Palestine Post: One Year Since October 7th

Today marks one year since the Hamas attack on October 7th, 2023.

We are joined once again by Khury Petersen-Smith, Michael Ratner Middle East Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, where he researches U.S. empire, borders, and migration

The U.S. continues to openly endorse Israel’s expansionist foreign policy, moving more U.S. military assets into the region as Israel escalates its attacks in Syria, Yemen, Lebanon and the West Bank. The devastation in Gaza and Lebanon is incomparable to what has taken place in prior wars, yet western media continues to diminish Israel’s indiscriminate killing of civilians or report on other evidence of war crimes.

The U.S. was not simply led by Israel into this war, but willfully joined in. Internal emails recently obtained by Reuters reveal that the Biden Administration knew as far back as October 13, 2023 that the weapons they provided to Israel were being used to target civilians in violation of international law. Brett Murphy, who reports for ProPublica’s national desk, found that members of the Biden Administration worked overtime to expedite weapons transfers to Israel despite the concerns of White House officials that displacing Palestinian civilians en masse would lead to a humanitarian disaster. His reporting also exposes the outsized influence that defense industry lobbyists have on U.S. foreign policy.

See Brett Murphy’s reporting here: https://www.propublica.org/article/israel-gaza-america-biden-administration-weapons-bombs-state-department