A recent document has revealed that US President Joe Biden’s administration is quietly providing intelligence to Israel for targeting purposes in the war-torn Gaza Strip, deploying US Air Force “intelligence engagement officers on the ground” to the occupied territories to help the regime conduct airstrikes and fire long-range artillery weapons.
According to a deployment order obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and published by online American news organization The Intercept, the Biden administration has been flying surveillance drone missions over Gaza since at least early November, ostensibly providing intelligence to Israeli officials about captives being held in the Palestinian territory.
At the time the drones were revealed, US General Pat Ryder insisted that the special operations forces were “not participating in target development.”
But several weeks later, on November 21, the US Air Force issued deployment guidelines for officers, including intelligence engagement officers, and airmen headed to Israel.
The deployment guidelines were issued by the Pentagon’s Air Force component command for the Middle East, Air Forces Central.
The document provides deployment instructions to air personnel sent to Israel, including an “Air Defense Liaison Team” as well as “airmen assigned as the Intelligence Engagement Officer (IEO).”
The revelation comes at a time when the International Court of Justice (ICJ) is opening hearings on a genocide case against Israel brought by South Africa.
Experts say that a team of targeting officers like this would be used to provide satellite intelligence to Israeli officials for the purpose of offensive targeting.
“They’re probably targeting people, targeting officers,” Lawrence Cline, who served as an intelligence engagement officer in Iraq before retirement, told The Intercept.
Tyler McBrien, managing editor of Lawfare, a website specializing in national security law, said that there seems to be an “Israel exception” to the US rules around military assistance.
Several progressive members of Congress have raised concerns that US aid to Israel — both before and during the ongoing Gaza war — violates the so-called Leahy law.
The law, named after Senator Patrick Leahy, requires the US government to vet foreign military units for “gross violations of human rights” when providing training or aid to those units.
The Israeli military intentionally strikes Palestinian civilian infrastructure, known as “power targets,” in order to “create a shock,” according to an investigation by the Israeli news website +972 Magazine.
Targets are generated using an artificial intelligence system known as “Habsora,” the Hebrew word for “gospel.”
The United States, Israel’s biggest ally, has provided the regime with arms and ammunition since the initiation of the Gaza war.
The US House of Representatives on November 2 passed a standalone $14.3-billion military assistance package for Israel. The legislation, however, is yet to clear the Senate.
Washington has also vetoed United Nations Security Council resolutions that called on the occupying regime to cease its aggression.
Amid simmering resentment across the region over US support of Israel’s war on Gaza, which has killed at least 23,708 people and injured more than 60,000 others, the Islamic Resistance in Iraq – an umbrella group of anti-terror fighters – has launched numerous missile and drone strikes against US military installation in Iraq and neighboring Syria.
