As Israel has declared a “complete siege” on Gaza in response to the Hamas attack on southern Israel, the US is scrambling to get more weapons in the hands of the Israelis.
According to The Washington Post, the Biden administration is considering combining its request for more spending on the war in Ukraine with new aid for Israel. The idea would be to “jam the far right,” referring to Republicans in Congress who oppose the proxy war in Ukraine but are staunch Israel supporters. No final decision has been made, and in the mean time, the US is already shipping new arms to Israel using existing authorities.
A Pentagon official told POLITICO on Monday that planes carrying new military aid for Israel have “already taken off.” The US is sending air defense and munitions. According to media reports, Israel has requested precision-guided munitions, small-diameter bombs, and interceptors for its Iron Dome missile defense system.
Israel receives $3.8 billion in military aid each year from the US, including $500 million to fund air defense development and $3.3 billion for Foreign Military Financing, which gives foreign governments money to buy US arms. Neither type of aid allows direct weapons shipments from US military stockpiles, but according to POLITICO, the US has $100 million available for the Presidential Drawdown Authority, which does.
The Pentagon is working to determine what arms in the US stockpile could be made available and is also pressing the arms industry to expedite deliveries of weapons Israel has already purchased. The effort comes as the US is expecting Israel to launch a ground invasion of Gaza, which will incur a huge amount of civilian casualties.
Israel could start to compete with Ukraine for the types of weapons it needs from the US. Right now, it’s focusing on pounding Gaza with airstrikes, which requires munitions Ukraine doesn’t use, but a ground assault would require 155mm artillery rounds, which are in short supply since the US has poured millions of shells into Ukraine.
US Army Secretary Christine Wormuth is calling on Congress to approve additional funding to ensure the US can sustain both wars. “One thing that is really important in terms of the munitions in particular and our ability to support both potentially the Israelis and the Ukrainians simultaneously is additional funding from Congress to be able to increase our capacity, in terms of our capacity to expand production and then to also pay for the munitions themselves,” she said.
Congress isn’t expected to authorize more spending on Ukraine or Israel until a new House speaker is elected, which will likely happen this week. According to The Messenger, House Foreign Affairs Chairman Michael McCaul (R-TX) said Congress is discussing a massive military aid package for Ukraine and Israel that would also include funds for Taiwan. “There’s discussion about putting Israel funding, Ukraine funding, maybe Taiwan funding and finally border security,” he said.
Somewhere in Kiev, Zelensky is throwing a massive hissy fit.
Somewhere in Omsk, sweetantisemite is continuing to be badly triggered by (((Zelenskyy))) and throwing a massive hissy fit on the troll farm
NATO has already lost; 487 Aircraft, 250 helicopters, 7649 UAV’s, 441 Anti Aircraft systems, 12425 tanks inc. APC’s, 1161 multiple rocket launchers, 6692 field artillery and 13949 military automotive equipment. Approx. $1 Trillion of NATO hardware.
Wastrels, pigs, warmongers all. They only differ in which war they want and how much wealth they want to waste on it. Biden, Bibi, and Blinken should all be put into a space capsule and shot into space all the way to Pluto.
Take too much fuel. The sun is better.
Along with 90% of Congress.
Why do you hate Pluto?
Why is it that American tax payers are supposed to pay for every bullet and missile that Israel fires.
They are a prosperous country with better heath care than the USA??
AIPAC
Don’t confuse the ringmaster for the circus. Yes, AIPAC organizes a lot, but the troup exists independently of the guy calling out each next act.
Huh?
Israel has already started bombing civilians in Gaza. Initial estimates put the toll at 2,500. But Gaza has a population of 2 million. That’s going to take a lot more munitions! (I’m feeling cynical today)
But their slaughter of innocent civilians will be completely justified by the Right because they are fighting “animals.” It will never occur to them that the Israelis are just as brutal. I don’t condone what Hamas has done, but Israeli retribution against civilians will not improve the situation or lessen the hatred between the the two sides.
It is a “final solution” for Israel, though.
Darwin proven right again. The nice Palestinians died from Natural Selection at the hands of Israelis. (Sarcasm)
Most Republicans and Democrats are just servants of various billionaire donors. They don’t give a crap about anyone or anything else
“That’s going to take a lot more munitions” – USA will provide as much as Zionists need. Supporting Zionism for them is no less important than supporting neo-Nazism.
“They are a prosperous country with better health care than USA” because USA are financing Israel regime the same as they are financing Kiev regime.
Media in the U.S. is ignoring stories like this: https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-palestine-war-gaza-area-bombed-after-warning-to-move It would appear that Israel lured people into these areas so as to kill as many as possible.
Egypt warned Israel of a pending Hamas attack ten days before Hamas broke out of prison.
ISRAEL CUT OFF WATER, ELECTRICITY, FOOD SUPPLIES TO GAZA STRIP. The final solution, the Gaza Cure, to starve the people of Gaza, genocide as a collective punishment.
Israel must be disbanded they have lost the right to statehood. Return Palestine to the Palestinian people.
So they didn’t get the memo from Sisi? I read they deny it, however given the mess Sinai is, Egypt has no reason to lie about this. Interesting how happy, energetic and animated Bibi is, seems that this incident gave him a new lease on life and power.
Hamas nowadays looks to be a much better fighting unit. Well organised with a purpose.
True. But it’s hard to imagine that they are any match for the IDF.
With that in mind, I can’t understand what they hope to accomplish. My best guess is that they are betting others will help, or that it will sabotage a peace deal with the Saudi’s…. something that I suspect Israel wants to do anyway (given the organized settler unrest in Jerusalem.)
When people have nothing left to lose….
I’m inclined to believe Egypt had intel it tried to share. Have read that the FBI often warns Mafiosos of impending ‘hits’ (Feds spying on all sides) and those that don’t take the warning serious, well…
I am thinking BiBi purposefully stifled it in the hopes that the attack would cause Israel would forget about his own attacks on its Constitution and rally around the flag a la America after 9/11. Plus he also really wants to avoid seeing the inside of an Israeli prison cell
The US has gone to hell… As it should.
Friends, please read Caitlin Johnstone’s “The True Face of Israel”.
I love this quote from the article:
“I built a new house. There were people living where I wanted to build it so I just started building it on top of them. They tried to stop me so I had to kill them for being terrorists. If you disagree with my actions you’re basically a Nazi. I have a right to defend my house.”
Another good article is from Consortium.com: “Uprooting the Causes of Violence in Gaza & Israel.”
Thanks, SIU, I read it!
“US Scrambles to Get More Arms to Israel, Ukraine.” Don’t forget Taiwan! The Repugninants insist! (Sarcasm)
I guess putting USA gun manufacturers out of business would be a bad idea?
Again, WHY does Israel, with a $28 BILLION annual defense budget, “need” US arms and munitions, to fight a poorly armed guerilla movement, with no tanks, no artillery, no air force, and no navy????
WHY doesn’t anyone in power ASK that question?
Israel is perfectly capable of leveling Gaza, and killing everyone inside, with no help from anyone; that would be a horrific over-reaction, and I certainly do NOT want to be a party to it.
What this tells you is all the previous news about Israel army being number one in Middle East or number five (or whatever) in the world is just trash talks…!
NCAA still has (7) Israel State as the odds-on favorite over (191) U Gaza.
“There’s discussion about putting Israel funding, Ukraine funding, maybe Taiwan funding and finally border security,” he said.
Something for everyone. Then we’d see what a joke it is about there being any antiwar faction in congress.
Good joke. Israel needs more weapons like we need more warmongers in Congress. (Joke)
They all want to get on that hysterical bandwagon, when the fervor is high.
In other news, Israeli security forces detained Hamas militants and found RPG-7 munitions in their truck. The munitions had the markings of a Ukrainian unit.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad/66697
Do you regard Slavyangrad as a credible source? Why or why not?
Why would there be “unit markings” on RPG-7 munitions? Not saying that there can’t be, but I’ve never seen them on munitions of that general size, either US/allied or Iraqi/Soviet/Jordanian (a lot of the Iraqi mortar rounds and such that I saw in 1991 were in boxes marked “GHQ — Amman,” but they didn’t have Iraqi unit ownership designations or anything on them).
Slavyangrad can be a useful source for information about events in the Donbas, always remembering that is a partisan source. I can’t think of any reason it would have inside information about what the IDF found in Hamas vehicles.
It really doesn’t make sense that munitions for that RPG would be packaged with unit markings, unless it was something like a shipping label. This is commodity stuff available around the world in enormous quantities.
Maybe the Nazi faction in Ukraine sent weapons to Hamas? After all, Nazis there don’t like Russians or Israelis. And, their agenda is obviously to kick out the Russians first then go after the Zionists in Ukraine. And, watch Mr. Z’s coming flight from Kiev if they go after him, after all he want’s to make Ukraine into a big Israel. Does it get any nuttier than this?
Straight up from the Kremlin.
It’s working cause you are all repeating it.
Well, God, if you’re five-foot-three, and your IDF’s second to none
Taxes ought not to pay, for your brand new guns
Bibi’s putting Gazans six feet in the ground
‘Cause he built his party on kickin’ them down
Lord, it’s a damn shame. . .
All of above is not enough to maintain or increase US hegemony… It is going down in opposite direction…!
The House could easily enough split the two bills, just as it did the bills keeping open the government and sending aid to Ukraine.
This does however reveal the depth of the Administration’s fear that Ukraine is now yesterday’s concern, so that funding will walk away.
And it shows a simple lack of humanity, to even consider funding more killing in Gaza and Ukraine is beyond me.
Biden and his administration and the whole congress, makes me pu*e.
I bet, Biden the killer, even went to communion last Sunday.
Hopefully Confession, too, Lysi.
“Non absolvo eo.” ~God
😂
I thought he was banned by the Pope from receiving the sacraments due to his stand on abortion?
No, some US priests/bishops refuse him the sacraments. Or at least did. The Pope may have countermanded them or just let them roll with it (Biden can go to other priests/dioceses for the sacraments), but he didn’t order it church-wide.
I believe that did not happen he was not excommunicated and war crimes are not abortion.
I am deeply ashamed of the Biden regime and for the nation as a whole.
The Israelis have enough bombs to level Gaza with no stone left over another stone, why use more tax payers money to repeat the bombing when nothing is left anyway. They do what the Americans did to N.Korea and the carpet bombing in Germany and the two nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. How sickening, what the Israelis the USA and the Europeans do to the Palestinians.
My heart goes out to all the children Palestinian or Israeli, their blood is read, and their pain and horror is the same, and the same goes for all the people men and women young and old. The criminals are sitting in safe offices, the people are made to suffer for their interests.
Morally they even beat the NAZIS, 60 years of brutality against Palestinian people and our governments still have no sense of human decency, no animal behaves like that.
Do the Palestinian people have any right to exist with dignity?
Well, bouncing the rubble benefits both Wash. and the MIC, obviously.
HEY! We need more kindling!
Maybe throw in more arms to Katmandu and Timbuktu and you got a deal?
The US is transferring dual-purpose biological research activities to Africa, the Russian Defense Ministry claimed on Monday, citing Pentagon documents.
According to Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, who leads the Nuclear, Chemical, and Biological Protection Troops of the Russian Armed Forces, the move is in response to Moscow’s efforts to expose Washington’s illegal military-biological operations.
rt.com
Pff, And you believe this BS.
Pff, other than bias you have evidence RT is an unreliable source?
Where in Africa?
Dig deep. Wash. and the MIC will benefit from your generous contributions to inflict more pain and misery around the world in their interventions abroad. Wash. is like a vulture who flaps in anywhere there’s death and misery to exploit the situation for themselves and their campaign donors.
The wonderful thing about spending on Unkraine and Israel is that defense contractors like General Dynamics are making a killing without the need for US generals and the rank and file to risk their lives killing anyone.
Money is not an issue here, Time is….! US is out of weapons except for ammunition and air missiles…! Israel has to wait and delay the Gaza siege for sustainability since it is not comfortable with their limited weapons…! The later siege of Gaza by Zionist, the less chance of their success. In fact Hamas militants would rather die than surrender…!
My understanding is beyond operation’s stock the US’s scraped the barrel’s bottom for 155mm artillery ammunition (which apparently everything including granny’s shotgun uses it) and why they sent Ukraine cluster bombs. And it will be 1-2 years before the manufacturers get tooled up for >3k a month.
The corporate fascists in the west lack the weapons to fuel both proxy wars in Ukraine and Israel.
Gaza will be a battle Hamas has 40 thousand fighters. America should make sure they send some body bags with that aid package. Lots of bunkers and a hellscape that will require the IDF to proceed.on foot. Their impregnable tanks are being lit up by sholder fired anti tank rockets. Yes go ahead and invade Gaza city Hamas is waiting for you, dont forget to say goodbye to your famlies before you go. Hamas fighters have already said their last goodbyes. They do not expect to survive this battle and are ok with it. I am glad I am not in the IDF.
US Scrambles to Get More Arms to Israel, Ukraine and leave USA vulnerable to attack?