‘Honored in the Breach’: US Nods to Human Rights as Israeli Arms Shipments Persist

Unless the White House threatens to withhold substantial amounts of weapons from Israel, Jerusalem is unlikely to take the administration’s verbal beratings seriously, a human rights lawyer told Sputnik. However, both street protests and legal action are capable of influencing events.

As the war in Gaza grinds on, outrage is also continuing to grow over Israel’s treatment of the civilian population in the small territory. While US President Joe Biden has remained steadfastly behind the Israeli war cause, Biden verbally castigated Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the “indiscriminate” bombing of Gaza and the deaths of more than 18,000 civilians.

On Thursday, US media reported that Vice President Kamala Harris has also pressured Biden to be “tougher” on Netanyahu and told administration staffers to show more concern for humanitarian issues in Gaza.

The news comes amid reports confirmed in Israeli media that Israeli soldiers detained, bound, stripped down, and tortured hundreds of Palestinian civilians in Gaza after photos of the incident circulated widely on social media. The Committee to Protect Journalists has reported that at least 63 journalists have been killed in Gaza since the war began on October 7, as well as targeted assassinations of cultural figures like professor and writer Refaat Alareer, whose Shujaiya apartment was singled out in a December 7 airstrike.

Human rights activist, labor attorney, and author Dan Kovalik told Radio Sputnik’s Political Misfits on Thursday that a strong case exists for bringing legal action against the Biden administration on human rights grounds to halt the weapons shipments to Israel.

Violence 'Every Day' in West Bank

Kovalik, who just returned to the United States from spending a week in the West Bank and Jerusalem, said that "people feel pretty grim, most of the people I know are not even going out to restaurants or doing anything to celebrate."

“The people who put me up, their daughter is getting married in December, they were going to have a big wedding - that’s been canceled," he said. "People feel they can’t do such things when their brothers and sisters are being murdered in Gaza, is the long and short of it.”

“There was violence every day I was there. In various places that I was at, including Ramallah, in Bethlehem, in Hebron. In one day, five Palestinians were killed in skirmishes, I’d say probably 10 were killed the whole week I was there. The death toll is nearing around 300 since October 7, which again would exceed the entire number from all of last year, and around 3,000 Palestinians have been arrested in the West Bank since October 7, which is an astounding number,” Kovalik said.

Kovalik said many times, Palestinians arrested in such mass sweeps are not charged with crimes, but are “held in what is called ‘administrative detention,’ in which case they don’t even have to be charged. I met a young man, he was in jail for eight months, he was 17, he never knew why he was arrested, he said it was in a secret file and he never knew. He was released as part of the prisoner exchange a couple weeks ago. He was beaten in prison, he shared a cell with 12 or 13 other people, he said that they would get one plate of food to share. So it’s terrible, what’s happening is awful.”

Kovalik said those kinds of facts weren’t getting as much attention in the media due to the violence in Gaza, “which is much worse of course, but what’s happening in the West Bank is terrible as well.”

“Meanwhile, the construction of Israel settlements is fast and furious,” he said. “You hear the sound of construction, you see the cranes at the top of the ridges, that’s where the Israelis build their settlements. They are building furiously and they are destroying Palestinian homes in a furious manner. In fact, I got a tour of East Jerusalem from a human rights advocate, and he showed me all the homes that had been destroyed and all of the homes and apartment buildings that are slated for demolition, which is pretty astounding.”

Pushing for Ceasefire

Kovalik said he “hopes” and “thinks it’s possible” mass pressure on the White House for a ceasefire would yield results, noting “that’s what people like me who have been protesting would like.”

“Biden’s words seem to be just words. He tells Netanyahu ‘please stop killing so many civilians and using these heavy bombs on the population’ - meanwhile, he sends them 2,000-pound bombs to drop on Gaza. Military experts in Afghanistan said they wouldn’t even use 500-pound bombs because those were too big to use on an urban area, which Gaza is. Meanwhile, he’s pushing for $14 billion in aid to Israel at this time to help them with the war effort, and he’s been trying to get rid of all limitations on Israel’s ability to tap into US weapons and ammunition reserves so they can keep up their fight.”

“If he coupled his statements to and about Netanyahu with action, that would mean something and he could force Netanyahu’s hand if he withheld military assistance, but he’s not doing that,” Kovalik said. “So I don’t know how to take Biden seriously on this.”

“Now, if his poll numbers start to drop, then maybe he can be moved toward a ceasefire, though I was surprised to see the most recent polls that he pulled ahead of Trump again.”

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan was the latest to meet with Netanyahu on Thursday, telling him the “high intensity” phase of the Gaza war needs to end “in a matter of weeks, not months.”

Kovalik said that “unless they’re going to threaten to withhold military support, and I don’t see that happening, I don’t see what everybody says to him is going to make any kind of a difference.”

Legal Action to Halt Arms Shipments

Indeed, Kovalik noted that a federal lawmaker could likely sue Biden under the Leahy Amendment, a part of the Foreign Assistance Act that prohibits the US government from giving financial assistance to foreign military or police forces “where there is credible information implicating that unit in the commission of gross violations of human rights (GVHR).”

The human rights lawyer said Biden’s weapons sales to Israel “clearly does violate the Leahy Amendment,” as well as numerous other international human rights laws and conventions to which the US is a signatory, and as a result are part of US law.

“And there are people, the Center for Constitutional Rights, has brought a lawsuit against Biden under the Genocide Convention trying to do just that, to prevent these arms sales,” he noted. “But as we see time and time again, in all the wars the US is involved in, they seem to rarely be invoked or invoked in any effective way. They seem to be ‘honored in the breach,’ which is quite sad.”

“POWs have to be treated with respect, you're not even supposed to interview a prisoner of war for like a newspaper, certainly not publish photos of them naked or nearly naked,” he said, comparing to the US-operated prison at Abu Ghraib in Iraq, where torture and the circulation of photos of torture were widespread and revealed to much scandal in 2004.

“What makes it worse is these weren’t even combatants,” he said, adding it “is an outrage,” all the more so because “Israel continues to lie about it” and many other things, which are repeated in the media until they are debunked.