Former officials speak out against Biden’s Israel support after aid worker killings: ‘No one can change his mind’

Investigations into potential Israeli war crimes and violations of international law are being undermined by President Joe Biden’s insistence on providing his close ally with billions of dollars in unconditional military support, several former State Department and Pentagon officials told The Independent.

Speaking out after the killing of seven international aid workers by Israel in Gaza, among them an American citizen, one former Pentagon attorney said that any US investigations into Israel’s actions were “perfunctory” and “performative” due to pressure from the White House.

The former officials say the president’s decades-long and deeply held personal connection to Israel renders US laws and regulations concerning US arms sales essentially toothless.

“There’s no incentive to investigate if the president and the White House themselves have announced that aid is unconditional,” said Brian Finucane, who worked for a decade in the Office of the Legal Adviser at the State Department advising on arms transfers and the laws of war.

“That means they don’t want to hear inconvenient legal conclusions,” he told The Independent.

Mr Finucane said senior administration officials he had spoken to had been met with a “shrug” by the US intelligence community when they quizzed them about mass civilian casualty incidents caused by Israeli bombing, “because it’s no one’s job in the US intelligence community, apparently, to actually investigate these things.”

His assessment was corroborated by two former State Department officials and a former Pentagon attorney — all of whom worked on the issue of US arms transfers — in interviews with The Independent.

Charles Blaha, former director of the State Department’s Office of Security and Human