SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
");background-position:center;background-size:19px 19px;background-repeat:no-repeat;background-color:var(--button-bg-color);padding:0;width:var(--form-elem-height);height:var(--form-elem-height);font-size:0;}:is(.js-newsletter-wrapper, .newsletter_bar.newsletter-wrapper) .widget__body:has(.response:not(:empty)) :is(.widget__headline, .widget__subheadline, #mc_embed_signup .mc-field-group, #mc_embed_signup input[type="submit"]){display:none;}:is(.grey_newsblock .newsletter-wrapper, .newsletter-wrapper) #mce-responses:has(.response:not(:empty)){grid-row:1 / -1;grid-column:1 / -1;}.newsletter-wrapper .widget__body > .snark-line:has(.response:not(:empty)){grid-column:1 / -1;}:is(.grey_newsblock .newsletter-wrapper, .newsletter-wrapper) :is(.newsletter-campaign:has(.response:not(:empty)), .newsletter-and-social:has(.response:not(:empty))){width:100%;}.newsletter-wrapper .newsletter_bar_col{display:flex;flex-wrap:wrap;justify-content:center;align-items:center;gap:8px 20px;margin:0 auto;}.newsletter-wrapper .newsletter_bar_col .text-element{display:flex;color:var(--shares-color);margin:0 !important;font-weight:400 !important;font-size:16px !important;}.newsletter-wrapper .newsletter_bar_col .whitebar_social{display:flex;gap:12px;width:auto;}.newsletter-wrapper .newsletter_bar_col a{margin:0;background-color:#0000;padding:0;width:32px;height:32px;}.newsletter-wrapper .social_icon:after{display:none;}.newsletter-wrapper .widget article:before, .newsletter-wrapper .widget article:after{display:none;}#sFollow_Block_0_0_1_0_0_0_1{margin:0;}.donation_banner{position:relative;background:#000;}.donation_banner .posts-custom *, .donation_banner .posts-custom :after, .donation_banner .posts-custom :before{margin:0;}.donation_banner .posts-custom .widget{position:absolute;inset:0;}.donation_banner__wrapper{position:relative;z-index:2;pointer-events:none;}.donation_banner .donate_btn{position:relative;z-index:2;}#sSHARED_-_Support_Block_0_0_7_0_0_3_1_0{color:#fff;}#sSHARED_-_Support_Block_0_0_7_0_0_3_1_1{font-weight:normal;}.grey_newsblock .newsletter-wrapper, .newsletter-wrapper, .newsletter-wrapper.sidebar{background:linear-gradient(91deg, #005dc7 28%, #1d63b2 65%, #0353ae 85%);}
To donate by check, phone, or other method, see our More Ways to Give page.
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
"To protect civilians in Gaza... administration rhetoric on the protection of civilians must be backed by action and leverage."
Citing the "staggering civilian death and destruction" caused by Israel's 76-day war on Gaza, a group of 14 humanitarian organizations on Wednesday urged Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to withhold U.S. military aid to Israel and take other steps to protect Palestinian noncombatants.
In a letter to Austin, the groups—Airwars, Amnesty International USA, Anera, Center for Civilians in Conflict, Humanity & Inclusion, Human Rights Watch, InterAction, Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders USA, Norwegian Refugee Council USA, Oxfam America, PAX, Refugees International, Save the Children U.S., and Zomia Cente—asserted that the Pentagon's response to Israel's obliteration of Gaza "has failed to live up to and... actively undermined" the Defense Department's Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Action Plan (CHMR-AP).
"Israel's operations... continue to cause devastating levels of civilian harm and destruction and inhibit the provision of life-saving humanitarian aid—all using U.S. support."
Published last year, CHMR-AP lays out a series of policy steps aimed at preventing and responding to the death and injury of noncombatants. The plan was widely welcomed, but was also met with skepticism by critics who noted that the U.S. military has killed more foreign civilians than any other armed force in the world since the end of World War II, including hundreds of thousands of noncombatants during the ongoing global War on Terror.
"Israel's operations... continue to cause devastating levels of civilian harm and destruction and inhibit the provision of life-saving humanitarian aid—all using U.S. support. The result is civilian harm at a massive scale amidst a humanitarian crisis," the letter notes. "To protect civilians in Gaza and live up to the aspirations of the CHMR-AP, administration rhetoric on the protection of civilians must be backed by action and leverage."
The groups urge Austin to:
"In recent remarks, President [Joe] Biden... stated that Israel is engaging in 'indiscriminate bombing.' Such practices clearly violate
international humanitarian law principles that require militaries to distinguish between civilians and combatants and prohibit attacks that cause disproportionate harm to civilians and civilian objects," the letter states. "The U.S. government must unequivocally condemn indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks on civilians or civilian objects in Gaza."
While peace activists and progressive U.S. lawmakers have pushed for an immediate Gaza cease-fire, Biden has reaffirmed his "unwavering" support for Israel. Biden is seeking $14.3 billion in additional U.S. military aid for Israel atop the nearly $4 billion it receives each year from Washington. The president has also come under fire for asking Congress to lift most of the restrictions on Israel's access to a stockpile of U.S.-supplied weapons.
Speaking earlier this week in Tel Aviv, Austin, while underscoring U.S. support for Israel's war against Hamas, said that "protecting Palestinian civilians in Gaza is both a moral duty and a strategic imperative."
"So we will continue to stand up for Israel's bedrock right to defend itself and we will also continue to urge the protection of civilians during conflict and to increase the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza," he added.
The Palestinian death toll from Israel's war on Gaza topped 20,000 on Wednesday, with more than 6,000 women and 8,000 children among the dead. Over 50,000 other Gazans have been wounded, and thousands are missing and feared buried beneath the rubble of bombed-out buildings. More than 1.9 million of Gaza's 2.3 million people have also been forcibly displaced.
"The U.S. is failing to fulfill its commitments in responding appropriately to civilian harm," said one advocate.
Two dozen Somali and international human rights groups on Monday asked the Pentagon to "take immediate steps to address the requests of families whose loved ones were killed or injured by U.S. airstrikes in Somalia"—people who often say they're being ignored by American officials.
In a letter to U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, the groups cite recent Interceptreporting that "illustrates how in multiple cases of civilian harm in Somalia confirmed by the U.S. government, civilian victims, survivors, and their families have yet to receive answers, acknowledgment, and amends despite their sustained efforts to reach authorities over several years."
The letter highlights victims including Luul Dahir Mohamed, a 22-year-old Somali woman who was killed along with her 4-year-old daughter Mariam Shilow Muse in an April 2018 U.S. drone strike in El Buur. Luul's brother Abubakar Dahir Mohamed said that despite confirming their deaths and admitting they were civilians, the U.S. military has yet to provide the family with a "substantive reply."
"Since the strike, our family has been broken apart. It has been more than five years since it happened, but we have not been able to move on," Abubakar Dahir Mohamed wrote in an opinion piece published last week by The Continent. "Even as we have contacted [the U.S. government] in every way we know how, we have never been able to even start a process of getting justice. The U.S. has never even acknowledged our existence."
The groups' letter asserts that "the U.S. response thus far stands in stark contrast to this administration's stated priorities of mitigating, responding to, and learning from civilian harm."
Declaring that "the protection of civilians is a strategic priority as well as a moral imperative," the Pentagon last year
published its Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Action Plan (CHMR-AP), which includes stated commitments to improving commanders' understanding of civilian environments, developing standardized incident reporting and data management processes, and enhancing the military's ability to assess and respond when noncombatants are harmed by U.S. attacks.
"In light of these commitments, it is unfathomable that Abubakar and his family have for so long struggled to receive acknowledgment or amends from the United States," the new letter contends. "We urge the Department of Defense to urgently make long-overdue amends in consultation with Abubakar's family and their representatives, including condolence payments and an explanation for why their demands appear to have been ignored until now."
The letter notes that "the Department of Defense has at its disposal $3 million of annual funding provided by the U.S. Congress to make ex gratiapayments to civilian victims and survivors of U.S. operations."
However, the signers "know of no cases in which those funds have been used in Somalia, despite the fact that in numerous cases confirmed by the United States, the identities of civilian victims and survivors are known and their contact information has been made available through their own reporting or through civil society representatives."
Living up to the Pentagon's commitment "requires responding to the inquiries of civilians seeking answers and making amends for the life-altering harm they and their families have experienced," the letter asserts. "We urge [U.S. Africa Command] and the Department of Defense to do so immediately."
International groups joining Somali signatories to the letter include Airwars, Amnesty International USA, Center for Civilians in Conflict, the Columbia Law School Human Rights Institute, and Human Rights Watch.
According to Airwars, a U.K.-based monitoring group, hundreds of Somalis—including some civilians—have been killed by U.S. airstrikes this year alone as the Biden administration quietly continues the so-called War on Terror launched in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
Airwars said in 2021 that as many as 48,000 civilians in over half a dozen countries have been killed by U.S. airstrikes since 9/11, while the Costs of War Project at Brown University's Watson Institute for International & Public Affairs estimates that more than 430,000 noncombatants have been killed by all sides during the war.
"Over the past 20 years, the U.S. military has struggled with escalation of force and many civilians were killed when they were falsely viewed as a threat. This incident appears to be one of many such cases," said one expert.
A formerly classified document published Friday by NPRrevealed how the Pentagon dismissed highly credible evidence of civilian deaths caused by the October 2019 U.S. assassination of Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in Syria.
In a raid hailed by then-U.S. President Donald Trump as "impeccable," U.S. special forces stormed al-Baghdadi's hideout just outside Barisha in Idlib province on October 26-27, 2019. Realizing he was cornered during the raid, al-Baghdadi detonated an explosive device, killing himself and two children he was carrying with him, according to U.S. officials.
For years, the Pentagon dismissed a December 2019 NPRreport of a U.S. military helicopter attacking Syrian civilians in Barisha during the raid, killing two cousins traveling in a van and blowing the hand off a third man, claiming the victims were enemy combatants who ignored repeated warning shots.
NPR subsequently filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Pentagon and obtained a redacted copy of the military's erstwhile secret assessment of the raid.
The document revealed that:
"Suddenly I felt something hit us," he said. His friends, 27-year-old Khaled Mustafa Qurmo and 30-year-old Khaled Abdel Majid Qurmo, were killed. Barakat's right hand was blown off; his arm was later amputated. His left hand was also badly injured.
The U.S. military initially claimed that the army helicopters came under fire from the van. However, a formerly classified U.S. Central Command document previously published by NPR shows that the Pentagon acknowledged the claim was untrue.
The newly exposed document states that the military also "assessed secondary explosions emitted from the vehicle, indicating weapons and explosive devices were on board the panel van."
This was untrue, as was a similar claim made by the Pentagon following an August 2021 drone strike that killed 43-year-old Afghan aid worker Zamarai Ahmadi and nine of his relatives, including seven children, in Kabul during the chaotic days of U.S. withdrawal from a 20-year invasion.
The Pentagon often attempts to conceal or minimize civilian casualties caused by U.S. bombs and bullets, which have killed and maimed hundreds of thousands of civilians in more than half a dozen nations since the ongoing so-called War on Terror began after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
NPR's latest report on the al-Baghdadi raid comes as the Pentagon implements its Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Action Plan (CHMR-AP), a series of policy steps aimed at preventing and responding to the death and injury of noncombatants.