U.S. FALSIFIES REPORT TO REMOVE EVIDENCE THAT ISRAEL BLOCKED AID TO GAZA
June 4, 2024The State Department falsified a report earlier this month to absolve Israel of responsibility for blocking humanitarian aid flows into Gaza, overruling the advice of its own experts, according to a former senior US official who resigned this week.
Stacy Gilbert left her post as a senior civil-military adviser in the State Department’s Bureau of population, refugees and migration, on Tuesday. She had been one of the department’s subject matter experts who drafted the report mandated under National Security Memorandum 20 (NSM-20) and published on 10 May.
The NSM-20 report found that it was “reasonable to assess” that Israel had used US weapons in a way that was “inconsistent” with international humanitarian law, but that there was not enough concrete evidence to link specific US-supplied weapons to violations.
Even more controversially, the report said the State Department did not “currently assess that the Israeli government is prohibiting or otherwise restricting the transport or delivery of US humanitarian assistance” in Gaza.
It was a high-stakes judgment because, under a clause in the Foreign Assistance Act, the US would be obliged to cut arms sales and security assistance to any country found to have blocked the delivery of US aid.
Gilbert, a 20-year veteran of the State Department who has worked in several war zones, said that the report’s conclusion went against the overwhelming view of State Department experts who were consulted on the report.
She said there was general agreement that while other factors impeded the flow of aid into Gaza at a time when famine has begun to take hold of its 2.3 million population – such as lack of security, caused by Hamas, Israeli military operations and the desperation of Palestinians to find food – it was clear that Israel was playing a role in limiting the amount of food and medical supplies crossing the border into Gaza.
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English Script:
VEDANT PETAL: We stand by the National Security Memorandum 20 Report. We are not an administration or a department that twists the facts and allegations that we have are unfounded.
Reporter: Did the State Department twist the facts?
Stacy Gilbert: They did. Again, the subject matter experts are in consensus on this, that Israel has blocked humanitarian assistance in many ways.
Reporter: The report that you drafted, that you saw, the version of the report that you saw was changed, you told me earlier today, by undersecretary level, kind of a number three level, underneath the secretary of state. Isn’t that normal, though? Isn’t it normal for people like you to draft things and then the ultimate decision goes to higher level people, including the secretary?
Stacy Gilbert: What typically happens is the subject matter experts draft the report and it goes through a clearance process.That’s very common. In this case, subject matter experts were removed from the report and it was drafted at a higher level. That’s not to say there aren’t other constraints that the humanitarian or aid organizations face, but I’m also resigning in part to speak up for them.
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