US provided majority of weapons for Gaza war

The United States is complicit in Israel’s war crimes in the Gaza Strip as it supplied the majority of military equipment used in the onslaught, says an analyst.

“The basic point that the United States is complicit in the war crimes committed by Israel not just in the most recent Gaza incursion but in all four of them is absolutely true,” Jeff Steinberg, senior editor at Executive Intelligence Review told Press TV.

“If you look at the military equipment that the Israelis used including the American F-16s which conducted the majority of the bombing operations, then this clearly violates the treaty under which the United States provides military aid which says is strictly for defensive purposes,” he added.

Steinberg dismissed the claim made by both Israeli and US officials that the Gaza invasion was carried out to protect Israel’s civilian population from rockets fired by the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas.

“Israeli civilian safety was never a serious issue in the whole operation,” he said. “The whole purpose of the Gaza invasion was to destroy the unity government agreement that was reached between Fatah and Hamas.”

The total American military aid to Israel has amounted to $100 billion since it began in 1962, making the Zionist regime the largest foreign recipient of taxpayer dollars, according to a report by Haaretz.

For the past decades, the United States has been transferring annual aid of about $3 billion to Israel. In recent years the aid has been solely for military purposes.

In addition, the US has been funding many of Israel’s military projects such as the Iron Dome, a system designed to intercept incoming short-range missiles. Israel has received over $700 million in American funds for the missile system since 2011.

Steinberg said that the US military aid to Israel has become “a point of major irritation” in the United States where many within the defense community believe the US-Israel military to military relationship is “a very big strategic liability.”