State Department stays true to form in wishy-washy report on Israel's conduct of the war

In the early 1960s, seven leading French film directors collaborated on a movie called “The Seven Deadly Sins.” Each director took a sin. Jean-Luc Godard, the bad boy of the French new wave, took sloth.

In his segment, the actor Eddie Constantine, playing himself, has the opportunity to seduce a young film starlet. He takes her home, but is too lazy to have sex with her.

The light-hearted message? One deadly sin — sloth — can mitigate another — lust.

This brings me, believe it or not, to the report issued last week by the State Department on the question of whether Israel, in its war against Hamas, has violated international humanitarian law using U.S.-supplied weapons. A definitive finding that Israel has done so would provide a basis for cutting off further aid.

The report says it’s “reasonable to assess” that Israel has violated international law using U.S. weapons. However, it found there is insufficient information to draw a firm conclusion of specific instances of violation, Therefore, it found Israel's assurances that it is using U.S. weapons in accordance with international law to be credible.

To me, this is a case of one set of State Department “sins” — spinelessness and a penchant for double-talk — preventing another of its “sins” — animus towards Israel tinged, in my view, with anti-Semitism — from having operational force.

The State Department has been anti-Israel for as long as Israel has existed, and even before that. Secretary of State George Marshall was strongly opposed to the Truman administration’s support for the creation of a Jewish state. He fought tooth-and-nail against this decision. Fortunately, Truman, who idolized Marshall, was persuaded by Clark Clifford to reject the counsel of his Secretary of State.

Ever since then, the Department, driven by its “Arabists,” has been anti-Israel. How much of its animus towards the Jewish state is driven by anti-Semitism? I don’t know. However, it’s “reasonable to assess” that some of it is.

At the same time, the State Department is notorious for hedging. This, after all, is a diplomatic enterprise, and diplomats are known for keeping options open and not wanting to alienate the parties with whom they deal. Thus, they tend to talk out of both sides of their mouth.

As I see it, these tendencies help explain the double-talk in the State Department’s report on Israel’s use of U.S. weapons. I’m pretty sure, there was pressure to conclude, categorically, that Israel has violated international law using our weapons.

Indeed, Reuters has reported that officials in at least four bureaus within the Department have claimed that Israel's conduct in Gaza resulted in specific instances of international law violations. But the Department’s innate caution, penchant for double-talk, and desire to please both sides, negated an out-and-out anti-Israel outcome in the final report.

Unfortunately for the Department, its report pleases no one. In that sense, it represents a microcosm of Biden administration policy in this war. By arming Israel while bad-mouthing it all the while, Biden has pleased no one.

Anti-Israel politicians like Sen. Chris Van Hollen, whose proposed legislation propelled Biden to order the report, complained bitterly about the State Department’s product. He accused the administration of failing “to do the hard work of making an assessment and duck[ing] the ultimate questions” that it was expected to answer. He called the report “woefully inadequate” and full of contradictions.

Jeremy Konyndyk, a former senior Biden administration official and current president of Refugees International, agreed. “[The report] is just objectively wrong on its face, and it overrides and ignores the inputs of the U.S. government’s own experts on the humanitarian response,” he moaned. Oxfam chimed in, saying that “in turning a blind eye, the administration is allowing Israel to continue to [violate international law] without consequence.”

On the pro-Israel side, there is mostly relief about the absence of findings that would lead to an aid cut-off. However, the claim that it’s “reasonable to assess” that Israel has violated international law using U.S. weapons won’t sit well with supporters of Israel, especially in light of Biden’s recent decision to withhold offensive weaponry.

What the State Department has done in its little two-step is akin to the Justice Department deciding not to charge the target of an investigation with a crime due to lack of evidence, but adding, publicly, that the defendant nonetheless might well be guilty. The DOJ doesn’t do this except in extraordinary cases (e.g. the Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden documents investigations).

If the Justice Department doesn’t have a case, it won’t run a person’s name through the mud. When, as here, the State Department finds it doesn’t have a case, it shouldn’t run a nation’s name through the mud — especially when the matter has given rise to so much heat and passion.

I’ll add, however, that some important truths seep into the State Department’s exercise in double talk. The report attributes the inability to reach a clear conclusion about possible breaches of international law to the chaos of the war in Gaza.

The Department acknowledges that it is often difficult to determine facts on the ground in an active war zone due to the presence of legitimate military targets across Gaza and because Hamas uses civilian infrastructure for military purposes and civilians as human shields.

Welcome to the IDF’s world.

The chaos that stands in the way of assessing facts on the ground for purposes of the State Department’s report also stands in the way of the IDF as it tries to limit the inherent inhumanity of war. Under the conditions the report describes, it’s not just extraordinarily difficult to fairly second-guess Israel’s actions. It’s also extraordinarily difficult — indeed, even more so — for Israel to make flawless decisions in real time on the first guest.

Thus, neither Congress nor the State Department should be second-guessing Israel’s war effort, at least not with the degree of specificity Israel’s critics are demanding. Fortunately, the Department’s innate wishy-washiness has prevented it from satisfying Israel’s critics in this report, as much as its knee-jerk bias against Israel must have pushed it in that direction.