Alex Kane: Five Ways America Enables Israel's Atrocities!

Israel's assault on the besieged Gaza Strip has entered its sixth day. At least 58 civilians have been killed, and the toll is likely to rise. Hundreds of Palestinians, the majority of them civilians, have been injured as well. If you are an American, it's your money that is being used to pay for these atrocities. As Glenn Greenwald wrote in The Guardian, "Israeli aggression is possible only because of direct, affirmative, unstinting US diplomatic, financial and military support for Israel and everything it does." So it's no surprise that those outraged at the latest Israeli assault on Gaza would blame the US, Here's a look at 5 ways the US enables Israel to commit human rights abuses against Palestinians. 1. Green Lighting Military Operations. When Israel escalates in Gaza, the country can count on the US to give it the green light to do what it feels it has to. This dynamic was on display the past week, as Israel conducted an assault of choice on the largely civilian population of Gaza, and the US fully backed it. The serious escalation in violence began after Israel assassinated a Hamas leader, Ahmed al Jabari, and proceeded to pound the Gaza Strip for the next week. But despite the fact that it was Israel who decided to escalate, the US had no interest in looking at the facts. The supportive rhetoric from the US began the day of the assault, when a military spokesman told reporters that "we stand by our Israeli partners in their right to defend themselves against terrorism." Similar statements were used over the week, culminating in Barack Obama's extremely supportive comments aired yesterday. "There's no country on Earth that would tolerate missiles raining down on its citizens from outside its borders," said Obama, missing the irony and blatant hypocrisy in his statement. "Israel has every right to expect that it does not have missiles fired into its territory." 2. Giving Israel Weaponry Israel can't carry out a decade's old, belligerent military operation and siege without having the tools to do so. And the US obliges Israel, day in and day out. Every year, the American government delivers about $3.1 billion in military aid to Israel. That money is sent to Israel with the stipulation that they must use the money to buy American weaponry, so that aid gets recycled back into the US military industrial complex. These weapons include the F16s bombing Gaza, missiles raining hell on civilians there,, and the US made rifles. According to the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation over the past decade "the United States licensed, paid for, and delivered more than 670,903,390 weapons and related equipment to Israel, valued at $18,866 billion through three major weapons transfer programs during the same period." You can also see this dynamic being played out in Israel's use of the Iron Dome system. This defense system is meant to protect against the rockets that Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups fire at Israel. It was paid for by the US government, to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars. The Iron Dome system has been effective at knocking down some of the rockets fired during this latest escalation.