Jake Johnson
Common Dreams / September 30, 2024
“Members of the Biden administration unwilling to rein in Israel and furthering its genocide in Gaza need to go to jail,” said the human rights attorney representing Veterans for Peace.
An organization representing anti-war U.S. veterans urged the Justice Department on Monday to immediately empanel a grand jury to investigate—and, if necessary, indict—Secretary of State Antony Blinken for lying to Congress, unlawfully refusing to cut off American military aid to Israel, and “conspiring to cause genocide of Palestinians.”
The call from Veterans for Peace (VFP) comes days after the investigative outlet ProPublica published a detailed account of how the U.S. State Department submitted a report to Congress that contradicted the findings of the department’s own experts and those of other agencies.
The Blinken-led State Department’s May report concluded that Israel was not “prohibiting or otherwise restricting the transport or delivery of U.S. humanitarian assistance,” despite internal assessments from State Department experts and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) arguing that Israel had deliberately impeded American aid shipments to Gaza and that weapons transfers to the country should be cut off in line with Section 620I of the U.S. Foreign Assistance Act.
In a letter addressed to the Justice Department’s Human Rights and Special Prosecutions Section and U.S. District Attorney Matthew Graves, VFP specifically cites ProPublica’s reporting and states that “Blinken’s failure to implement U.S. federal law and halt weapons shipments to Israel touches upon both domestic and international law.”
“Secretary Blinken’s lack of candour with the Congress to continue the provision of military aid to Israel meant concealing the existence of the USAID and State Department reports showing repeat violations of aid requirements,” the new letter reads. “The concealed reports explicitly recommended the immediate cutoff of military aid to Israel. By allegedly lying to Congress, Secretary Blinken caused ongoing genocidal acts and war crimes against the Palestinians by continuing the supply of weapons and munitions to Israel.”
The letter also points to the role of U.S. Ambassador to Israel Jack Lew in ensuring the continued flow of American arms to Israel even as human rights organizations accumulated overwhelming evidence that Israeli forces were using the weapons to commit horrific war crimes in Gaza. According to ProPublica, Lew “sent Blinken a cable arguing that Israel’s war cabinet… should be trusted to facilitate aid shipments to the Palestinians” and “recommended continuing to provide military assistance.”
“The alleged wrongdoing of Secretary of State Blinken of lying to Congress, supported by what looks like wilful provision of inaccurate information from Ambassador Lew, combined to save Israel from interruption of U.S. provision of weapons and munitions,” VFP argued in its letter. “Thus Israel was able to continue to perpetrate war crimes and genocidal acts.”
The group wrote that Blinken and Lew “appear to have violated the objectives of U.S. foreign policy against fomenting war, against allowing war crimes, and against the commission of human rights violations,” which “enabled Israel to breach the Genocide Convention and the orders of the International Court of Justice.”
Terry Lodge, VFP’s human rights counsel, said in a statement Monday that “the Israeli military continues detonating massive bombs in southern Beirut—bombs they would not possess but for Antony Blinken’s repeated violations of federal laws aimed at halting human rights and war crimes violations.”
“Members of the Biden administration unwilling to rein in Israel and furthering its genocide in Gaza need to go to jail,” Lodge added.
VFP’s letter came days after the U.S. and Israel reached a deal for an additional $8.7 billion in American military support, even as the Israeli military continues to obstruct aid deliveries in Gaza, bombard the enclave’s starving population, and expand the assault on Lebanon.
In an appearance on MSNBC last week, USAID Administrator Samantha Power brushed off host Andrea Mitchell’s question about ProPublica’s reporting, downplaying her agency’s assessment of Israel’s aid obstructions as “a report from months ago.”
ProPublica reported last week that USAID sent Blinken “a detailed 17-page memo” that “described instances of Israeli interference with aid efforts, including killing aid workers, razing agricultural structures, bombing ambulances and hospitals, sitting on supply depots, and routinely turning away trucks full of food and medicine.”
Susan Schnall, VFP’s president, said Monday that U.S. military aid to Israel amounts to “a theft from millions of Americans who have none of the health insurance every Israeli enjoys; from millions of Americans living in horrific housing while Israel builds thousands of upscale homes on land stolen from Palestinians; from millions of young Americans can’t afford college because America’s top priorities are weapons and death, not human needs.”
Jake Johnson is a senior editor and staff writer for Common Dreams
