wsj.com
WSJ NEWS EXCLUSIVE
By Jared Malsin and Nancy A. Youssef
Dec. 1, 2023 1:34 pm ET
Biden Sends Israel Hundreds of Millions of Dollars of Arms
Includes 100 powerful 2000-Pound Bunker Buster Bombs,
15,000 smaller bombs, 57,000 155mm artillery shells,
1,000 GBU-39 small diameter bombs
Biden has provided Israel with tens of thousands of weapons and artillery shells. The surge of arms, including roughly 15,000 bombs and 57,000 artillery shells, began shortly after Oct 7 and has continued in recent days, officials said. The U.S. hasn’t previously disclosed the total number of weapons sent nor has it mentioned the transfer of 100 BLU-109, 2,000-pound bunker buster bombs.
The airlift of hundreds of millions of dollars in US munitions, primarily on C-17 military cargo planes flying from the U.S. to Tel Aviv, comes as the Biden administration urges them to consider preventing large-scale civilian casualties (while supplying many of the munitions deployed).
Some security analysts say the US weapons giveaways could undercut Biden’s pressure on Israel to protect civilians. “It seems inconsistent with Biden’s reported exhortations to use smaller-diameter bombs,” said a senior adviser at the nonprofit International Crisis Group, and a former attorney-advisor at the State Department.
Unlike US arms to Ukraine, where the US has openly published regular updates on some of the weapons it has provided, Washington has disclosed little about how many and what types of weapons it has sent to Israel.
Biden officials say the lack of disclosure is partly b/c US weapons to Israel come through different mechanisms. U.S. military aid to Israel amounts to some $3.8 billion every year.
The US arsenal of artillery, bombs, other weapons and military gear outlined have been used in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Somalia and Libya, to target large groups of gathered enemy forces. By contrast, the tiny state of Israel is making ground incursions, battling militants who are among civilians in narrow strips of dense urban environments.
“They are kind of the weapons of choice for the fights we had in Afghanistan and Syria in open, non-urban areas,” said a former deputy assistant secretary of defense and officer in the Marine Corps and C.I.A. “The US may use them in more urban areas, but first it would do a lot of target analysis to make sure the attack was proportional and based on military necessity.”
The Israeli Prime Minister’s Office and its Ministry of Defense didn’t respond to a request for comment on the weapons transfers. The White House National Security Council didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
On the one hand, Israel’s military says it takes precautions to protect civilians, but it has also said its air force strikes were causing “maximum damage.”
According to an internal US govt list of the weapons described to The WSJ, among the US arms handed over to Israel include:
<><>more than 5,000 Mk82 unguided or “dumb” bombs,
<><>more than 5,400 Mk84 2,000 pound warhead bombs,
<><>around 1,000 GBU-39 small diameter bombs,
<><>approximately 3,000 JDAMs, which turn unguided bombs into guided “smart” bombs,
<><>BLU-109 bunker busters w/ 2,000 pound warheads designed to penetrate concrete shelters.
Military analysts say the transfer of large bombs to Israel illustrates the choices facing the Israeli military to wipe out Hamas in Gaza, a tiny, densely populated ribbon of land that is home to more than two million Palestinians.
The U.S. has transferred about 1,000 GBU-39 small diameter bombs to Israel to help dislodge Hamas from Gaza where Hamas uses a vast network of underground tunnels, which Israel could attempt to strike with the bunker buster bombs, analysts say. The tunnels, however, lie beneath Gaza’s small urban landscape of apartment blocks, schools, hospitals, and other civilian buildings.
US officials say Israel used an American-provided bomb with a large payload in one of the deadliest strikes of the entire war, an attack that leveled an apartment block in Gaza’s Jabalia refugee camp, killing more than 100 people. Israel said the strike killed a single Hamas leader.
“There is potentially a legitimate use to bust underground bunkers,” said a former advisor at the State Department. “The problem is there’s a massive refugee camp with hundreds of thousands of civilians on top of those tunnels when you drop the bomb. You need to factor in the harm to civilians.”
The U.S. has also sent Israel roughly 57,000 155mm artillery shells—a key munition the U.S. has also provided Ukraine since the 2022 Russian invasion—along with thousands of other artillery shells and various small arms.
Even before the US armed the war in Gaza, the nation’s 155mm artillery rounds were in such short supply that the U.S. was forced to reach deep into its global stockpiles and turned to allies South Korea and Japan, among other countries, to provide more arms to Ukraine.
Vivian Salama in Dubai contributed to this article.
Hmmmmm...........by the looks of that arms list, Biden is
smarting after getting a well-deserved Hebraic tongue lashing.
“Overcompensating” comes to mind.
Has to nail that Jewish vote.
Yet, as one FReeper posted, he’d still get 70% of the Jewish vote in 2024
<><>even if he flew the Nazi flag over federal buildings in downtown DC
<><>and personally supervised the operations of a Nazi concentration camp
<><>with the acquiescence of reliable Del Dems (who never even knew they were voting for him).