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amnesty international usa
New Research Details How Israel Has Used US Weapons to Commit War Crimes
The report from Amnesty International USA comes ahead of a May 8 deadline for the Biden administration to certify that Israel is complying with international and domestic laws.
Apr 30, 2024
With just over a week until the deadline for the Biden administration to certify that Israel's use of U.S.-supplied weapons is adhering to domestic and international law, Amnesty International USA submitted a report to the federal government detailing how American bombs and other weapons have been used in Israeli attacks that could constitute war crimes.
The White House, said the human rights group, must inform Congress that Israel is violating humanitarian laws by May 8 as part of the National Security Memorandum on Safeguards and Accountability with Respect to Transferred Defense Articles and Defense Services (NSM-20) process, and "must immediately suspend the transfer of arms to the Israeli government."
Amnesty's report focuses on several attacks on civilian infrastructure in which Israel used bombs and other weapons made by U.S. companies including Boeing, as well as practices used by the Israeli government and Israel Defense Forces (IDF) since they began bombarding Gaza in October in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack.
Four of the IDF attacks took place in Rafah, where Israel is reportedly preparing a ground offensive after forcibly displacing more than 1 million Palestinians to the southern city and carrying out airstrikes for months.
The four strikes in December and January killed at least 95 civilians, including 42 children, despite the U.S. and Israel's repeated claims that the IDF is targeting Hamas fighters.
"The evidence is clear and overwhelming: the government of Israel is using U.S.-made weapons in violation of international humanitarian and human rights law, and in a manner that is inconsistent with U.S. law and policy."
"In all four attacks," reported Amnesty, "there was no indication that the residential buildings hit could be considered legitimate military objectives or that people in the buildings were military targets, raising concerns that these strikes were direct attacks on civilians and civilian objects and must therefore be investigated as war crimes."
The strikes, which included one on a five-story building inhabited by the Nofal family, were carried out with GBU-39 Small Diameter Bombs—made in the U.S. by Boeing.
"The evidence is clear and overwhelming: the government of Israel is using U.S.-made weapons in violation of international humanitarian and human rights law, and in a manner that is inconsistent with U.S. law and policy," said Amanda Klasing, national director for government relations with Amnesty International USA. "In order to follow U.S. laws and policies, the United States must immediately suspend any transfer of arms to the government of Israel."
Boeing was also the manufacturer of Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs) that were used in October 2023 in "two deadly, unlawful airstrikes on homes full of Palestinian civilians," according to satellite imagery examined by Amnesty's weapons experts and remote sensing analysts.
Those attacks killed 43 civilians, nearly half of whom were children.
Other patterns in Israel's assault on Gaza, including its use of a 24-hour mass evacuation notice early on in its current escalation, ordering more than 1.1 million people in Gaza City and northern Gaza to go to the southern part of the enclave; its use of indiscriminate attacks with both U.S.- and Israel-made weapons; its use of arbitrary "administrative detention"; and its denial of humanitarian assistance, all show that the Biden administration's continued material support for the IDF violates U.S. and international law, Amnesty said.
As progressives in the U.S. Congress have warned, Section 620I of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 (22 U.S.C. 2378-1) bars the federal government from providing military aid to any country that is blocking U.S. humanitarian aid.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant's announcement on October 9, 2023 of a "complete siege on Gaza" with "no electricity, no food, no water, no gas" allowed in has deprived the enclave of equipment needed to provide healthcare to tens of thousands of people wounded in Israel's attacks, as well as pregnant women and newborns, the elderly, and people facing chronic illnesses. It has also placed Gaza's 2.3 million Palestinians at risk of a "government-engineered famine," said Amnesty, with dozens of people, including children, already having starved to death.
"It's shocking that the Biden administration continues to hold that the government of Israel is not violating international humanitarian law with U.S.-provided weapons when our research shows otherwise and international law experts disagree," said Klasing. "The International Court of Justice found the risk of genocide in Gaza is plausible and ordered provisional measures. President [Joe] Biden must end U.S. complicity with the government of Israel's grave violations of international law and immediately suspend the transfer of weapons to the government of Israel."
The report comes days after Biden signed a military aid package including $17 billion more for the IDF, after approving multiple weapons transfers to Israel since October.
Ahead of the May 8 NSM-20 deadline, a coalition of more than 90 lawyers—including at least 20 who work in the Biden administration—is preparing to send a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland warning that Israel's practices in Gaza likely violate the Arms Export Control Act, the Leahy Laws, and the Geneva Conventions, which prohibit disproportionate attacks on civilians.
While spokespeople for the Biden administration have repeatedly said publicly that the White House does not accept allegations that Israel has violated international humanitarian law—and made the U.S. complicit—the letter is just the latest sign of widening dissent within the government regarding Gaza.
Senior U.S. officials recently told Secretary of State Antony Blinken in an internal memo that Israel lacks credibility as it continues to claim it is adhering international law.
"This is a moment where the U.S. government is violating its own laws and policy," a Department of Justice staffer who signed the new letter, toldPolitico. "The administration may be seeing silence or only a handful of resignations, but they are really not aware of the magnitude of discontent and dissent among the rank and file."
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Virginia Abolishes 'Ultimate Denial of Human Rights That Is the Death Penalty'
An Amnesty International USA advocate said that "we hope to see more states work to retire this most extreme punishment to where it belongs—as a relic of the past, not a part of our future."
Mar 24, 2021
Human rights advocates applauded after Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam on Wednesday signed legislation that makes Virginia the 23rd state--and the first in the South--to abolish the death penalty.
"The death penalty system is fundamentally flawed--it is inequitable, ineffective, and it has no place in this commonwealth or this country."
--Gov. Ralph Northam
Northam signed the legislation--which was approved by lawmakers last month--at a ceremony outside the Greensville Correctional Center, home to the state's execution chamber. Virginia has a long history of capital punishment with at least 1,391 documented executions.
"Over our 400-year history, Virginia has executed more people than any other state," Northam noted. "The death penalty system is fundamentally flawed--it is inequitable, ineffective, and it has no place in this commonwealth or this country."
"Virginia has come within days of executing innocent people, and Black defendants have been disproportionately sentenced to death," the governor said. "Abolishing this inhumane practice is the moral thing to do. This is a truly historic day for Virginia, and I am deeply grateful to those who have fought tirelessly and for generations to put an end to capital punishment in our commonwealth."
\u201c\u201cThere is no place for the #deathpenalty today in this Commonwealth, in the South, and in this country.\u201d \u2014 @GovernorVA Ralph Northam on #Virginia's abolition of capital punishment. @DPInfoCtr @VADP @vainterfaith @ACLUVA\u201d— Robert Dunham (@Robert Dunham) 1616610387
Kristina Roth, senior advocate for Criminal Justice Programs at Amnesty International USA, welcomed Northam's anticipated move and echoed his critiques of the practice.
"The death penalty is irreversible, it is ineffective, and it does not deter crime," Roth said. "The way the death penalty is carried out is painful, violent, and inhumane, and it is targeted in this country disproportionately against communities of color. The use of the death penalty as a punishment is outdated, fundamentally broken, and must end once and for all."
"Virginia, once a stronghold of the Confederacy, now becomes the first southern state to end the ultimate denial of human rights that is the death penalty," she added.
"The use of the death penalty as a punishment is outdated, fundamentally broken, and must end once and for all."
--Kristina Roth, Amnesty International USA
Highlighting the commonwealth's "sordid past with the use of the death penalty against Black people, applied arbitrarily," Roth pointed out that "a Black defendant in Virginia is three times more likely to be sentenced to death if the victim is white rather than Black."
Other supporters of the legislation also emphasized how the death penalty has affected people of color in Virginia for centuries.
"Virginia's legacy on the death penalty was so closely connected to its history of slavery and lynching," said Rev. Dr. LaKeisha Cook of Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy. "Now that it is coming to an end, we can start a new chapter that embraces an evidence-based approach to public safety: one that values the dignity of all human beings and is focused on transforming the justice system into one rooted in fairness, accountability, and redemption."
Sarah Craft, Death Penalty Program director at Equal Justice USA said that "Virginia will become the first former Confederate state to abolish capital punishment following a year that saw the dismantling of 168 Confederate symbols across the nation--and nearly half of them in the commonwealth alone."
"This is the final action of a crushing blow against the death penalty, one of our nation's most visible and egregious responses to violence," she added. "It is part of our country's reckoning with a deep and wide legacy of racial injustice."
In a tweet Wednesday, U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) celebrated his state's action and promised he would "continue to push legislation in the Senate to end the death penalty at the federal level."
\u201cI\u2019m proud to see Virginia abolish this brutal and racist institution. Today, Virginia gives us hope that work done for justice is not in vain, and that progress is possible for all.\n\nI will continue to push legislation in the Senate to end the death penalty at the federal level.\u201d— Tim Kaine (@Tim Kaine) 1616612743
While Virginia joins 22 other states and Washington, D.C. that have outlawed capital punishment, members of Congress and President Joe Biden face growing pressure to end the practice at the federal level. After a 17-year hiatus, former President Donald Trump resumed executions in 2019, despite concerns about the drug protocol and global calls for an end to the death penalty.
Trump oversaw what critical lawmakers called a "frenzied and unprecedented" spree of federal executions. As a candidate, Biden vowed to work on passing a bill that would eliminate the death penalty "at the federal level, and incentivize states to follow the federal government's example." Earlier this month, United Nations human rights experts urged him to do everything he can to end all U.S. executions.
Amnesty's Roth said Wednesday that the 13 federal executions carried out under Trump "raised the specter of the same irreparable problems we know the death penalty has at all levels, including racial bias, the executions of people with intellectual disabilities, and arbitrariness of defendants sentenced to death."
"This step from Virginia is a welcome unintended consequence of the Trump execution spree," she said. "We hope to see more states work to retire this most extreme punishment to where it belongs--as a relic of the past, not a part of our future."
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