The US is reported to have made more than 100 weapons sales to Israel, including thousands of bombs, since the start of the war in Gaza, but the deliveries escaped congressional oversight because each transaction was under the dollar amount requiring approval.

“This doesn’t just seem like an attempt to avoid technical compliance with US arms export law, it’s an extremely troubling way to avoid transparency and accountability on a high-profile issue,” Ari Tolany, director of the security assistance monitor at the Centre for International Policy thinktank, said.

She added that, in exploiting the loophole, the Biden administration was following the steps of its predecessor. “They’re very much borrowing from the Trump playbook to dodge congressional oversight,” Tolany said.

In defending its continued arms sales to Israel, despite ever more public misgivings about its conduct of the Gaza war, the administration has argued that they are part of the US’s basic commitment to Israel’s self defence.

  • @LinkerbaanOP
    link
    English
    -19 months ago

    So where are the contents? It says there are two public sales for which Biden bypassed congress. Does that imply that the other ones are not public?

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      -19 months ago

      Can you tell me what you’re looking for specifically?

      Just know that I’m all out of goal posts, if you’re in the market for anymore.

      Looks like you just used yours up.

      • @LinkerbaanOP
        link
        English
        -19 months ago

        The contents of the sale as I asked 50 comments ago.

        • @[email protected]
          link
          fedilink
          English
          09 months ago

          And you got part of your answer already.

          If you’re interested in the answer, ask the specific question you want to know.

          You’re asking vague questions so you can continue pretending you don’t understand the answer each time and reframe the question.

          • @LinkerbaanOP
            link
            English
            -1
            edit-2
            9 months ago

            What was in it? Can you list it?

            Can you even give me the total amount of money the secret weapon transfers were? That should be far easier right?

            • @[email protected]
              link
              fedilink
              English
              -1
              edit-2
              9 months ago

              If you tell me what you’re looking for, like a time period or specific transactions, i can help you find an answer or the lack of one.

              I’m not sure what you’re looking for.

              You’re getting closer, but when I say I need a “specific” question, I mean the opposite of a vague question, as you insist on asking.

              • @LinkerbaanOP
                link
                English
                -1
                edit-2
                9 months ago

                The state department office of the inspector general found that between 2017 and 2019, the Trump administration had made 4,221 below-threshold arms transfers to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, worth an estimated total of $11.2bn.

                You see the number with a dollar sign in front of it? That but for Joe Biden’s secret weapons transfers to israel

                • @[email protected]
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  19 months ago

                  Okay, so when you say secret, you’re talking about an estimate based on publicly available numbers?

                  You would like publicly available numbers to estimate a dollar amount for 100 arm sales for sales to Israel since October 7th? But we’ll call it a secret?

                  Got it.

                  That “secret”(shhh) number is:

                  14 million threshold multiplied by another estimate of 100 secret(shhh) below the threshold sales

                  Stick with me here, but we’re going to take that publicly available 14000000 and then we’re going to add two of those big circle things. Those are the zeros from the 100 estimated sales.

                  So we get 1400000000(whoa, look at all those circles!), or 1.4 billion dollars in estimated arms sales to Israel below the

                  5 months, an estimated 1.4 billion dollars in arms sales to Israeli from the US below the Congressional notification threshold in the past 5 months.

                  Phew!

                  It took you 3 hours of questions and me 1 minute to find the publicly available estimates(five to type this), but thank goodness we got it done.

                  What an incredibly not meaningless number that is totally significant and we can draw conclusions from, especially in the middle of a conflict we don’t know the resolution of that incorporates so many other factors and so much complexity.

                  Good thing we got your big circle number on deck.