In May, the State Department published a report saying it is “reasonable to estimate” that Israel may have used US weapons in violation of international law. But it also said it could not definitively link US weapons to specific cases.
“It’s hard to get that information in an active combat zone,” Miller said. “But I would also say that we haven’t worked very hard trying to get information.”
US law prohibits sending military aid to countries that restrict US military supplies helpsuch as food and medicine. Experts monitoring aid, including aid from several international organizations and the State Department itself, have found that Israel has repeatedly blocked aid to the people of Gaza.
Brett McGurk, the White House’s Middle East coordinator and one of President Biden’s closest advisers, declined a request for an interview on 60 Minutes. But a senior White House official told 60 Minutes that government lawyers had not determined that Israel had violated the laws of armed conflict, and therefore American weapons continued to flow.
The official said Hamas could end the war by returning the estimated 95 hostages still in Gaza. Miller sees the war ending when Israel says it’s over.
“Without the intervention of the United States or someone else forcing or coercing a decision, it ends when Netanyahu says it’s over,” he said.
Destruction in Gaza
The US stamp is everywhere across decimated Gaza. Hala Rharrit, a US diplomat who resigned in protest, said she believed what happened in the 25-mile strip would have been impossible without US weapons.
Rharrit spent nearly two decades on assignments in Asia, Africa and the Middle East, where she worked on human rights and counter-terrorism. She was stationed in Dubai as deputy director of regional media when the war broke out. Part of her job at the time was monitoring the Arab press and social media to document how America’s role in the war was perceived in the Middle East. Rharrit sent daily reports to senior management in Washington that contained gruesome images and warnings.
“I would show complicity that was indisputable. Fragments of American bombs in addition to the massacre of mostly children,” said Rharrit. – And that’s the desolation.
Rharrit said that in some cases she was shut out when she tried to speak.
“I would show pictures of children who starved to death,” she said. “In one incident they actually scolded me: ‘Don’t put that picture there. We don’t want to see it. We don’t want to see children starving.'”
But others told her to keep the pictures, stressing that they needed to be seen.
American support for Israel affects America abroad
The White House believes that cutting off arms to Israel would have led to an even longer, deadlier conflict and that US military support and diplomacy have prevented a wider war in the Middle East.
But FBI Director Christopher Wray told Congress in November 2023 that the war in Gaza was raised the threat terrorist attack at home.
The acting director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Brett Holmgren, told 60 Minutes that anti-American sentiment has been fueled by the war in Gaza to a level not seen since the war in Iraq. Groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS are recruiting on that sentiment, making the most specific calls for attacks on America in years, Holmgren said.
The anger across and beyond the Arab world is palpable, Rharrit said. She documented the protests and the burning of American flags.
“[This is] very significant because after the war on terror we worked so hard to strengthen ties with the Arab world,” she said.
Rharrit believes that US support for Israel has put a target on America’s back.
“And I say that as someone who survived two terrorist attacks myself,” Rharrit said. “I say this as someone who has worked intensively on these issues and has followed the region intensively for two decades.”
After three months of war, Rharrit says she was told her reports were no longer needed. She resigned last April. She said one of her turning points was the death of a little girl named Sana al-Farra, whose picture she included in one of her reports – one of the thousands of children killed in Gaza so far.
“She has her princess dress on, and she’s in the picture waving her wand with a huge, beautiful smile,” Rharrit said. – I saw my child in that child.
