Report: The US is sitting on nearly 500 reports of civilian killings by US weapons in Gaza

Biden administration officials are brushing aside hundreds of reports of Israeli forces using U.S.-supplied weapons to slaughter civilians in Gaza. These are new findings from reporting and disregard the government's own policy on weapons to give Israel a pass.

According to a new report from The Washington Post As released Wednesday, the State Department has received nearly 500 reports of the use of U.S. weapons in attacks that caused “unnecessary harm” to civilians during Israel's genocide. But despite guidelines requiring urgent investigation of these reports, hundreds of the cases remain unsolved, citing former and current officials post said.

In August last year, the Biden administration established a procedure to respond to incidents in which U.S.-made weapons killed civilians. Under the system, known as Civilian Harm Incident Response Guidance, officials must recommend actions such as suspending arms shipments if it is found that U.S. weapons have been used by U.S. allies to kill civilians. At the time, the initiative was praised as a step toward reducing harm to civilians and strengthening U.S. commitment to human rights.

The State Department receives the reports from government as well as humanitarian aid groups, media reports and eyewitness accounts. As media reports have shown repeatedly over the past year of genocide, many reports are accompanied by photographic evidence of fragments of American weapons at attack sites.

But as the U.S. did countless times in the last year of genocide (and in the decades of Israeli apartheid before it), officials are ignoring their own rules to further fuel Israel's atrocities in Gaza, the occupied West Bank, Lebanon and beyond.

Although the guidelines require investigations to be conducted within two months, over two-thirds of cases remain unresolved, “with many awaiting a response from the Israeli government, which consults with the Foreign Ministry to review the circumstances of each case,” it said it in the message post writes.

Despite the deadlines, officials said they had not taken a single case to the final stage where action would be recommended.

One of the cases reportedly concerns the Israeli military's killing of six-year-old Hind Rajab and the paramedics who came to her rescue – although US officials publicly insist they are relying only on Israel's own investigation into the killing. Another concerns a horrific Israeli attack in July on Gaza's “humanitarian security zone” in al-Mawasi, in which Israeli forces dropped eight 2,000-pound bombs on civilian areas, killing at least 90 Palestinians.

Humanitarian groups, Gaza officials and weapons experts – including those in the State Department – have repeatedly said that Israel extensively uses U.S. weapons to commit war crimes against Palestinians in Gaza. In fact, experts have said it would be impossible for Israel to wreak the scale of destruction in Gaza without U.S. help.

The Washington Post The report is the latest evidence that the Biden administration is deliberately circumventing domestic law in its support of Israel.

When a bomb was found last month ProPublica noted that this spring two U.S. agencies recommended a suspension of arms sales to Israel, citing the blockade of Israel's humanitarian aid and attacks on aid efforts.

But Secretary of State Antony Blinken lied to Congress about the findings, saying the administration failed to assess that Israel was blocking humanitarian aid just as Israel began its invasion of Rafah, marking the start of an even harsher Israeli aid blockade would. Now, months later, aid flows into Gaza have reached record lows as disease and famine plague the population.