In May, the State Department published a report saying it was “reasonable to assess” the possibility that Israel may have used US weapons in violation of international law. But it also said it could not link US weapons to specific cases.
“It’s hard to get that information in an active combat environment,” Miller said. “But I can also say that we didn’t work very hard to try to get information.”
US law prohibits military aid from being sent to countries that restrict the delivery of US aid, such as food and medicine. Experts tracking aid, including from several international organizations and the State Department itself, have found that Israel has been blocking aid to the people of Gaza.
Brett McGurk, the White House’s Middle East adviser and one of President Biden’s closest advisers, declined 60 Minutes’ request for an interview. But a senior White House official told 60 Minutes that the administration’s lawyers did not determine that Israel had violated the laws of war, so American weapons continued to flow.
This official said that Hamas can end the war by returning approximately 95 hostages in Gaza. Miller sees the war ending when Israel says it is over.
“The absence of intervention from the United States or anyone else to force or enforce the decision, ends when Netanyahu says it’s over,” he said.
The destruction of Gaza
America’s stamp is everywhere across the ravaged Gaza. Hala Rharrit, the US ambassador who resigned in protest, said she believed what happened in the 25-mile zone could not have happened without US weapons.
Rharrit spent nearly two decades on assignment in Asia, Africa and the Middle East, where she worked on human rights and counter-terrorism. He was working in Dubai as the deputy director of regional affairs when the war broke out. Part of his job at the time was to monitor Arab media and social media to document how America’s role in the war was perceived in the Middle East. Rharrit sent daily reports to senior leadership in Washington containing gruesome images and warnings.
“I can show the participation that was indisputable. Fragments of US bombs near the killing of many children,” said Rharrit. “And destruction.”
Harrit said that sometimes he was gagged when he tried to speak.
“I was going to show pictures of children dying of hunger,” she said. “In one incident, I was teased a lot, ‘Don’t put that picture in there. We don’t want to see it. We don’t want to see children starving.’
But others told him to keep the pictures, insisting they needed to be seen.
US support for Israel has implications for America abroad
In the White House, the belief is that disarming Israel will lead to a longer, more deadly conflict, and that American military support and diplomacy have prevented a wider war in the Middle East.
But FBI Director Christopher Wray told Congress in November 2023 that the war in Gaza has increased the threat of terrorist attacks at home.
The acting director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Brett Holmgren, told 60 Minutes that anti-American sentiment fueled by the war in Gaza is at a level not seen since the Iraq War. Groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS are rallying around that idea, issuing direct calls for attacks on America in recent years, Holmgren said.
The anger around the world and beyond is palpable, said Rharrit. He documented protests and the burning of US flags.
“[This is] It is very important because we worked hard after the war on terror to strengthen relations with the Arab world,” he said.
Rharrit believes that US support for Israel has put a target on America’s back.
“And I say as a person that I myself survived two terrorist attacks,” said Rharrit. “I say this as someone who has worked hard on these issues and has been closely monitoring the region for twenty years.”
Three months after the war started, Rharrit says he was told that his reports were no longer needed. He resigned last April. He said that one of the things that broke him the most was the death of a little girl named Sana al-Farra, whose photo he included in one of his reports – one of the thousands of children killed so far in Gaza.
“She has her princess dress on, and she’s in the picture waving her wand with a big, beautiful smile,” said Rharrit. “I saw my child in that child.”
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