The US has authorized the sale of almost 14,000 tank shells to Israel, bypassing congressional rules, amid the ongoing conflict with Hamas in Gaza.
The State Department used an emergency declaration to sell $106.5m worth of ammunition for Israel’s tanks. The Department of Defense (DOD) utilized an emergency declaration from the Arms Export Control Act to make the sale.
This decision has been made in response to Israel’s urgent requests for aid, as it faces an unprecedented wave of attacks on southern Israel by Hamas militants.
The Pentagon is working across DOD enterprise, including U.S. Central Command, to determine which arms in U.S. inventory can be made quickly available for Israel’s defense.
DOD officials are in “constant and ongoing contact” with their Israeli counterparts as the needs of the conflict evolve, according to a senior Defense Department official.
The official also condemned the surprise attacks on Israel by Hamas over the weekend as “unprecedented” and “ISIS-level savagery”.
“Hamas militants going across Israel, murdering children in front of their parents, massacring with indiscriminate violence [at] music festivals, burning down entire houses while families sheltered in their bunkers. …It’s unprecedented,” the official said.
Israel’s appeal for more arms came into focus earlier Monday, after Biden administration officials briefed congressional leaders and the heads of security-focused committees on the situation. During the unclassified call, officials told lawmakers that America’s closest ally in the Middle East urgently needed precision-guided munitions and more interceptors for the Iron Dome air defense system.
The U.S. has launched a new effort to quickly find more precision weapons and artillery shells to rush to Israel as the Middle Eastern country conducts hundreds of strikes a day against Hamas targets in Gaza. A newly formed team inside the Pentagon has been tasked with scouring U.S. stockpiles, searching for ammunition to resupply Israel as it fires off munitions at a frantic pace, according to three people familiar with the effort.
The move comes as the defense industry and the Pentagon scramble to send weapons to Ukraine and keep U.S. shelves stocked. The group leading the effort comprises officials from across the Pentagon, including the acquisition and policy offices, as well as the armed services. They seek to replicate the efforts of another team of Defense and State Department officials that has been working on military aid for Ukraine.
Israel has already used up more than 8,000 precision munitions, and with Hezbollah looming on its northern border and the war showing little sign of ending, the government is eager to restock. Many of those same munitions are also key to American war plans in the Indo-Pacific and elsewhere and have been rushed to Ukraine over the past year. The need to shuttle supplies for the Ukraine and Israeli wars is creating an “inflection point” for America’s defense industry, the official said.
Relevant articles:
– Biden administration uses emergency authority to sell about 14,000 tank shells to Israel
– Biden admin uses emergency authority to approve tank shells sale to Israel
– Israel-Gaza war live: Biden bypasses Congress to approve sale of 14,000 tank shells to Israel
– Biden plans to send additional aid to Israel – POLITICO
Funny how the corporate news media doesn’t mention that the Israeli troops are doing the same to the Palestinians. Man thinks he can own a strip of land, but it is the land that gave birth to him not man to the land. Can a man own his Mother? Zion is a place within, not a place on this earth. Even if it were, it would not be a place worth living at the cost of so much blood. All this killing is for nothing, but you can’t fix stupid.