Israeli Defense Minister in U.S. to Negotiate Increased Support of Wars in Gaza and Against Hezbollah

Fascist Israel’s Defense Minister flew to the United States this weekend for meetings which he and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hope will resolve some open public disagreements between the two countries. His full schedule is not public yet, but he is expected to meet with Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and members of Congress.

Gallant will be in Washington for much of the week.

The disagreements began some months ago as the Biden administration announced a policy that they would consider a change to how much military aid the U.S. would be providing Israel if it proceeded with an intense ground invasion of Rafah.

Israel proceeded with that assault anyway. It proceeded without the plan to protect innocent Palestinians that puppet Joe Biden had insisted was a prerequisite to “allow” the invasion to proceed. It has since continued with deadly, reckless abandon, including the mass destruction of the few medical facilities remaining, schools, and former office buildings which are now being used to shelter many hundreds of thousands of individuals who had fled to Rafah after Israel promised earlier in the war that they would be safe there.

The invasion brought in drones and bombs carrying thousands of pounds of explosives which were designed to shatter facilities and kill indiscriminately, with no regard to collateral damage and mass murders of civilians which volowed.

It also included horrific attacks on authorized Palestinian refugee camps in the city, again and again. One of the most terrifying and costly in terms of human lives and collective injuries was the shelling of a tent city in Tel al-Sultan on May 26. After rocket fire and possibly drones ripped through the thin fabric of the camp, large fires broke out in addition to the immediate deaths of many as the bombs exploded. Over 45 were murdered in just that one attack, with many of those who died burned alive. Over half of those who died were women and children. Another 180 were badly injured and many permanently maimed because of what happened.

Israeli Defense Forces said the raid was a success as it resulted in the deaths of two Hamas commanders it said were hidden within the tent city.

Israel said nothing about the brutality of what happened at Tel al-Sultan after the fires were out.

Instead, it issued a statement that, “The attack was carried out against terrorists who are a target for attack, in accordance with international law, using precision munitions, and based on intelligence indicating the use of the area by Hamas terrorists.”

Meanwhile, multiple White House spokespersons said that even this brutal mass murder event did not constitute a violation of Biden’s requirement that there had to be a plan for protecting innocent civilians in place, or he would consider a change in delivery of weapons to Israel.

Then Israel stepped up air raids and equally intense actions against what it said were Hamas targets in central and northern Gaza, despite previously having said those areas were mostly under control.

One of the worst of those came on June 6, when Israeli Defense Forces launched a series of missiles at the al-Sardi school located in Deir al-Balah. Using fighter jets to carry out their deadly mission, the IDF fired multiple U.S.-made and U.S.-supplied GBU 39 missiles into the second and third floors of the school. At least 40 were murdered in the attack, with at least 12 women and three children among the dead, according to hospital medical staff in the area. Dozens more were reportedly injured as a result.

The IDF once again this was just collateral damage as they were hunting down between 20 and 30 Hamas operatives who they said were embedded at the school.

The attack was in direct violation of prohibitions for combatants to attack any certified school site, even in the event of war.

Still there was no word from the United States condemning or criticizing Israel’s actions.

A hint as to why the U.S. might have been holding back happened less than a week earlier, when on June 1 Joe Biden presented a ceasefire plan when it said had been proposed by Israel.

That plan had three phases in it. The first included a “full and complete” cessation of hostilities, the "release of a number of hostages including women, the elderly, the wounded in exchange for release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners”, removal of all military forces from populated areas in Gaza, allowance for Palestinians to return to their homes without obstruction if they wished, opening up border checkpoints to increased aid, and a plan for discussions to end the war. Phase two would focus on negotiations to end the war once and for all. Phase three would focus on beginning reconstruction of Gaza and laying in place the means to govern a post-war Gaza.

Biden may have been waiting to make any statements possibly in conflict with Israel’s continuing genocidal war in the Strip, in the hopes the ceasefire plan would be adopted.

Hamas embraced the plan for the most part, with some amendments that Secretary of State Blinken implied might be difficult to work out, but that he was still optimistic.

Israel issued no public statements on the plan for weeks after, despite that during that time Blinken kept telling reporters that Hamas represented the only stumbling block to making the ceasefire happen.

On June 11, the UN Security Council ceasefire plan the U.S. submitted based on what Biden unveiled was approved by a vote of 14-0, with only Russia abstaining.

All things pointed to this perhaps being the first ceasefire the UNSC had approved for Gaza which would actually happen. Over the ten days following that vote, Blinken and other White House officials kept saying Hamas was the only party holding up making the ceasefire a reality.

Then Netanyahu and others began to push back, saying that while they might consider a ceasefire, they still insist on the complete destruction of Hamas before all fighting could end.

The frustration Netanyahu had with the U.S. on the resolution the UN passed became more specific and strident as the days continued. The prime minister spoke of the plan Biden pushed through the Security Council as not from Israel, but instead a proposal that Biden was “marketing” via the public press and the United Nations.

On June 18, Netanyahu escalated the public spat between he and Biden with another revelation. In multiple interviews with the Israeli press, he called out Biden for doing what few outside the White House knew had already happened. Biden had for at least some weeks – and Israel now says for several months -- suspended shipment of some of the bigger bombs it had been providing to Israel to fight its war in Gaza.

Which ones were held back were not made public, but it is believed they might include the GBU-31 and GBU-32 shells, with 2,000 pounds and 1,000 pounds of explosive, respectively. These are the same bombs cited in a new report from the UN’s Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights published last week. That report laid out new charges of potential war crimes committed by Israel in six separate mass murder incidents just in the first two months of the current phase of occupier Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza.

In the Channel 14 interview a week ago, Netanyahu attempted to temper his anger over the suspension of these munitions shipments with some diplomatic language to soften his message.

“When Secretary Blinken was recently here in Israel, we had a candid conversation,” he said, in an interview broadcast in English, which means it was intended for an international audience.

“I said I deeply appreciated the support the US has given Israel from the beginning of the war,” he continued. “But I also said something else, I said it’s inconceivable that in the past few months, the administration has been withholding weapons and ammunitions to Israel.”

“Secretary Blinken assured me that the administration is working day and night to remove these bottlenecks,” Netanyahu went on., carefully choosing language which would give the U.S. a plausible reason for these bigger bombs being simply delayed rather than deliberately withheld.

“I certainly hope that’s the case,” the prime minister added. “It should be the case.”

When asked about Netanyahu’s allegations in a press conference last week, Secretary of State Blinken attempted to brush off this issue as far less extensive and serious as Netanyahu was alleging.

“We are continuing to review one shipment that President Biden has talked about with regard to 2000-pound bombs because of our concerns about their use in a densely populated area like Rafah. That remains under review,” Blinken told the reporters.

The press group pressed Blinken to understand why Netanyahu would say this was about multiple shipments and had been going on for months, but he refused to engage on that.

“I’m not going to talk about what we said in diplomatic conversations,” Blinken told them.

Puppet Joe Biden and his emissary Antony Blinken have been increasingly under fire for continuing to aid Israel in carrying out acts of genocide and war crimes in Gaza. With those issues now being about more than just public opinion, but instead now backed up by the UN’s International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court which is seeking warrants for the arrest of Netanyahu and Hamas officials for their actions during the war, and multiple UN reports condemning Israel’s actions, the war itself is drawing away political support by younger voters, those of Islamic background in the U.S., and others who believe Biden should be considered equally guilty of crimes against humanity.

Pushing back against Netanyahu by forcing a UN Security Council Vote that Netanyahu perhaps did not want to happen, and holding back weapons shipments could be the first of many sensitive political moves – rather than humanitarian-based ones – to ease those political tensions.

Despite his demands that weapons shipments be restored, over the last several days Netanyahu has attempted to manage expectations regarding when the war will end in Gaza, even as he too is dealing with extensive political pressure to wind things down, get the hostages back, and settle a growing internal dispute which caused opposition leader Benny Gantz and one other to resign over Netanyahu’s handling of the later stages of the war.

In a news interview held with Israel’s Channel 14 this weekend, Benjamin Netanyahu said that although the cleaning-out of Hamas from Rafah is still ongoing, the deadliest parts of battles in Rafah may now be in the past.

“The intense phase of the fighting against Hamas is about to end,” the prime minister said. “It doesn’t mean that the war is about to end, but the war in its intense phase is about to end in Rafah.”

At the same time as Netanyahu and Biden have been arguing over weapons shipments and the potential ceasefire idea the UN passed, Israel is now facing a new and even more serious battlefront from Hezbollah forces. Based in Lebanon, they began striking back at Israel almost daily, strikes returned by IDF forces as well, almost since the day the Israeli occupation forces launched their attempt to wipe out or move from Gaza the Palestinian people.

Hezbollah, who is aligned with Hamas against Israel and is backed by Iran in this venture, says it will continue the attacks until Israel shuts down its war in Gaza.

Hezbollah has also recently raised the stakes in its attacks on Israel with more rockets and more shelling, with the waves which began last week triggered by Israel’s targeted killing of a key Hamas senior official. It also recently publicly released a series of drone photos showing precisely how well it has mapped Israeli military and civilian sites across the country, as a not-so-hidden-warning to the nation about what it might face if Israel were to keep the war in Gaza going.

With the potential now that the war with Hezbollah will escalate even further as Israel refuses to release its bloody grip on Gaza, especially now that Netanyahu says the fighting will not stop until Hamas is no longer able to function, Israel will be in desperate need for fighter jets, bigger bombs, advanced cruise missiles, armored tank carriers, mobile defense systems such as the current Iron Dome array which may need upgrading, and military intelligence support.

That is the reason Israel’s Minister of Defense is visiting the United States this week.

But perhaps more important to focus on for now is that the reason it is Gallant that is visiting instead of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is because of the ongoing backbiting and arguing going on between he and Joe Biden, and the rest of the White House senior leadership. At this point lines have been drawn where neither the president nor the prime minister can easily back down from their positions, whereas Gallant may have a chance to reach a compromise for Israel, and continue to manage a new far more treacherous war with Hezbollah while continuing its genocidal destruction of the Palestinian people in Gaza.