-Israel weapons pipeline has kept right on flowing, completely unchecked. A cornucopia of military funds and hardware for Israel in the early months of the war came from just two nations: 69% from the United States and 30% from Germany.

Were it just about any other country than Israel committing such a genocide, Washington would have cut off arms shipments months ago. But U.S. leaders have long carved out gaping exceptions for Israel. Those policies have contributed mightily to the lethality of the onslaught, which has so far killed at least 52,000 Palestinians, 46,000 of whom are believed to have been civilians. And of those civilian dead, five of every six are also believed to have been women or children. Israeli air strikes and other kinds of bombardment have also destroyed or severely damaged almost half a million housing units, more than 500 schools, just about every hospital in Gaza, and large parts of that region’s food and water systems — all with dire consequences for health and life.

Bombs Leave Their Calling Cards

From October 2023 through October 2024, reports Brett Murphy at ProPublica, 50,000 tons (yes, tons!) of U.S. war matériel were shipped to Israel. A partial list of the munitions included in those shipments has been compiled by the Costs of War Project. The list (which, the project stresses, is far from complete) includes 2,600 250-pound bombs, 8,700 500-pound bombs, and a trove of 16,000 behemoths, each weighing in at 2,000 pounds. In January 2024, Washington also added to Israel’s inventory of U.S.-made F-15 and F-35 fighter jets. Naturally, we taxpayers footed the bill.

As Abigail Hauslohner and Michael Birnbaum of the Washington Post

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