Our latest is on the State's secretive arms pipeline to Israel, what senior leaders knew about civilian harm and when, and how they've rushed weapons out the door since Oct 7 anyway — over internal legal objections. A quick thread on the reporting: propublica.org/article/israel…
In January, Jack Lew, Biden’s ambassador to Israel, sent a cable urging Washington to send 3,000 more bombs to the IDF. Lew wrote that there was no potential the Israelis would misuse the bombs because they had a “decades-long proven track record” of avoiding killing civilians.
Lew didn’t mention that 25,000 Palestinians in Gaza were already dead by then; that his own staffers’ homes had been targeted; or the fact that this same kind of bomb was used against civilians in the past.
In the months that followed, the IDF dropped that bomb on shelters, refugee camps, schools and mosques, killing scores of civilians. Children's bodies were so mutilated their parents had trouble identifying them. cnn.com/2024/08/10/mid…
Lew’s cable reflects what many at State say is a different reality where senior policymakers ignore the evidence of human rights abuses collected by experts internally in order to justify more arms sales to Israel.
As one former embassy diplomat put it, their job is to “protect Israel from scrutiny” and move arms no matter how many human rights abuses are reported. “We can’t admit that’s a problem.”
The Israelis have been grateful. Just before Christmas last year they sent boxes of wine to the State’s arms transfers bureau, which had been working overtime, after hours and through the weekends to push through more sales to Israel. 
Going back years, some experts at State had tried raising alarms about similar deals and refused to approve them. More senior officials overrode those attempts and approved the sales anyway.
The pressure to keep the arms pipeline moving also comes from military contractors who make the weapons. Lobbyists have routinely pressed lawmakers and State Dept officials behind the scenes to approve shipments to Israel and other controversial allies like Saudi Arabia.
We got emails that show one company executive pushed his former subordinate at State for a valuable sale so much so that the government official had to remind him that strategizing over the deal might violate federal lobbying laws.
Here's @humeyra_pamuk's great story today about other warnings and concerned raised by State's human rights and Middle East bureaus early in the war reuters.com/world/middle-e…
In response to a list of questions from us, the Israeli government called our reporting biased and said we’re “casting doubt on the security cooperation between two friendly nations and close allies.”
State told me it has measures in place to vet each sale and expects Israel to use American weapons and bombs in compliance with international humanitarian law. “We have several ongoing processes to examine that compliance.”
It's also important to note that earlier this week the IDF killed at least 99 Palestinians in Gaza in a 24-hour stretch — one of the highest daily death tolls in months. They bombed multiple schools and houses. They bombed an orphanage nytimes.com/live/2024/10/0…
We’re continuing to report on foreign arms sales. If you have something to share, get in touch on Signal: 508-523-5195 or brett.murphy@propublica.org
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