Why is the US turning a blind eye to Israel’s war crimes?

Last month, the Watson Institute of International and Public Affairs published a revealing report on the cost to American taxpayers of the war in Gaza. Since October 2023, Israel’s war on Gaza, and more recently on Lebanon, has cost the U.S. $22 billion.

This is only the publicly declared number, the report describes, as efforts have been made to obscure through bureaucratic tactics the total amount of aid and the types of systems involved.

A particularly glaring example was the decision to arrange 100 separate arms deals with Israel between October 2023 and March 2024, each kept below the dollar threshold that would require reporting to Congress.

Last week, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, “for crimes against humanity and war crimes committed from at least 8 October 2023 until at least 20 May 2024.” The European Union and Canada said that they will abide with the decision.

Almost at the same time, the United States was the only country in the Security Council to veto a U.N. resolution calling for a ceasefire and the release of hostages. It drew criticism of the Biden administration for once again blocking the international community from stopping the ravaging war that is putting the Levant on the brink of an all-out conflict.

Moreover, only a few days earlier, Israel had missed a U.S. deadline by which it was supposed to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza by allowing aid to enter the territory, or face consequences under the law. Israel’s government is showing no willingness to back up any of its acts that violate international law, as the situation for the civilians in Gaza has become increasingly dire. And yet the Biden administration turned a blind eye.

It has become clear by now that rescuing the hostages abducted on October 7 is no longer the highest priority for Netanyahu’s government. Instead, it appears to be using the U.S. green light and blank checks to advance a much more ambitious goal: the “Greater Israel” expansionist ideology, which has been so far regularly dismissed as conspiracy theory but is proving to be very real.

Last month, these ambitions embraced by Israel’s far right have come out to the open. In an interview with Arte, the European cultural channel that broadcasts in French and German, Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, said that Israel would be expanding “little by little” until it reaches Damascus.

The Israeli far right has been a crucial support for keeping Netanyahu in power despite years of allegations of corruption. In exchange for clinging to power, Netanyahu is willing to do what they ask of him. The war has gone beyond Gaza, beyond South Lebanon, and has reached the middle of Beirut, and the mountain towns bordering with Syria — an hour’s drive from Damascus.

Whether Israel’s ambitions will be achieved or not is not the question here. The real puzzle is the Biden’s administration’s insistence on going against the international community, international laws and millions of American voices to sustain unequivocal support to the expansionist policies of a war criminal. What justifies this overcommitment to use taxpayers’ money, both through public channels and behind-the-scenes bureaucratic maneuvering? Even during a lame duck, the Biden administration is insisting on its stance.

This is a symptom of a sunk-cost fallacy — a cognitive bias that occurs when decisionmakers persist in committing resources to a cause despite clear suboptimal outcomes. When they fall into this bias, decisionmakers tend to justify lost lives and an escalation of incurred costs, both financial and diplomatic, because they are reluctant to have wasted past investments into the cause. Bureaucracies push for the continuation of such commitments because of inertia or groupthink, which dismiss any critical argument to influence decisions.

It is time to recognize this irrationality. The U.S. has to reevaluate its foreign policy priorities, and realign them with its values and long-term strategic interests in the region. American support should be conditional on Israel's compliance to international law, human rights and initiatives that would guarantee sustainable peace and a two-state solution.

Remaining in the sunk-cost fallacy will only exacerbate the atrocious situation in the Middle East and continue to erode America’s reputation on the international stage, all the while burning through billions of dollars of taxpayer money.

Sima Beitinjaneh is a student at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and a research associate at the Foreign Policy Institute.

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