In May, the State Department published a report saying it is “reasonable to assess” that Israel may have used American weapons in violation of international law. But he also said he could not definitively link U.S. weapons to specific cases.
“It’s difficult to acquire this information in an active combat zone,” Miller said. “But I would also say that we haven’t really worked very hard to try to acquire this information.”
U.S. law prohibits sending military assistance to countries that restrict the delivery of U.S. munitions. helplike food and medicine. Experts who track aid, including from several international organizations and the State Department itself, have found that Israel continually blocks aid. to the people of Gaza.
Brett McGurk, the White House Middle East coordinator and one of President Biden’s closest advisers, declined an interview request from 60 Minutes. But a senior White House official told 60 Minutes that government lawyers did not determine that Israel violated the laws of armed conflict and, as a result, 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 is over.
“Absent intervention from the United States or anyone else to coerce or force a decision, it ends when Netanyahu says it’s over,” he said.
Devastation in Gaza
The American footprint is everywhere in the decimated Gaza Strip. Hala Rharrit, a U.S. diplomat who resigned in protest, said she believed what was happening on the 25-mile strip of land would be impossible without U.S. weapons.
Rharrit spent nearly two decades stationed 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 his 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 leaders in Washington containing horrific images and warnings.
“I would show indisputable complicity. Fragments of American bombs next to massacres of mostly children,” Rharrit said. “And it’s devastation.”
Rharrit said that in some cases she was closed off when she tried to speak.
“I was showing pictures of children starving to death,” she said. “In one incident, I was basically scolded: ‘Don’t put that picture in there. We don’t want to see it. We don’t want to see kids starving.'”
But others told him to keep the images, emphasizing that they needed to be seen.
US support for Israel impacts America abroad
At the White House, the belief is that cutting off Israel’s arms would lead to an even longer and deadlier conflict, and that it was American military support and diplomacy that prevented a broader war in the Middle East.
But FBI Director Christopher Wray told Congress in November 2023 that the war in Gaza had raised the threat of a terrorist attack at home.
Acting Director of the National Counterterrorism Center Brett Holmgren told 60 Minutes that anti-American sentiment over the war in Gaza is at a level not seen since the Iraq War. Groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS are recruiting based on this sentiment, issuing the most specific calls for attacks on America in years, Holmgren said.
The anger in the Arab world and beyond is palpable, Rharrit said. She documented protests and the burning of American flags.
“[This is] very important because we worked very hard after the war on terror to strengthen ties with the Arab world,” she said.
Rharrit believes that American support for Israel has put America on the back foot.
“And I say this as someone who survived two terrorist attacks myself,” Rharrit said. “I say this as someone who has worked intensely on these issues and who has closely monitored the region for two decades.”
Three months into the war, Rharrit says he was told his reports were no longer needed. She resigned last April. She said one of her breaking points was the death of a little girl named Sana al-Farra, whose photo she included in one of her reports – one of thousands of children killed so far in Gaza.
“She’s wearing her princess dress and she’s in the picture waving her wand with a huge, beautiful smile,” Rharrit said. “I saw my child in this child.”
