THE U.S. VS. DEMOCRACY:

The disparity in casualties in Israeli assaults on Gaza speaks for itself.

At the time of writing, the current Israeli assault on Gaza is reported to have killed at least 212 people, including 61 children and 35 women, while rockets fired from Gaza have killed ten people in Israel, including two children.

In the 2008-9 assault on Gaza, non-government organizations estimate that Israel killed between 1,387 and 1,417 Palestinians, while Palestinians' efforts to defend themselves killed nine Israelis, six of whom were soldiers.

In 2014, more than 2,100 Palestinians and 73 Israelis (mostly soldiers invading Gaza) were killed, as at least 6,000 bombs and missiles were dropped on Gaza, many from US-built F-16s, while Israeli tanks and artillery fired 49,500 shells, mostly massive six-inch shells from US-built M-109 howitzers.

In response to largely peaceful March of Return protests at the Israel-Gaza border in 2018, Israeli snipers killed 183 Palestinians and wounded more than 6,100, including 122 who required amputations, 21 paralyzed by spinal cord injuries and nine permanently blinded. [...]

US policy has perpetuated the crisis and atrocities of the Israeli occupation by unconditionally supporting Israel in three distinct ways: militarily, diplomatically and politically.

On the military front, since the creation of the Israeli state, the United States has provided $146bn in foreign aid, nearly all of it military-related, as of November 2020. It currently provides $3.8bn per year in military aid to Israel.

In addition, the United States is the largest seller of weapons to Israel, whose military arsenal now includes 362 US-built F-16 warplanes and 100 other US military aircraft, including a growing fleet of the new F-35s; at least 45 Apache attack helicopters; 600 M-109 howitzers and 64 M270 rocket-launchers. At this very moment, Israel is using many of these US-supplied weapons in its devastating bombardment of Gaza.

The US military alliance with Israel also involves joint military exercises and joint production of Arrow missiles and other weapons systems. The U.S. and Israeli militaries have collaborated on drone technologies tested by the Israelis in Gaza. In 2004, the United States called on Israeli forces with experience in the Occupied Territories to give tactical training to US Special Operations Forces as they confronted popular resistance to the United States' hostile military occupation of Iraq.

The US military also maintains an estimated $1.8bn stockpile of weapons at six locations in Israel, pre-positioned for use in future US wars in the Middle East. During the Israeli assault on Gaza in 2014, even as the US Congress suspended some weapons deliveries to Israel, it approved handing over stocks of 120mm mortar shells and 40mm grenade launcher ammunition from the US stockpile for Israel to use against Palestinians in Gaza.

Diplomatically, the United States has exercised its veto in the UN Security Council 82 times, and 44 of those vetoes have been to shield Israel from accountability for war crimes or human rights violations. In every single case, the United States has been the lone vote against the resolution, although a few other countries have occasionally abstained.

It is the United States's privileged position as a veto-wielding permanent member of the Security Council, and its willingness to abuse that privilege to shield its ally Israel, that gives it this unique power to stymie international efforts to hold the Israeli government accountable for its actions under international law.

The result of this unconditional US diplomatic shielding of Israel has been to encourage increasingly barbaric Israeli treatment of the Palestinians. With the United States blocking any accountability in the Security Council, Israel has seized ever more Palestinian land in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, uprooted more and more Palestinians from their homes and responded to the resistance of largely unarmed people with ever-increasing violence, detentions and restrictions on day-to-day life.

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