Did Antony Blinken Commit War Crimes?

A bombshell report from ProPublica documents how Blinken apparently lied to US Congress to continue illegally sending weapons to Netanyahu

We must ask this question candidly and directly—did US Secretary of State Antony Blinken commit war crimes by knowingly lying to U.S. Congress and illegally sending arms to Netanyahu? A breaking detailed report from ProPublica indicates the strong and horrifying likelihood that the answer is yes. Let’s Address This.

Pro justice protestors interrupt Blinken’s Senate testimony. [Credit: Kent Nishimura/Getty Images]

ProPublica is a well respected non-profit media organization dedicated to authentic, verifiable, and reliable investigative journalism. Founded in 2007, it has already won six Pulitzer prizes, among numerous other awards. Non-partisan media watch dog organizations consistently rate ProPublica as reliable. I offer this context lest critics attack ProPublica’s reputation and credibility, which is beyond reproach. This week ProPublica published a detailed report documenting the following:

The U.S. government’s two foremost authorities on humanitarian assistance concluded this spring that Israel had deliberately blocked deliveries of food and medicine into Gaza. The U.S. Agency for International Development delivered its assessment to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the State Department’s refugees bureau made its stance known to top diplomats in late April. USAID sent Blinken a detailed 17-page memo on Israel’s conduct. The memo described instances of Israeli interference with aid efforts, including killing aid workers, razing agricultural structures, bombing ambulances and hospitals, sitting on supply depots and routinely turning away trucks full of food and medicine. Days later, Blinken delivered a carefully worded statement to Congress that said, “We do not currently assess that the Israeli government is prohibiting or otherwise restricting the transport or delivery of U.S. humanitarian assistance.”

Some saw through Blinken’s remarks immediately. Senator Chris Van Hollen immediately condemned Blinken’s testimony as contrary to established facts. And while the aforementioned USAID report was delivered to Blinken in April, it was not the first such indication of Israel’s war crimes. Indeed, we knew this as early as October 23, 2023, when Human Rights Watch reported:

The Israeli government is deliberately deepening the suffering of civilians in Gaza by refusing to restore the flow of water and electricity and blocking fuel shipments. Willfully impeding relief supplies is a war crime, as is collectively punishing civilians for the actions of armed groups.

Furthermore, in March of this year OxFam reported:

Israeli authorities have rejected a warehouse full of international aid including oxygen, incubators and Oxfam water and sanitation gear all of which is now stockpiled at Al Arish just 25 miles away from the border of 2.3 million desperate Palestinians in Gaza. The reasons for rejection are not clear, says Oxfam. In a new report today, Oxfam said this rejected aid was just one example of an overall humanitarian response that Israel has made so dangerous and dysfunctional as to be impossible for aid agencies to work at the speed and scale necessary to save lives, despite best efforts. [Israel] is failing in its legal responsibilities to the people whose land it occupies and breaking one of the key provisions demanded by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) – to boost humanitarian aid in light of the risk of genocide in Gaza.

Similarly, the US Aid report sent to Blinken concluded:

Lifesaving food was stockpiled less than 30 miles across the border in an Israeli port, including enough flour to feed about 1.5 million Palestinians for five months, according to the memo. But in February the Israeli government had prohibited the transfer of flour, saying its recipient was the United Nations’ Palestinian branch that had been accused of having ties with Hamas.

But we also know this is a lie from Netanyahu. While falsely accusing Hamas of blocking aid, Netanyahu himself blocked aid to Gaza. The Guardian reported in May:

Those blocking the vehicles say the aid they carry is being diverted by Hamas instead of being delivered to civilians in need, a claim relief agencies reject. US officials have also said that Israel has offered no evidence to support allegations that Hamas is diverting aid.

The Guardian furthermore reported that the Israeli military worked subversively to tip off extremist Israeli settlers to block and destroy aid to Gaza. Extremist Israeli settlers went as far as personally stopping truck drivers and beating them on the mere allegation that they were delivering aid to Gaza. The Guardian reports:

…Israel’s security forces are tipping off far-right activists and settlers to the location of aid trucks delivering vital supplies to Gaza, enabling the groups to block and vandalise the convoys, according to multiple sources [including] a spokesperson from the main Israeli activist group behind the blockades told the Guardian. The claim of collusion by members of the security forces is supported by messages from internal internet chat groups reviewed by the Guardian as well as accounts from a number of witnesses and human rights activists.

In short, Blinken saw the reports from Human Rights Watch, OxFam, The Guardian, and two U.S. Government agencies via their official reports—all in full agreement that the Israeli government is illegally blocking aid to Gaza as Palestinians starved to death—and decided to testify to the opposite effect to U.S. Congress.

There exist only two possibilities at this point:

• Either the people working at USAID who were responsible for investigating and reporting (apparently falsely) that Israel was illegally blocking aid to Palestine should be prosecuted for lying to the Federal Government.

• Or, Secretary Blinken should be prosecuted for lying to U.S. Congress in contravention to the factual USAID report, and then also prosecuted for illegally approving arms to Netanyahu in violation of the Leahy Laws.

There’s no third possibility here. I find it impossible that the top two foremost authorities on humanitarian assistance in the US Government both lied to the Secretary of State on a matter as serious and grave as this. And given the lack of terminations or prosecution of those government employees, it appears Blinken also agrees that they did not lie. It therefore appears painfully undeniable that Blinken knowingly lied to U.S. Congress after receiving and rejecting the indisputable USAID reports that Israel is illegally blocking aid to Gaza.

It would be incredibly dangerous to let this massive injustice to go ignored, as doing so sets a horrifying precedence for future administrations. Indeed, if the Leahy Laws will not be enforced in this instance, what is to stop a future MAGA administration from illegally selling weapons to Viktor Orban, or Assad, or Kim Jong Un? And if you think this is a fantastical claim, remember that Donald Trump forced the release of 5000 Taliban terrorists for exactly nothing in return, and to this day we still don’t know the true nature of his relationship with Putin? Holding Blinken accountable now is not just a matter of justice and principle, but of long term national security.

Finally, remember that stopping arms to Netanyahu is not just the moral and legally smart decision, it is the politically smart decision. A recent national CBS/YouGov poll, reports the following critical facts about how united Americans are to end the siege on Gaza by withholding arms from Netanyahu:

• 61% of Americans oppose weapons to Israel’s assault in Gaza

• 77% of Democrats reject US weapons to Israel

My fear is that the Biden administrations continued refusal to listen to the will of the American people hurts VP Harris’s chances to win in November. In an election as tight as this election is shaping up to be, it is entirely meritless to enforce a position that more than 3 in 5 Americans and nearly 4 in 5 Democrats oppose.

The bottom line is that Blinken absolutely knew that the Israeli government under Netanyahu was illegally blocking aid to Gaza—and knowing this—he testified to the opposite to US Congress. If, as Democrats rightly remind us regarding Donald Trump, that no one is above the law not even the President, then that principle must likewise and unquestionably apply to the Secretary of State.

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